ited States to submit to lengthy and humiliating interrogations of their character prior to being issued a visa in China. The Page Act effectively closed off the immigration of Chinese wives of immigrants already in the United States. But it did little to stop the illegal trade in women which was protected by corrupt officials on both sides of the Pacific. The perception of Chiense prostitution as a widespread threat to the nations moral and physical well-being was greatly exaggerated. At the peak of Chinese prostitution in the late 1870s, it was reported that some 900 Chinese women in San Francisco worked as prostitutes. The number of Chinese women who worked as prostitutes other than on the West Coast, however, was quite small. Although New York' Chinatown gained notoriety for prostitution, opium, and gamling, it was reported that only three of the prostitutes in the quarter were Chinese, while the overwhelming number of prostitutes who worked there were white. Nevertheless, the image of the Chinese prostitute as a source of pollution was considered a matter of urgent concern. Chinese prostitutes were said to constitute a particular threat to the physical and moral development of young white boys. In San Francisco, a Public Health Committee investigated conditions in Chinatown in 1870 professed shock that boys as young as ten could afford and did regularly use the services of the lowest level of Chinese prostitutes. In a popular environment in which theories of national culture were freely combined with theories of germs and social hygiene, it was asserted by some public health authorities that Chinese prostitutes were the racially special carriers of more virulent and deadly strains of venereal disease. The general tended to ignore the realty and focus on the sensational accounts that fueled the perception of a social crisis....
