2.4.1: The Impact of Economic Growth on California Politics

Prosperity and Reform

Between 1880 and 1810, California's population nearly tripled.

Table \(\PageIndex{1}\):Population Growth

Year	CA Population
1880	864,694
1890	1,213,398
1900	1,485,053
1910	2,377,549

Source: U.S. Census

Until the early 1900s, the California economy primarily focused on agriculture and mining. With the transcontinental railroads inexpensively connecting California to national markets, California became much more integrated into the national economy. Agricultural production began with wheat and livestock and, increasingly, by the late 1880s, many kinds of fruits and vegetables. Farms were large "factories in the field," employing thousands of laborers who migrated from farm to farm up and down the state. Manufacturing in California lagged behind the rest of the country until World War I (Rhode 11).

Nationally, the late nineteenth century became known as "The Gilded Age," when bankers and industrialists dominated politics by controlling Congress with bribery and political favors. The federal government helped exacerbate this oligarchic system by giving vast amounts of land to the railroads to develop transcontinental and intrastate lines. These bequests included prime farmland along each line, making the railways the largest private landowner in California. The "Octopus," as the Southern Pacific was called by its critics, controlled the state legislature through bribery and favors (Rawls and Bean 232). Although it mostly ensnared the Republican establishment (dominant nationally), party affiliation did not matter so much as simple loyalty or patronage to the railroad.

Just as the federal planning and funding of the railroad created the "Octopus," national trends were its undoing. The Progressive movement in the early 1900s had many incarnations; one manifestation was the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who ran his campaigns and his presidency (1901-1909) on a progressive Republican platform to oppose the power of monopolies and political machines. In California, Progressives were intent on promoting more popular control of government using mechanisms of direct democracy and the regulation of monopolies by government bureaucracies. Progressive demands were similar to those voiced by populists in the 1870s; the difference was that twenty years of California growth had created a much larger middle and working class with much more electoral clout.

The three elements of direct democracy, the initiative, the referendum, and recall, were first added to the charter of Los Angeles in 1903. Then Lincoln-Roosevelt Republican leagues sprang up statewide to oppose the old Republican machine. By the end of the decade, Hiram Johnson was touring the state as the progressive Republican gubernatorial candidate touting reform, namely to "kick the Southern Pacific Railroad out of politics" (Rawls and Bean 261). Governor Johnson would introduce significant reforms to the California government after his election in 1910.