S.F. had its own divisive, Trumplike demagogue
Almost 150 years before Donald Trump harangued a mob that invaded the U.S. Capitol, San Francisco had its own demagogue who rose to prominence by capitalizing on the rage of disaffected workingclass voters, demonizing minorities and promising to drain the swamp of corrupt officials.
The difference between Denis Kearney and the 45th president of the United States is that Kearney not only incited his followers to storm the citadels of power, he personally led them there.
The year 1877 was one of national crises. The presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden deadlocked in the Electoral College, resulting in the “Compromise of 1877,” in which Hayes was declared the winner in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction and opening the door to the disenfranchisement and renewed oppression of Southern Black people.
At the same time, the country was convulsed by a social and economic crisis known as the Great Upheaval. After Eastern railroads cut wages, workers across the country rose up, derailing trains
and burning depots. Democratic and Republican governors alike called out militias. In the eyes of angry workers, both major parties had lost legitimacy.
The downturn did not spare San Francisco. Churches and charities fed thousands of unemployed. Anger among white workers at Chinese laborers and the capitalists who employed them at lower wages than they paid whites had been simmering in the city for years. As Alexander Saxton argues in “The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the AntiChinese Movement in California,” that rage was a toxic compound of economic grievance and racism. On the evening of July 23, it boiled over.
A crowd had gathered on the sandlots near the unfinished City Hall to listen to a speaker for a socialist party, the Workingmen’s Party of the United States, demand reforms. The speech was moderate and did not mention the Chinese. But the socialists soon lost control of the crowd.
Hecklers shouted threats against the Chinese. Soon, groups of young men broke away, searching for targets. They broke into 20 or 30 Chinese laundries and beat individual Chinese people they came upon.
The next night, rioters killed several Chinese people and set fire to Chinese businesses. On the third night, mobs attacked the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., whose ships carried Chinese immigrants, and battled police and firefighters. A “pickhandle brigade” of 4,000 volunteers fought back the rioters. When order was restored, four rioters lay dead and dozens of Chinese businesses had been destroyed.
Kearney was not in the mob. In fact, he was a member of the pickhandle brigade that fought the rioters. An Irish immigrant and owner of a small draying business, he had hitherto evinced the classic conservative beliefs of the selfmade man, denouncing the indolence of workingmen and praising selfreliance.
But Kearney always had an eye for the main chance, and after the riots he suddenly changed his position. He became an outspoken critic of both the Chinese and the “thieves, speculators, land grabbers, bloated bondholders and shoddy aristocrats” who employed them. His fiery speeches, which always climaxed with his trademark slogan, “The Chinese must go,” made him the most popular of the sandlot orators. Soon he founded a political party, the Workingmen’s Party of California.
Like Trump, Kearney subscribed to no particular ideology. He blamed the workers’ plight not on the system but on individual evildoers who broke the rules (shades of “Crooked Hillary”). Like Trump, he was a master at activating racial and economic grievances. And just as Trump had Fox News, Kearney had a key media supporter: The Chronicle, which had been a mainstream Republican outlet but now went all in on the rabblerousing demagogue.
On Oct. 29, Kearney led his followers to Nob Hill, where the hated Central Pacific Railroad magnates who employed Chinese workers, including Charles Crocker and Leland Stanford, had built their mansions. Kearney raged to the mob, “The Central Pacific Railroad men are thieves, and will soon feel the power of the workingmen. When I have thoroughly organized my party, we will march through the city and compel the thieves to give up their plunder. I will lead you to the City Hall, clean out the police force, hang the prosecuting attorney, burn every book that has a particle of law in it, and then enact new laws for the workingmen.”
Despite Kearney’s threats, he and his mob did not actually invade the mansions, which would have resulted in the full power of the authorities coming down on them. It was safer to beat up Chinese people.
Kearney’s incendiary words got him repeatedly arrested, but to his followers this only made him a more heroic figure. The Workingmen’s Party became a major political force in California, and one of its candidates, Isaac Kalloch, was elected mayor of San Francisco in 1879.
But in a larger sense, the Workingmen’s Party and Kearney himself proved to be failures. The party had no real platform and achieved nothing for workingmen. And Kearney’s fulminations proved to be all hot air — he returned to his business roots in a few years and concluded his career, ironically, as a stock speculator and owner of an employment agency.
However, the Workingmen’s Party and Kearney did achieve one thing. They succeeded in getting antiChinese measures written into the California Constitution and mobilized the public against the Chinese. It was this pressure that led the U.S. government to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which outlawed Chinese workers from immigrating to the U.S. The law wasn’t repealed until the mid20th century.
Kearney and his movement may have ended up in the trash can of history, but they left a legacy of divisiveness and hatred. In that regard, too, they bear a striking similarity to Trump and Trumpism.
Gary Kamiya is the author of the bestselling book “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco,” awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. His new book, with drawings by Paul Madonna, is “Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City.” All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to SFChronicle. com/portals. For more features from 150 years of The Chronicle’s archives, go to SFChronicle.com/vault. Email: metro@SFChronicle.com