The White Women's Labor Laws: Anti-Chinese Racism in Early Twentieth-Century Canada

Abstract

Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, provided the setting, in May 1912, for two widely publicized trials that highlighted the explosive fusion between race, gender, and class in early twentieth-century Canada. The prosecutions were based on a Saskatchewan statute passed several weeks earlier, “An Act to Prevent the Employment of Female Labour in Certain Capacities.” The first of its kind in Canada, this statute made it a criminal offence for “Chinese” men to employ “white” women. Quong Wing and Quong Sing, men who operated two restaurants and a rooming house in Moose Jaw's small but growing Chinatown, were charged with violating the new law. Between them, they employed three white women: Nellie Lane and Mabel Hopham as waitresses and Annie Hartman as a chambermaid.