The growth of the Golden State’s economy in the 1920s went hand in hand with nationwide prosperity, and a pro-business, conservative swing of the political pendulum away from reform. California’s politics remained largely a Republican affair, only it was the right wing of the party rather than its progressive element that wielded the power. Gone was the influence of Hiram Johnson, who by then was serving his state in the U. S. Senate. In addition to the changing mood of America and splits in the Republican Party, there were certain demographic and structural factors specific to California that account for the rightward shift.
Evidence of a conservative renaissance in the 1920s is seen in the almost complete failure of Democrats to gain elective office. They failed to win a single executive-level statewide office and won only a few lower-echelon partisan contests.
Johnson’s successor, Governor William D. Stephens, held office from 1917 to 1923. He was a transitional figure embodying a combination of progressive and conservative leanings. On the one hand he was a Republican prohibitionist who spoke out against labor unions while supporting the Criminal Syndicalism Act in 1919. On the other hand, he had been a member of the Progressive Party in its earlier heyday and as governor secured an increase in the state budget and a 35 percent corporate tax hike to finance it.
Stephens was followed in office by a solidly conservative Republican governor, Friend W. Richardson of Berkeley. Richardson denounced his predecessor’s tax and spending policies, making deep cuts in the budgets for education and welfare. When the state legislature passed spending bills, he usually vetoed them.
Richardson’s unwavering conservatism caused a liberal backlash, led by the Progressive Voters League and resulting in the candidacy of Berkeley Republican Clement C. Young in the gubernatorial election of 1926. A former teacher turned businessperson, Young entered politics, serving as assembly speaker and lieutenant governor before campaigning for the state’s highest office. His progressive platform called for governmental efficiency, highwaybuilding, development of hydroelectric power and water delivery systems, and conservation. Richardson campaigned on a platform calling for government austerity. Young barely won nomination over the incumbent, Richardson, but went on to win the general election decisively.
Imbued with progressive intentions, Young was able to undo some of Richardson’s most reactionary policies. Government aid to the needy and physically handicapped was provided. America’s first state-sponsored old-age pension law was passed. Conservation and public parks were supported. These achievements made progressives happy, but they strongly opposed the Young administration’s roll-back of regulations allowing the proliferation of branches of the California-based Bank of Italy. Such proliferation triggered progressives’ fears of a banking monopoly in the making; in California and throughout the nation these reformers battled trusts in order to extend economic opportunity to entrepreneurs and prevent corporate domination of politics.
Young lost his bid for reelection in 1930 due to the split in the prohibitionist vote between him and another “dry” candidate in the Republican primary. The split resulted in the party’s nomination going to James (“Sunny Jim”) Rolph, Jr., a “wet,” as antiprohibitionists were called. A conservative Republican, Rolph went on to win the governorship in the November general election.
Aside from such splits within Republican ranks, there were both demographic and structural factors specific to California that helped ensure a pro-business, conservative cast to the state’s politics in the 1920s. Midwestern newcomers to southern California, whose population led the state after 1920, were markedly traditional in religious and political matters. What drew them to the Southland? A leading journalist of the time, Bruce Bliven, noted that many of these newcomers were retirees who had farmed the prairies most of their lives. “[G]narled and weather-worn, exhausted by the long struggle against [Midwestern] cyclones, blizzards, drought, locusts and low prices,” they sold their farms and came to southern California where the climate was so wonderful that “no one ever dies.” The growing numbers of these and others coming into the Golden State gave new emphasis to the issue of political representation in Sacramento.
Structurally, in the face of southern Californians’ growing discontent over their region’s underrepresentation in the state legislature, voters considered two opposing initiatives, framed as constitutional amendments on the 1926 ballot. Both measures dealt with the apportionment of seats in the Sacramento legislature. One initiative, designated “the federal plan,” called for the apportionment of the assembly on the basis of population and of the senate on the basis of counties. Accordingly, no county could have more than one senator and no senator could represent more than three counties. The other initiative, officially known as the All Parties proposal, provided for the apportionment of seats in both houses of the legislature on the basis of population. Supported by powerful growers and San Francisco business interests, the federal plan won adoption. Consequently, southern California continued to be underrepresented in the state legislature for another four decades and conservatives consolidated their hold on state politics.
World History
