After the heyday of California progressivism from 1910 to 1913, the movement nationwide entered a gradual decline that lasted into the 1920s. Naturally, America’s entry into World War I in 1917 forced the entire nation to focus less on reform and more on shoring up the home front and prevailing militarily overseas. Other factors, even more specific to California politics, also led to the waning of progressivism.
Between 1914, when World War I erupted in Europe, and America’s entry into the conflict three years later, politicians and publicists in the United States debated whether the nation should intervene militarily. Neutrality, President Woodrow Wilson’s declared policy, was proving hard to maintain.
In San Francisco, as elsewhere throughout the nation, some business leaders advocated going to war against Germany and its Triple Alliance partners. They appealed to patriotism to build public support for entering hostilities. In 1916, while the city was experiencing labor strife, a self-appointed Law and Order Committee and prominent businesspeople planned a parade for July 22, to demonstrate preparedness for war. Union members, socialists, pacifists, and some progressives boycotted the parade. Amid the flag-waving procession a bomb exploded at the intersection of Market and Steuart Streets. Nine people died and 40 were injured.
Suspects were arrested and trials held. Warren K. Billings, who had earlier been imprisoned for illegally transporting a suitcase filled with dynamite, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Next, Thomas J. Mooney, a radical trade union socialist and mentor of the younger Billings, was convicted and handed a death sentence. While the two were in prison, Mooney awaiting execution, their defenders nationwide demonstrated for release of the men. President Woodrow Wilson set up a Mediation Commission to investigate Mooney’s supposed guilt; the commission found no evidence to support the conviction. Thereafter, Governor William D. Stephens commuted Mooney’s sentence to life in prison in 1918, despite evidence that witnesses for the prosecution had committed perjury and that they had been encouraged to do so by District Attorney Charles M. Fickert. In 1939 Governor Culbert Olson pardoned both Mooney and Billings.
While the Mooney and Billings cases kept the issue of loyalty alive on the home front, more than 130,000 Californians served in the military. About 4,000 of them died in combat or from other war-related causes, such as disease or accidents.
In the aftermath of World War I, public suspicions about enemy saboteurs escalated into a coast-to-coast campaign to arrest and prosecute those thought to have been unpatriotic. In 1919 the California legislature enacted a criminal syndicalism law. By its terms, any person “advocating. . . unlawful acts of force and violence” aimed at changing ownership of industries or transforming the political system was liable to prosecution. Hundreds of Californians underwent trials for allegedly violating this law.
The most publicized of these trials was that of philanthropist, socialist, and suffragette Charlotte Anita Whitney. An outspoken opponent of American entry into World War I, with other Socialist Party members she helped form the more radical Communist Labor Party. In November 1919 she was arrested for violation of the criminal syndicalism law. Her trial and conviction the following year resulted in a prison sentence of one to 14 years. While she was free on bail for seven years, her attorney, John Francis Neylan, appealed the case until it landed in the U. S. Supreme Court in 1927. That tribunal upheld her earlier conviction and the constitutionality of California’s criminal syndicalism law. However, Governor Clement C. Young pardoned the by then 60-year-old woman, who, rather than being a real “criminal,” had devoted her life, in his view, to helping the less fortunate.
In addition to being eclipsed by the nation’s war-related preoccupations, California progressivism suffered from squabbling between factions of reformers within the state’s Republican Party. Strife between progressive factions erupted when Francis J. Heney ran for the U. S. Senate in 1914. Governor Johnson, just reelected to a second term, viewed Heney as a future rival and withheld endorsement. Heney lost the election and Johnson won an enemy.
In the elections of 1916, California progressives enjoyed a fleeting moment of victory that ended with a widening cleavage in their ranks. Regarding the presidential race that year, the state’s Republican conservatives, led by William H. Crocker, son of the Big Four’s Charles Crocker, organized a speaking tour for their party’s candidate, Charles Evans Hughes. Thinking that Johnson’s influence had evaporated, Crocker made no effort to court the progressive governor’s help. Feeling snubbed, an embittered Johnson, who was running for the U. S. Senate that year, put little effort into campaigning for Hughes in the Golden State. When the votes were tallied, Hughes lost in California by fewer than 4,000 votes. Had he carried the state he would have been elected president. Johnson, on the other hand, won a resounding victory in his Senate bid, beating his opponent by nearly 300,000 votes. In the wake of the 1916 elections, the split between Johnson and the California conservatives widened and the state Republican Party lay in ruins. The victory for progressives, however, would not be enjoyed for long.
The glow of the progressive victory in the 1916 elections faded fast due largely to Johnson’s mishandling of the matter of his successor following the untimely death of California’s lieutenant governor in February of that year. Were Johnson to win his U. S. Senate race, which he did, the lieutenant governor would accede to the governorship. Reluctant to fill the vacant office with William D. Stephens, a former president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, Johnson delayed stepping down as governor even after winning his Senate seat. Johnson groundlessly feared that Stephens would not support progressive policies, and on one occasion referred to him as a “mere swine with his head in a trough.” Consequently, for two weeks in the March 1917 transition period Johnson held the offices of governor and Senator simultaneously. Stephens, with strong support from southern California progressives, became the next governor despite Johnson’s denunciations and delaying tactics. The political fallout from this and other instances of infighting among reformers left the state’s progressive movement in tatters. A new, post-reform era in California began to unfold.
SUMMARY
Progressive Era California bore the markings of a Pacific-oriented state. The Southern Pacific Railroad’s domination of California’s economy and politics fueled the reform movement. However, the socialist thinking of some prominent leaders, such as Dr. John Randolph Haynes and Elvina Beals, coupled with the social democratic policies of the South Pacific dominion of New Zealand, guided the state’s urban-based reformers. Republican Governor Hiram Johnson embodied many of the ideals of the movement and oversaw the passage of numerous laws that broke the hold of the Southern Pacific on the state’s economy while cleaning up and democratizing politics. Without taking a stand on women’s suffrage, he signed the legislation that gave females the right to vote. Urban and farm sector growth were assured by the undertaking of major water projects.
California’s Progressive Era Pacific orientation is seen sharply in international affairs, immigration, and maritime trade. San Francisco was the flashpoint of a major dispute between Japan and the United States over immigration, while the federal government established Angel Island in the Bay Area to serve as the Pacific Coast screening station for Asians and others seeking entry into the United States. San Francisco and Los Angeles dominated West Coast trade, and the City of St. Francis’s hosting of the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition highlighted California’s lead in transpacific shipping. America’s entry into World War I and a host of other factors related to feuds within the state’s Republican Party led to the steady decline of California progressivism in the 1920s.
REVIEW QUESTIONS
• What were the long-range and immediate causes of California’s progressive movement?
• In what ways was California’s progressive movement Pacific-oriented?
• In what ways did the state’s progressive movement reflect the geographical reach of a Greater California?
• What do you regard as the five most important reforms of the California progressives and why?
• What factors led to the decline of California progressivism in the 1920s?
FURTHER READINGS
Mansel G. Blackford, The Politics of Business in California, 1890-1920 (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1977). A clearer, more comprehensive treatment of the subject matter would be hard to find.
Jacqueline R. Braitman, “A California Stateswoman: The Public Career of Katherine Philips Edson,” California History, 65 (June 1986), 82-95. Edson’s work with the state Bureau of Labor Statistics and her advocacy of the 1913 minimum wage law for women and children are highlighted in this authoritative article.
Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). This work analyzes San Francisco’s turn-of-the-century imperial stature and self-image from the perspectives of art, architecture, urban design, and environmental studies.
Peter Browning, ed., John Muir in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations (Lafayette, CA: Great West Books, 1988). The editor offers a treasure trove of Muir’s statements drawn from his autobiographical works, travel narratives, and reflections on the natural world.
Thomas R. Clark, “Labor and Progressivism,” California History, 66 (September 1987), 196-207. Studying labor voting patterns, the author found that workers voted in accordance with their perceived economic interests rather than for progressive candidates and measures as such.
William Deverell and Tom Sitton, eds., California Progressivism Revisited (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). This is an indispensable anthology presenting the recent findings of historians regarding early twentieth-century reform in the Golden State.
Ellen Dubois, “Woman Suffrage: The View from the Pacific,” Pacific Historical Review, 69 (November 2000), special issue. The entire issue contains articles placing women’s suffrage in a transpacific, comparative perspective.
Gayle Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000). The author reveals how California women crafted their own gendered image of citizenship at the same time that they assumed a larger, more active role in the public sphere.
Abraham Hoffman, Vision or Villainy: Origins of the Owens Valley-Los Angeles Water Controversy (College Station, TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2001). This is a well-researched, reliable account of a highly controversial California water project.
Lynn M. Hudson, “This Is Our Fair and Our State: African Americans and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition,” California History, 87 (2010), 26-45. The fair’s negative stereotypes of African Americans are presented largely through the reporting of Delilah L. Beasley, a leading black journalist of the Progressive Era who visited the exposition.
William L. Kahrl, Water and Power: The Conflict over Los Angeles’ Water Supply in the Owens Valley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). The history, politics, and economics of this dramatic episode in California history are covered in this detailed study.
Michael Kazin, Barons of Labor: The San Francisco Building Trades and Union Power in the Progressive Era (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989). Politics and economics are deftly woven into this history of the labor movement in one of America’s foremost unionized cities.
James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). The international roots and dimensions of early twentieth-century reform in the Western world are presented in this illuminating volume.
Lon Kurashige, “Immigration, Race, and the Progressives,” in William DevereU and David Igler, eds., A Companion to California History (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). Editor Chester RoweU’s changing discourse about race is offered as a cautionary tale about the dangers of classifying influential progressives as “racist,” based on a selective reading of their statements.
Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). The authors trace not only the Asian experiences at the Angel Island Immigration Station but also present the struggles of newcomers from some 80 countries who were processed at America’s Pacific gateway.
Richard Coke Lower, A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). This is a detailed, reliable, and mostly sympathetic study of Johnson’s career as a reform politician.
Spencer C. Olin, Jr., California’s Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911-1917 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). Though written decades ago, the author’s rigorous analysis and balanced conclusions about Johnson and his supporters remain largely intact.
Thomas G. Paterson, “California Progressives and Foreign Policy,” California Historical Society Quarterly, 47 (December 1968), 329-42. This is one of the few studies in print on a much-neglected topic in the literature on California progressivism.
Eric F. Petersen, “The Struggle for the Australian Ballot in California,” California Historical Quarterly, 51 (FaU 1972), 227-43. The author places this important late nineteenth-century California reform in a transpacific context.
Jackson K. Putnam, “The Persistence of Progressivism in the 1920s: The Case of California,” Pacific Historical Review, 35 (November 1966), 395-411. Contrary to most studies, this article traces the progressive impulse well into the 1920s.
James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984). A leading California historian provides one of the most accessible, coherent, and anthropologically informed overviews of the state’s indigenous peoples in print.
Tom Sitton, John Randolph Haynes: California Progressive (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992). The achievements and legacy of a prominent Los Angeles physician, Christian socialist, and progressive are treated in this nuanced and well-researched biography.
Arthur Verge, “George Freeth: King of the Surfers and California’s Forgotten Hero,” California History, 80 (Summer 2001), 83-105. This is a very sympathetic portrait of a Hawaiian who introduced surfing and professional life-guarding on southern California’s beaches.
World History
