A street in Chinatown view, photochrome print postcard.

In the 19th century, a majority of Chinese immigrants were single men who worked for a while and returned home. At first, they were attracted to North America by the gold rush in California. A relatively large group of Chinese immigrated to the United States between the start of the California gold rush in 1849 and 1882, before federal law stopped their immigration. After the gold rush, Chinese immigrants worked as agricultural laborers, on railroad construction crews throughout the West, and in low-paying industrial jobs. Soon, many opened their own businesses such as restaurants, laundries, and other personal service concerns. With the onset of hard economic times in the 1870s, European immigrants and Americans began to compete for the jobs traditionally reserved for the Chinese. Such competition was accompanied by anti-Chinese sentiment, riots, and pressure, especially in California, for the exclusion of Chinese immigrants from the United States. The result was the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882. This Act virtually ended Chinese immigration for nearly a century.

The Detroit Publishing Company was started by publisher William A. Livingstone and photographer Edwin H. Husher. ln 1905 that the company called itself the Detroit Publishing Company. The best-known photographer for the company was William Henry Jackson, who joined the company in 1897. The company acquired exclusive rights to use a form of photography processing called Photochrom. Photochrom allowed for the company to mass-market postcards and other materials in color. We at GetArchive are admirers of their exceptional high-resolution scans of glass negatives collection from the Library of Congress. By the time of World War I, the company faced declining sales both due to the war economy and the competition from cheaper, more advanced printing methods. The company declared bankruptcy in 1924 and was liquidated in 1932.