the "criminal classes, constitute the whole of its frame of reference. The book fills a wide gap in the history of America's Chinese. Most writers on the subject have avoided or deempha-sized the role of secret societies in Chinatown. Yet they played such a vital part in the social life of the early Chinese that no student of the subject can afford to overlook the role of these important associations.
Secret societies, chapters of or modelled after China's famous Triad Society, appeared in San Francisco during the first decade of Chinese immigration. For a few years these societies went unnoticed because of the refusal on the part of California to differentiate in any way among Chinese and because of the clandestine nature of the societies' activities. However certain of their unsavory practices were called to the attention of law enforcement officials as early as 1854. In the summer of ].862 a notice published in a Sacramento newspaper gave the first public indications of how disputing Chinese associations (not all of which were secret societies) sought to coopt California courts as unwitting allies in their intra-commun-ity struggles. When a secret society leader who had aroused the enmity of the "See Yup" people was murdered, his associates sought the public prosecution of one Chu Pak, who, they alleged, had given the orders to kill their leader. The "President Directors of the Five Chinese Companies of California" published a denial, asserting that the murdered man's followers were trying to use the courts to continue their oppression and begging the court "to pass a righteous judg-
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CHINATOWN NEWS, DEC. 18, 1963