Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance
According to one description:Laundry work was especially wearisome, because it meant the soaking, scrubbing, and ironing of clothing solely by hand; moreover, prompt and high quality service was necessary to keep customers satisfied.
With the support of white Americans in that same industry,[10] in 1933 the New York City Board of Aldermen passed a law intended to drive the Chinese out of the business.
[11] Bezozo successfully lobbied the council to exempt "Orientals" from the requirement to be United States citizens and to decrease the amount of the bond to $100, which preserved the livelihood of thousands of Chinese laundry workers.
With winter approaching, refugees and wounded soldiers in China will be in desperate need of relief, and even western customers of hand laundries have frequently suggested that the Alliance broaden its campaign to collect funds for medical supplies.
In addition, on October 31, at 4 PM, the Alliance will be sponsoring an anti-Japan publicity conference at its headquarters, to which Professor Chi Chao....China’s representative to the Pacific Scholars' Conference—has been invited as a speaker.
An article in the same publication the following year stated in part: Not only was the HLA the first organization in New York to advocate raising funds to assist Chinese military resistance against Japan after the occurrence of the Marco Polo Bridge incident, the Alliance also initiated the movement to collect donations from westerners by placing relief boxes in hand laundries.
When they saw the orderly manner in which the demonstration and rally proceeded, and the excitement of all the participants, they understood that the unyielding spirit and organizational capacity of the Chinese people guaranteed that the final victory will belong to China.
[13] The "only Chinese-language newspaper in the U.S. that was not pro-Nationalist",[14] it attracted negative attention from the United States Government and: In 1952 it was tried for violating the Trading with the Enemy Act, because employees continued to send remittances to China.
Its editor and three officers of the paper were sent to prison for running an advertisement, posted by a mainland-Chinese bank, urging Overseas Chinese to repatriate money to relatives.
[15] The CHLA continued its political and social struggles "against institutionalized racism and class oppression, tied to the fight for China’s self-determination",[10] but during the era of McCarthyism, "the loyalties of over ten thousand American citizens of Chinese descent were questioned based on their ethnicity and alleged risk to national security.
"[16] Eventually, targeted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during the Second Red Scare and faced with surveillance and interrogations, membership in the China Hand Laundry Alliance sharply declined.
Yet for sending money home, his friends were charged by the U.S. government for trading with the enemy and his life was shattered by constant FBI surveillance and harassment.
