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laborers who were bringing them
back with them after a visit to China. While their husbands, who possessed the proper certificate indicating prior residence in the United
States, were allowed to reenter, the two women were barred because they
were of the laboring class (by virtue of their husbands' status) and were
entering the United States for the first time.24
    Chinese women could enter only if they qualified as one of the exempt classes; even this right, however, had to be won through the judiciary. Chung Toy Ho and Gue Lim, both merchant wives, were initially
denied admission on the grounds that they did not hold merchant's certificates. Their successful appeals established the right for merchant wives
to join their husbands in the United States. As Judge Matthew Deady
of the Circuit Court for the District of Oregon ruled in the case of Chung
Toy Ho,
    My conclusion is that under the treaty and statute, taken together, a Chinese merchant who is entitled to come into and dwell in the United States
is thereby entitled to bring with him, and have with him, his wife and
children. The company of the one, and the care and the custody of the
other, are his by natural right; he ought not to be deprived of either, unless the intention of Congress to do so is clear and unmistakable.25
    The Exclusion Act severely limited the number of Chinese women
who could come to America, keeping a crack open mainly for the privileged few-the wives and daughters of merchants. But in fact, rigorous
enforcement of the act, along with the implementation of anti-Chinese
measures regulating prostitution such as the Page Law of 1875, kept
even those Chinese immigrant women with legitimate claims out of the
country and made immigration to America an ordeal for any woman
who tried to enter. Immigration officials apparently operated on the
premise that every Chinese woman was seeking admission on false pre tenses and that each was a potential prostitute until proven otherwise.
Only women such as my great-grandmother who had bound feet and a
modest demeanor were considered upper-class women with "moral integrity." As one immigration official wrote in his report, "There has never
come to this port, I believe, a bound footed woman who was found to
be an immoral character, this condition of affairs being due, it is stated,
to the fact that such women, and especially those in the interior, are necessarily confined to their homes and seldom frequent the city districts."
Furthermore, he wrote, "The present applicant No. 14 4 18 is a very modest appearing woman whose evident sincerity, frankness of expression
and generally favorable demeanor is very convincing."26 Most other
women, however, were detained for inordinate lengths of time and crossexamined like criminals. Under such trying circumstances, women suffered humiliation and, often, the added expense of legal fees in order to
obtain release and appeal adverse decisions. They also ran the risk of being barred for a number of other reasons: lack of proper documentation, having a contagious disease, or discrepancies in their testimonies.
As a result, the numbers of Chinese women in the United States remained
low throughout the nineteenth century, never exceeding the 5,000 mark,
or 7 percent of the total Chinese population (see appendix table i); the
scarcity of women supported Chinese prostitution, which was rampant
until the 18 8os; and merchant wives predominated as the favored class
of Chinese immigrant women throughout the Exclusion period.

    Bound Lives in Old Chinatown
    A good number of the Chinese women who came to the
United States in the nineteenth century-despite the social, economic,
and political barriers-settled in San Francisco: 654, or 37 percent of all
Chinese women in the country, lived in San Francisco in 18 6o; z,136,
or 47 percent, in r goo. But they were still grossly outnumbered by men,
who on the average made up 95 percent of the total Chinese