uckier girls were sold to well-to-do Chinese as concubines or mistresses or to the parlor houses to serve upper-class gentlemen. The lowest less-fortunate women were confined in cribs, rooms no larger than four-by-six feet, where they were forced to hawk their trade to poor laborers, teenage boys, sailors, and drunkards for as little as twenty-five to fifty cents. When hopelessly diseased, they were left alone to die in the hospital or were discarded in the streets. The trade was so lucrative along with gambling and opium. The tongs constantly fought for its control. Sing-song girls were often kidnapped in broad daylight and hijacked from their cribs under the very noses of their masters, in order to be rushed inland to womenless agricultural or mining towns Chinatowns and work as prostitutes. The Tong members were often called Hatchet man because of the brutal things that they perform. The Hip Yee Tong was reportedly netted two hundred thousand dollars from the illegal traffic between 1852 and 1873. Violent tong wars in the 1870s and 1880s, sensationalized in the press, often began with disputes over possession of a Chines prostitute. In 1875 two tongs went to battle after a Suey Sing Tong member was killed by a Kwong Dock Tong member over possession of Kum Ho, a prostitute. Ten men were killed in the street fight before the police intervened. In those days, there were no worse fate for a Chinese prostitute than to be banished to the mining camps, like the Comstock Mines in Nevada, where they led lives as harsh as they were short. In these isolated rural areas, conditions were even more worse and horrible than in urban brothels. Living with their masters in the segregated Chinatowns that services miners, most prostitutes serve a racially mixed clientele of uncivil miners. They were called the prostitute of the lowest order. In these mining towns, separate Chinatowns sprang up because of racism and discriminatory city ...
