Content area
Abstract
The study examines the role the Chinese laundries played in the experience of American society. It delineated the relationship between 'culture' and 'structure,' and illustrated the influence of them on the unique experience of Chinese Americans.
The development of Chinese laundry had been tied with the industrialization and urbanization in the American society since the second half of the nineteenth century. The division of gender role, the standard of cleanliness, and fashion change gave birth to commercial laundry service. The study specifically put the Chinese laundry, as an ethnic enterprise, in a framework that focused upon transformations in the social, economic, and demographic characteristics of urban settings.
An examination of the laundry industry itself brought up the issue of competition between the Chinese and American power laundries, which modified the argument that institutional discrimination resulted in the Chinese clustering in the line of laundry as an undesirable and thus non-competitive job. The nature of competition before World War I was manifested in the difference between hand laundry and power laundry. A conservative trust in hand-washing work over machine-washing, among other concerns, made hand laundry desirable.
Responding to the business opportunity, Chinese laundries presented a set of coping capacities drawing from their culture. With the help of family associations and/or district organizations, they endeavored to build a quasi-guild network. While the study stressed the role of ethnicity as a vital resource, it also presented the structural forces that encouraged Chinese entering laundry business and fostered continuous growth before World War II.
