Scenes from the garment industry, late 1800s-early 1900s: beyond San Francisco.(Era overview)(Brief article)

Although their numbers were smaller than in San Francisco, Chinese also worked in the garment industry in other California cities such as Los Angeles and Sacramento. Some garment workers, like Fong See, labored in the industry only for a limited period of time.

As a new immigrant, Fong See worked in the Sacramento Deha's potato fields, earning a dollar a day, then as a helper in a laundry. He also swept floors and washed dishes in a restaurant, cooked in a brewery and on a ranch, and sold merchandise door to door. On June 24, 1874, after only three years in Gold Mountain, he took out papers to open his own business in Sacramento, and he celebrated by having his photograph taken in a studio. Not until the late 1870s, however, did Fong See--together with his brothers Fong Lai and Fong Quong--open the business: a sewing factory