ABSTRACT
In the early days of San Francisco’s Chinatown—the largest in the United States, and in many ways the model for all later ones—several distinct types of organizations emerged. District associations, composed of men who had emigrated from the same region, took care of employment and community affairs, such as schools and medical services. In 1865, the major district associations in San Francisco took the further step of uniting to form the powerful Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, better known as the Chinese Six Companies . After lording over the affairs of Chinatown for a hundred years, the Six Companies is today a mere shadow of its former self. From 1882 to the late 1970s, however, the Six Companies reigned as the undisputed voice of Chinese America, exerting enormous influence through its network of traditional district and family associations. Most ethnic groups evolved parallel organizations. Compare the Japanese American kenjinkai, the Jewish landsmanshaften.
