countrymen."[45] They each had a club house, where members were
registered and where lodgings and other accommodations were provided.
The largest in 1877 had a membership of seventy-five thousand; the
smallest, forty-three thousand. The Chinese also maintained trade
guilds similar in purpose to the American trade union. Private or
secret societies also flourished among them, some for good purposes,
others for illicit purposes. Of the latter the Highbinders or Hatchet
Men became the most notorious, for they facilitated the importation of
Chinese prostitutes. Many of these secret societies thrived on
blackmail, and the popular antagonism to the Six Companies was due to
the outrages committed by these criminal associations.

When the American labor unions accumulated partisan power, the Chinese
became a political issue. This was the greatest evil that could befall
them, for now racial persecution received official sanction and passed
out of the hands of mere ruffians into the custody of powerful
political agitators. Under the lurid leadership of Dennis Kearney, the
Workingman's party was organized for the purpose of influencing
legislation and "ridding the country of Chinese cheap labor." Their
goal was "Four dollars a day and roast beef"; and their battle cry,
"The Chinese must go." Under the excitement of sand-lot meetings, the
Chinese were driven under cover. In the riots of July, 1877, in San
Francisco, twenty-five Chinese laundries were burned. "For months
afterward," says Mary Roberts Coolidge, "no Chinaman was safe from
personal outrage even on the main thoroughfares, and the perpetrators
of the abuses were almost never interfered with so long as they did
not molest white men's property."[46]

This anti-Chinese epidemic soon spread to other Western States.
Legislatures and city councils vied with each other in passing laws