The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city's Chinese immigrant population.

They not only hired out as servants and laborers; but they became laundrymen and turned their attention successfully to various mechanical branches of industry, which would yield them wages, and in a number of ways picked up money, which would have otherwise gone into white hands.

[6] That afternoon, a meeting scheduled for 7:30 p.m. was organized by the fledgling Workingmen's Party of the United States to agitate on behalf of the needs of the labor movement and those of unemployed workers in particular.

[4]: 253 [5]: 89  On the afternoon of July 23, San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) chief Henry H. Ellis had written to Brigadier General John McComb, requesting the California state militia be mobilized and held in readiness to suppress a potential riot.

[5]: 89 [11] Several representatives of the Workingmen's Party addressed the throng on the labor question, but none of them so much as mentioned the city's Chinese population, let alone attempted to lay blame upon them as the cause of the unemployment problem;[4]: 253  The first speaker, Chairman James D'Arcy, explicitly stated this was not an "anti-Coolie meeting" and was meant to be a rally to support the workingmen of Pittsburgh, but was repeatedly interrupted by the crowd's shouts: "Talk about the Chinamen" and "Give us the Coolie business".

[7] The Daily Alta article stated that a Dr. O'Donnell was permitted to speak on the condition that "he not slop over on his Anti Coolie hobby" and his speech was interrupted several times, first by Chairman D'Arcy to solicit donations to cover the cost of the band, then by the arrival of the Anti Coolie club from Platt's Hall, and finally by "[a] gang of some two hundred young hoodlums" who rushed from the McAllister side of the rally site up Leavenworth, "hooting and yelling in a fearful manner."

The ethnic violence was only halted through the combined efforts of the SFPD, the California state militia, and as many as 1,000 members of the civilian group "Committee of Safety", each armed with a hickory pickaxe handle.

[4]: 253  In total, twenty Chinese-owned laundries were destroyed in the violence and San Francisco's Chinese Methodist Mission suffered smashed glass when the mob pelted it with rocks.

Civilians living in the upper stories required rescue, and the rioters continued to bedevil San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) personnel by cutting their hoses in several places.

The police drove the mob back to Stockton and California, where they were joined by the other group of officers, and the combined forces pushed the mob back to Market, quelling the first night's activity by 11 p.m.[9] On July 24, General McComb called a meeting of prominent San Francisco citizens, business leaders, and politicians including Mayor Andrew Jackson Bryant, where they formed the Committee of Safety, led by an executive committee of twenty-four civilians chartered "to preserve the peace and well-being of the city, with our money and persons."

The severe rebuff administered to the incipient mob on Monday night on Dupont street had proved a wholesome lesson to the lawless elements.

[18] The men of the Committee of Safety were issued "clubs of the latest police pattern" (baseball bats) on July 25 in addition to any weapons they had brought.

Brock was derided as "very much under the influence of liquor, and whose anti-Coolie sentiments, enunciated in very uneven terms, caused great laughter and more ribald jests.

At the same time, a police squadron came down Montgomery onto Market, pinching the rioters in between; according to the Daily Alta, "many of them fell senseless to the street under the strong blow of an officer's 'billy', or a Committeeman's staff".

One of those who had served in the so-called "Pick-Handle Brigade" which had helped to quell the rioting, an Irish wagon-driver named Denis Kearney, was drawn into political activity by the July events.

[4]: 254  Stymied from membership in the existing opposition political party, Kearney started a new organization of his own, the Workingmen's Trade and Labor Union of San Francisco, which made use of the mobilizing slogan "The Chinamen Must Go!