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Charles Riggs

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Charles Riggs

Tom Bennett is our Curator at the Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo, in Anchorage. He has been involved with museums for 29 years as a Museum Attendant to Director.

Tom is involved is also involved with the Alaska Zoo and is currently a Board Member with the Alaska Museum of Natural History.

"Line out!" "Gee!""Haw!" "Let's go!"

It's that time of year in Alaska: The "Last Great Race" is on, and dog mushers from around the world are competing to be first with their team of dogs to across the finish line in Nome. This year, 71 dog teams (each with at least 12, no more than 16 working dogs) will traverse the 1,049 miles, (give or take a few), generally following the Iditarod National Historic Trail and battling whatever nature decides to hand them along the way.

Wells Fargo is proudly supporting this year's Iditarod , as it has for 22 years.

The true champions of the "Last Great Race " — to me at least — are the dogs. Definitely not household pets, these are lean, lanky, Olympic-quality, calorie-burning racers. That's 10,000 calories a day, folks. The dogs train all year and get superb health care — they even get massages. (I'd take the massages. But I don't think I can eat the equivalent of 50 cheeseburgers a day.)

Huskies are born to run. Running is their job, their play and their place in the sun. I know this because my folks had a Siberian Husky, who relished digging under the three-foot fence she could have leapt from a standing start, then would run around town looking for the dogcatcher because they were the only ones who might chase her. She would stand in the middle of the street waiting for them. They never once got within 20 feet of her.

Siberian Inupiaq brought their dogs, descendents of a mix of breeds including wolf, to Alaska more than a thousand years ago to provide transportation, pulling sleds across the snow and ice.

Dog teams have played an important historical role in Alaska, hauling for gold seekers stampeding to the Klondike, then on across Alaska as each new strike developed Dog teams sped serum to the people of Nome during the 1925 diphtheria outbreak. They have carried mail, food and gear to many points along the Iditarod trail....

Charles Riggs

Joycee Wong is Curator at Wells Fargo's San Francisco History Museum. (Her previous blog is here!) For Hispanic Heritage Month, Joycee reflects on the common sense we all have of celebrating family and life, whether we hail from Oaxaca or Hong Kong. (CR)

Recently, I went to the memorial park to pay respects to my dearest mom on the 4th anniversary of her death, lugging 2 large handle bags. In them were some flowers and vases, a thermos of tea and a freshly made scone, a camera (to capture the visit and share with out-of-town family later), a few old letters (to reminisce) and some tissues (for the inevitable tears). All this was my paraphernalia for a visitation to my mother's columbarium where her ashes are kept in a peaceful sanctuary.

I am reminded of the similarities between cultures when I saw a flyer a few days earlier about "Day of the Dead"  celebrations that will take place this month among many Hispanic families.

If you've never heard of it, "Day of the Dead" (El Día de los Muertos)  isn't some macabre Halloween game, but a time-honored tradition going back almost 3000 years. This holiday focuses on gatherings of families and friends, for prayer and to remember friends and family who have died. Traditions include building private altars, making sugar skulls, displaying marigolds and serving the favorite foods and beverages of the departed. Everyone visits graves with these gifts.

As a Chinese-American, I grew up with light touches of traditions on the multitude of Chinese holidays and celebrations, including those honoring our deceased loved ones. Growing up in Hong Kong, I remember periodic excursions to the cemetery where my parents and sisters — saddled with armloads of food, flowers, and cleaning supplies — spent a few hours with my paternal grandmother who was buried there. Honoring the dead according to Chinese customs require certain rituals, which our family followed to some degree....

Charles Riggs

When I wrote about Wells Fargo's 1916 office in the Philippines a couple weeks ago, I got this response:

Thanks for this entry. My wife grew up in the Philippines and I just eat up anything I can regarding FIlipino [sic] history, especially pre WWII. I think it is very important for me to learn as much about Pinoy history and culture as I can so I can help my childeren [sic] understand and be proud of their own heritage and see Filipino culture as something deeper than what we see on ASAP & The Buzz (popular Filipino TV shows). So, thanks for the post. A question: how long did Wells maintain a presence in the Philippines and what were the reasons for their exit from the island?

Thanks!
Dave

Before I answer Dave's question, this is a great example for why we celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month. (Indeed, all diversity.) Not only have people from different places and cultures contributed to our national parade, as it were, they also have — are! — contributing every moment. As with Dave and his family, they get married, move to new places, have kids and send them to school. They do everything that everybody does. Recognizing diversity isn't about calling out the differences one day or one month each year, it's about seeing all we have in common, beneath the physical and cultural differences.

From there, sharing any differences makes everybody better off. I mean, how can you be suspicious of Southeast Asian differences after you've eaten cuisine from the region? How can you dismiss Latin Americans' differences after you learn Spanish and discover its poetic genius, maybe the loveliest expression of being human?

OK, I'm getting all worked up about the potential of One World , so I'll stop. Just promise me you'll go to the next local ethnic festival , eat the food and listen to the sounds. It's a day well spent, and I stake my good looks on it!

Back to Dave's question about Wells Fargo in the Philippines. Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express opened offices there starting in 1902. In 1918, the Express was absorbed by the U.S. Government as a wartime measure, but Wells Fargo Bank continued operations in San Francisco. With dozens of correspondent offices worldwide, including 16 in the Philippines, Wells Fargo Bank transacted financial services around the globe.

In 1935, Wells Fargo Chairman Frederick L. Lipman declared, "The Bank of the Philippines at Manila is an old correspondent." Since the 1960s, relationships with other international financial services companies, and Wells Fargo's own remittance services, continue Wells Fargo's global reach.

Short answer: Wells Fargo is still there!

Charles Riggs

In November 1916, the Wells Fargo Messenger reported on the Company's new operations in the Philippines. The office of Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express was at 25 and 26 Calle David, Manila, just off the Escolta  — "Manila's Broadway" at the time.

Wells Fargo had offices in the Philippines since 1902. The archipelago , along with other Pacific and Carribbean countries, was annexed by the United States after war with Spain  in 1898. Flush with patriotic and imperial zeal, American business established itself in these new territories.

Wells Fargo & Co.'s Express was excited to be an important part of Pacific commerce. The Messenger report was written by George A. O'Brien, Wells Fargo's "Foreign Manager for the Orient." Images showed a bustling Escolta, with ox carts, horse-drawn traffic, automobiles and a trolley.

O'Brien noted the energy of local people, and their interest in all things Western.Of course, it's hard to know what resistance O'Brien met, or how much indifference he may have noticed. He confined his explorations to a view from the Manila office and a scan of reports on local facilities.From that vantage, business was good in the Philippines.

"When one comes to consider freight," O'Brien writes, "he begins to wonder just what traffic would naturally move by Wells Fargo from the Philippines. It does not take much imagination to realize what goods our company will carry from the horne country to its far eastern possessions." The US was in it's full industrial adolescence —impulsive and energetic. "For the return trip, however," he pondered, "the Philippines offer many express possibilities. For instance, there is the cigar business." O'Brien also suggested produce, poultry, eggs and fish.

"And then there is the embroidery traffic,"O'Brien noted. In that period, embroidery  was a coming industry in the islands. It was a household industry, fostered by the government. And since the start of World War I two years earlier, the embroidery  supply from Europe was cut off and dealers turned to the Philippines. Uncle Sam's Far East possessions, wrested by war a generation earlier, became an opportunity for trade with new war-torn markets.

Charles Riggs

In the nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, Chinese and Japanese people in America were denied basic civil rights. The Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years. The Act   was renewed in 1892 and made permanent in 1902. It was not repealed  until 1943.

This legislation focused on blocking Asian access to society and economy. Asians in that era were portrayed  as "Other," inferior, unable to assimilate and dishonest. Of course, if they were so different, it stands to reason they wouldn't do very well. But Asians are real people, not stereotypes. Their successes kept pace with — and often outpaced — other people's. Many felt threatened by this success, so, bigots developed a "voice" of exclusion, a rhetoric that elevated themselves by reducing Asians.

The sinister nature   of exclusion moved rhetoric away from reason and stoked fear and violence. The same arguments used against the Chinese were used against the Japanese a generation later.

Even before the dramatic migration to California, Whites had shown a propensity for excluding  people of color. Extreme reactions often occurred in times of economic stress, or whenever things appeared to change. By the 1870s, the gold rush was over, the transcontinental railroad was complete and the Civil War had ended. The economy was unstable and Anglo American opportunities for success were challenged by non-Anglos seeking their own opportunities. The dream was passing by too many White men, and resentment set in. To people unable to understand the larger forces at play, "inscrutable" Asians seemed as good a reason as any for their misfortune.

But check this out: By 1880, there were about 75,000 Chinese people in California. After the Exclusion Acts, their population dropped to about half of that. The Japanese population in California grew from 32 people in 1870 to over 10,000 by 1900. Meanwhile, California population as a whole almost doubled in those years, to 1.5 million people* — the Chinese population thus declined to near invisibility. And while Japanese growth was impressive, it actually declined by one-third as a percentage of the entire population! Anti-Asian sentiment was clearly aimed at a diminishing proportion of California population. Any "threat" they posed was utter fiction.

The racism that drove anti-Asian movements degraded everyone. Chinese and Japanese people in America suffered humiliation and violence, and were systematically blocked in the quest for the American Dream. Asian success in that time, and since, is certainly twice the accomplishment in the face of such hostility.

* From Loosley, Foreign Born Population of California, 1848-1920: A Thesis. San Francisco, 1971.

Charles Riggs

Asian Pacific Heritage Month celebrates the histories of the many people from Asia and the Pacific islands who have built communities across America. May was chosen because in that month, in 1843, Japanese immigrants  arrived in the U.S. And in May of 1869, the transcontinental railroad  was completed after Chinese workers succeeded in laying track through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

Historical and genealogical records show even earlier arrivals. Colonial records reveal indentured servants who came to the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries were East Indian.  Filipino sailors aboard Spanish Galleons  formed early Asian communities in America. In 1849, Chinese miners and merchants joined the gold rush across the Pacific to the land they called Gum Shan , "Golden Mountain." They soon became some of Wells Fargo's best customers.

Wells Fargo's financial services across the Pacific included Hawaii , still an independent kingdom in the 19th Century. By the early 20th Century Wells Fargo had Representative banking offices that connected U.S. and Asian business communities.

Wells Fargo had a large volume of telegraphic transfers of money with Hong Kong ($623,000 in 1909) and maintained correspondent relationships with banks in Canton, Hong Kong, Peking, Shanghai, and Tientsin.

In 1905, Wells Fargo staunchly advocated that financing international trade — the movement of merchandise — was among the soundest of banking principles. Frederick Lipman was the Cashier, the old-time equivalent to our modern CFO.  He stated, "there was no other phase of banking which compared to it in the service it rendered and in the earnings it could generate."