Tong Wars

By the early 1880s, Tong Wars evolved as periods of violence in Chinatowns. At their height in the 1880s and 1890s, in San Francisco alone, twenty to thirty tongs, or community organizations, ran highly profitable gambling houses, brothels, opium dens, and slave trade enterprises in Chinatown. Overcrowding, segregation, graft, and the lack of governmental control contributed to conditions that sustained the criminal tongs until the early 1920s. Photo: MEMBERS OF THE HIP SING TONG, INCLUDING NATIONAL SECRETARY ENG YING "EDDIE" GONG (CENTER), IN 1933.