Chinese Gangsters

TONG WAR-!--Eng Ying Gong and Bruce Grant--Nicholas L. Brown ($2.50).

Chop Suey and the Chinese tong are as American as hashed brown potatoes; neither is known in China; both sprang up to fill a need. Tong means association. The first tong was organized in San Francisco's Chinatown several years before the Civil War to protect its members from the invasion of competitors in business, from legal injustice (or justice). So effective was it that rival or imitative tongs were soon found wherever there were Chinese colonies. Tong leaders began employing hatchetmen (boo how doy), gun- men who managed the affairs of brainier tong leaders, terrorized respectable citizens, puzzled the constabulary. Gory, clever, macabre, the tong wars of the early twentieth century had much the same effect on the U. S. public as Chicago's gang-battles; they turned harmless laundrymen into homicidal maniacs from sheer contagion.

Author Eng Ying (Eddie) Gong, proprietor of an Americanized restaurant at No. 1 Pell Street (nucleus of Manhattan's Chinatown) observed, noted, took part in tong warfare, wrote an inside story of it. Along came Reporter Bruce Grant, who read the story, realized that it was an expose exciting and spectacular enough to appeal to underworld-minded readers, was the first authentic history of the tongs ever written, was a splendid scoop. He wrote Author Gong's manuscript into reportorial text. All Reporter Grant needed was a rewrite man.

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