California Progressivism Revisited
240
California Progressivism Revisited
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Overview
Since the 1950s, scholars have used California Progressivism as a model case study for explaining early twentieth-century social and political reform nationwide. But such a model—which ignored issues of class, race, and gender—simplified a political movement that was, in fact, quite complex.
In revising the monolithic interpretation of reform and reformers, this volume provides a better understanding of the sweeping reform impulses that had such a profound effect on American political and social institutions during this century. Equally important, the issues examined here offer significant insights into problems that the entire country must tackle as we approach the new century.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520914575 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
California Progressivism Revisited
By William Deverell
University of California Press
Copyright © 1994 William DeverellAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520084704
John Randolph Haynes and the Left Wing of California Progressivism
Tom Sitton
The reinterpretation of the political nature of progressivism in the past two decades has enlightened our perception of how this movement developed in California. Past analyses of progressivism treated its leaders as like-minded "liberals" struggling to solve the problems of urbanization and industrialization and to modernize American institutions; as conservatives bent on controlling the lower classes, advancing their own entrepreneurial opportunities or professions, and ameliorating some defects in the socioeconomic system to undermine the arguments of radicals; as a displaced elite trying to reestablish its role in society; and so on. More recent conceptions of progressivism define it as a "dynamic general reform movement composed of many specific reform movements and shifting coalitions of self-interested groups uniting temporarily over different issues and behind different political leaders." This formula makes a little more sense of a complex phenomenon that on various occasions joined together altruists laboring to raise the downtrodden; conservatives advocating structural political changes to nullify the voting power of the lower classes; young peoplelooking for vehicles of social advancement; opportunists, egotists, socialists, and reactionaries; and other groups with countervailing agendas.1
Among those comprising the "shifting coalitions" of progressivism was a left wing composed of individuals who occupied the ground between the Socialist Party of America and the more moderate reformers. Benjamin Parke DeWitt, an early participant and promoter of the movement and the Progressive party, portrayed this left wing as an integralcomponent of progressivism, a bridge between two political parties that differed mainly in the emphasis each placed on extending the power of government. "Radical Progressives and conservative Socialists, therefore, could almost meet on common ground," he wrote, optimistically believing that socialism "is an ideal which the [progressive] movement hopes someday to see realized." Historians such as Otis L. Graham, Jr., have found it difficult to define the boundary between the two, the point where "the progressive movement spilled over, on its Left edge, into socialism." Graham, Robert Crunden, and others include gradual socialists and even party members such as Upton Sinclair and Charles Edward Russell in the progressive fold, since they frequently worked with more moderate progressives, sharing common values and goals. In fact, right-wing Socialists who collaborated with organized labor for more palliative reforms aptly demonstrated their similarity to left-wing progressives, especially in campaigns to win municipal ownership of utilities and social welfare improvements. The occasional partnership of right-wing Socialists and left-wing progressives, most notably at the local level, pushed progressivism slightly to the left and often painted the Socialist party as a less radical entity.2
The left wing of California progressivism has received scant notice in the major works on the subject. Overshadowed by mainstream moderate leaders of the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, such as Hiram Johnson, Chester Rowell, and Meyer Lissner, a number of middle-class individuals with much more advanced views on social change were active in state and local progressive campaigns. Calling themselves Fabian or gradual socialists, they joined party members in advancing major reforms along the road to a cooperative commonwealth, while working with conservative peers for small incremental changes. Some of the more notable progressives, such as William Kent, Fremont Older, and Francis Heney, were not socialists but did favor more far-reaching economic changes than the moderates did. Others—for instance, self-avowed Christian socialists such as John Randolph Haynes and Caroline M. Severance—joined the Lincoln-Roosevelt League very late or not at all, but nonetheless contributed significantly to the progressive cause.3
Left-wing progressives in California were in the forefront of campaigns for more advanced social welfare objectives, such as protective legislation for workers (especially women), better health care, and public ownership, as well as the drives for women's suffrage, regulation of corporations, and direct legislation. They collaborated with Socialists and labor unions to increase economic opportunity for the lower classesand social services for the needy. The left wing forced progressive election platforms leftward, so much so that at times they almost mirrored those of the Socialists. (The result was evident in portions of San Francisco and Los Angeles County, where Socialist and progressive candidates received votes from the same constituency in consecutive elections.) At a time when Socialist party fortunes were on the rise in California municipal elections, left-wing progressives prodded their more moderate brethren to cooperate with Socialists in the quest for social reform goals.4
In many respects similar in their middle-class, professional backgrounds to right-wing Socialist leaders such as Job Harriman of Los Angeles and Reverend J. Stitt Wilson of Berkeley, some left-wing progressives could almost embrace the ideology of right-wing Socialists, sans the red card and Marxian notions of class revolt. As Kevin Starr has noted, these frequently wealthy social democrats became conduits allowing reform ideas to "flow from the far left to the reforming conservatives" unhindered by class barriers. With a strong commitment to fundamental change, left-wing progressives infused into their movement an altruistic zeal and a higher purpose, forcing it to embrace more far-reaching reform than it would otherwise. When reform enthusiasm waned during and after World War I as moderates tired or thought the job finished, it was the old left wing that inspired progressives to continue.5
The most active figure in the California progressive left wing was Dr. John Randolph Haynes. Born in rural Pennsylvania in 1853, and reared in coal-mining country, Haynes graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with Ph.D. and M.D. degrees and established a lucrative medical practice in a poor neighborhood of Philadelphia. He and his wife, Dora Fellows Haynes, amassed a small fortune there until John's chronic bronchitis and various ailments of his family members dictated their move in 1887 to the more salubrious climate of Southern California. In Los Angeles he became one of the city's busiest physicians and joined the social elite, which included many of his patients. He also continued to invest wisely in real estate and other financial ventures, thereby enhancing the fortune he later used to bankroll his social reform crusades.6
In his first decade in the City of Angels, Haynes rarely indulged in politics, although he claimed to be interested in major changes in America's socioeconomic structure. He had witnessed poverty and inequalityin the coal-mining region during his boyhood and in the slums of Philadelphia while a young doctor, but was not quite sure how one person like himself could help bring about meaningful changes. The watershed of his activism occurred in early 1898, when his local Episcopal church sponsored a series of lectures by Reverend William Dwight Porter Bliss, a national spokesman for the Christian socialist movement. Bliss had just formed the Union Reform League (URL) and was touring the West Coast to enlist members. His social reform philosophy fused Christianity and secular socialism into a utopian commonwealth, which would be slowly created through the education of workers by middle-class Christian socialists. The latter also would work with their more conservative peers to transfer the nation's private means of production to public ownership and control. While striving for this metamorphosis of the economy in a gradual, nonrevolutionary manner, Bliss recommended a number of immediate reforms—including direct legislation, public ownership of utilities, women's suffrage, and abolition of child labor—to ameliorate some of the worst social injustices.7
John Haynes's response to the Bliss sermon was something akin to a religious awakening. The doctor suddenly acquired an agenda of immediate and long-range goals and an inspiration for activism. He joined the Union Reform League and soon became its president. While continuing his thriving medical practice, he found time to organize URL meetings and lectures, raise money, lobby local government, and arrange for the publication of URL literature. Although the URL gradually withered away after the departure of the charismatic Bliss from Los Angeles in 1899, Haynes helped to establish new organizations with similar goals—the Economic Club and the League of Christian Socialists—as substitutes. None survived more than a few years, but they did provide forums for local and national speakers to discuss reform issues and offer solutions to the problems of the day.8
While working with these organizations, Haynes met a legion of social reformers who would join him in further campaigns. The group included self-described Christian socialists, such as Caroline Severance, William Stuart, and William C. Petchner; single-taxers Abbot Kinney and Frank Finlayson; Socialist Party of America members Job Harriman, H. Gaylord Wilshire, and James T. Van Rensselaer; and moderates like Dana Bartlett and William Andrews Spalding. These reformers of different stripes worked together in a variety of organizations for individual goals and various degrees of progress along the path to social democracy. They created their own network of related groups, importingnoted speakers from the East to keep them abreast of the latest thought and developments in social reform. In essence, this network resembled a local version of James Kloppenberg's "transatlantic connection," whereby generations of U.S. and European philosophers and activists formulated the political action program of social democrats in the early twentieth century.9
Haynes's experience in turn-of-the-century social reform organizations also helped him define his specific reform goals. He would always be committed to a distant and vague socialist utopia, to be attained gradually and democratically without violent overthrow of existing institutions. Along the way he would support many typical reforms of the Progressive Era: women's suffrage; an end to child labor; civil service; structural and functional improvements to government; legal protection for workers, women, children, and Native Americans; regulation of corporations; and the like. But his first and second priorities were direct legislation and public ownership of utilities. He would become California's primary advocate of direct legislation—the initiative, referendum, and closely related recall—with which he hoped the Socialist party, labor unions, prohibitionists, women's groups, and others could combat the corrupt plutocracy he believed to be dominating the state. With these weapons, which had been endorsed for years by Populists and Socialists, Haynes hoped that ordinary citizens could legalize needed reforms and kick out the rascals beholden to greedy special interests. With public ownership of utilities, especially municipal water and hydroelectrical power systems, he hoped to demonstrate concrete examples of public management of natural resources as prototypes for national operation in the future.10
In the first decade of the twentieth century, Haynes worked diligently for direct legislation and municipal ownership. He made numerous speeches for the initiative and formed a Direct Legislation League consisting of many of his more conservative business and professional friends to lend respectability to the idea (even though he and secretary George Dunlop were the only league activists). In a 1902 election, with the help of organized labor and Socialists, he directed the successful campaign to incorporate the initiative, referendum, and recall (the first municipal recall in the United States) into the Los Angeles city charter. The measures gave local citizens more power in their political affairs, although the immediate results were disappointing: the few early initiatives consisted of restricting the location of slaughterhouses and establishing prohibition; and the recall was used successfully to remove acity councilman opposed by union labor, though his replacement was not much of an improvement. Despite the results, the opportunity for initiating social and political reform measures and deposing corrupt or inept officials before the end of their terms was at least now available.11
Haynes's advocacy of municipal ownership grew slowly after he embraced the concept as a member of the Union Reform League. In the early 1900s he convinced friends to petition the city council to take steps toward purchasing private utilities in the city. By late 1904 he began his public pleading for municipal ownership, and in the following year he and a few younger men founded the Voters' League, a voluntary group bound to this reform, as well as to direct legislation and other goals. Besides campaigning for the city's purchase of present utilities or its construction of new ones, the Voters' League supported Haynes's almost single-handed effort to force local traction companies to install safer fenders on streetcars. In this case, Haynes and his fellow reformers resorted to regulation simply because outright purchase of the utility was not feasible.12
Haynes also influenced a number of more conservative reformers in their quest for efficient and honest government. A nonpartisan organization consisting of several Voters' League members and allied businessmen and professionals was organized in 1906 to alter city politics. Though Haynes was far to the left of them, the leaders of the group accepted many of his own precepts—such as direct legislation, municipal ownership of at least some utilities and regulation of others, and removal of the two major national parties from purely local issues—and depended on his leadership in accomplishing some of those goals. In 1909 the municipal reformers chased out of office a mayor tied to underworld figures and selected George Alexander as the replacement. With a sympathetic city council majority elected later that year, the moderate progressives entrenched themselves in city hall. There they implemented some of the fashionable municipal reforms of the day, both to achieve efficiency and to keep themselves in control. Haynes found it expedient to cooperate with these city progressives, using his influence to convince the Alexander administration to expand municipal social services.13
Haynes joined some of the same Los Angeles reformers in the statewide progressive movement. Although much further to the left of the mostly young Republicans who formed the Lincoln-Roosevelt League in 1907, he is credited with inspiring its inception. In harmony with his desire to rid the state of the political influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad, the league consistently sought his advice, his financial support, and his membership. Sympathetic to the league's aims but skeptical of its success and wary of its one-dimensional platform, Haynes at first declined to join. He did work with some of its leaders in lobbying the state legislature for passage of a direct primary and other progressive laws.14
After Hiram Johnson and the league won the 1910 election, Haynes initially was distanced from the inner circle because of his close association with radicals. But he was a prominent figure in the successful 1911 campaign for state direct legislation. He personally had lobbied for these constitutional statutes at every state legislature session since 1903; he also had hired lawyers to protect direct legislation in local and state courts and had toured the state to promote the measures. During the Johnson years Haynes frequently aided the administration in the passage of labor laws and other social reform legislation, and at election time. Along with other left-wing progressives William Kent and Francis Heney, Haynes consistently cajoled Johnson and legislators to take action on social justice issues. Haynes's appointment by Johnson to the State Charities and Corrections Board in 1912 allowed the doctor to play an active role in the social welfare accomplishments of the progressive administration for a decade.15
At the same time that Haynes loomed as a towering figure in local and state progressive reform, he also toiled to a more limited extent for gradual socialism. Since his days in the Union Reform League, he had continued to correspond and meet with local socialists in reform societies and within the loose social democrat network. In this period he met noted Los Angeles Socialists such as Job Harriman, as well as out-of-towners Nelson O. Nelson of St. Louis and J. Stitt Wilson of Berkeley; and he became a friend and business partner of H. Gaylord Wilshire, publisher of the socialist Wilshire's Monthly . He was a frequent visitor to the home of Caroline Severance, a Christian socialist and noted suffragist, and served as the first president of the Severance Club, named in her honor. In 1902 he helped form a stock company that launched a Rochdale Plan cooperative store for the Los Angeles working class. Later that year he was courted as a mayoral candidate by the Union Labor party, a fusion of organized labor and the local Socialist Party of America chapter, testimony to his standing in the eyes of these two groups. He supported many local and national Socialist magazines and newspapers, donated funds to establish "Socialist libraries" in colleges across the nation, hosted gatherings for Jack London and others, and contributed to the local party. In 1906 he helped establish the short-livedstate Public Ownership party, composed primarily of unionists and right-wing Socialists. His public stature in this area earned him the respect of fellow social democrats, the scorn of Los Angeles Times editors and other conservatives, and the suspicion of moderate reformers.16
The limit of Haynes's support for socialism surfaced in 1911, when Job Harriman ran for mayor of Los Angeles. Harriman's fusion of Socialists and labor unions won the primary that year and seemed to have a good chance to defeat the progressive incumbent, George Alexander. But many of the genteel "socialists"—prodded by the specter of class violence, as portrayed in the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, and by their belief that the progressives appeared to be bringing about honest and efficient government—refused to back Harriman and his party. William H. Stuart, who was "never more certain of the eventual realization of the socialist ideal than I am at this moment," nevertheless congratulated another social democrat for backing the Alexander ticket, since the progressives would accomplish the same objectives in a gradual manner. Fabian socialist Caroline Severance also supported Alexander, though she was suspicious of the good government forces. John Haynes, who had been reappointed to the Board of Civil Service Commissioners by Alexander, decided to support the mayor, who cherished the doctor's advice. Although Haynes described his old friend Harriman as "an honest, courageous and able man," Haynes drew the line at endorsing the Socialist party and risking the possibility of an abrupt upheaval of the Los Angeles economy and social equilibrium and the loss of his own influence at city hall.17
But Haynes's borderline was a thin one. The following year found him working with Socialist leaders Harriman and Thomas W. Williams, progressives S. C. Graham and George Dunlop, and others in a People's Charter Conference formed to modify the city charter. Chief among the recommendations was the addition of a proportional representation system that would give the Socialists city council seats in proportion to the votes they received in an election. "Sooner or later the Socialists, through the oscillating pendulum of public opinion, are certain to come into power," Haynes reasoned. It would be "much better that they first have a taste of the sobering influence of responsibility such as is afforded by minority representation." His view was shared by other left-wing progressives such as John J. Hamilton, who wondered "why shouldn't the moderate reformers of today recognize their kinship to the advanced reformers and radicals whose turn is to come up next, instead of holding aloof from them?" The left-wing progressives failed to convince theirmore moderate counterparts to endorse this election system, but Haynes continued to recommend it in future charter revision sessions. He also continued to defend gradual socialism in publications and speeches, including one delivered to the World's Social Progress Congress in San Francisco in 1915.18
Haynes's hopes for the progress of local and state political developments and his association with California progressive leaders led him almost naturally into the national Progressive party. He was enamored with insurgent leaders Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette, Hiram Johnson, and others who had battled corporations and reactionaries and stood, Haynes believed, for advanced social reform values. And the Progressive platform, which demanded equal suffrage, social and industrial justice for workers, a national health service, national transportation improvements, a graduated inheritance and income tax, and other features—appealed to Haynes as closer to the Socialist platform than that of the two major parties. He believed, very optimistically, in "the Socialist nature of the platform of the Progressive Party," and saw it as a blueprint for gradual, nonrevolutionary change. As Haynes the pragmatist advised one group in 1912: "If our watchword is to be ultimate principles with present defeat, then our votes should go to the Socialist Party; if, however, we seek practical tangible results now, we should vote for Roosevelt." With this view, Haynes was close to Benjamin Parke DeWitt, Amos Pinchot, and other left-wing Progressives, but far from the typical Bull Mooser, who expected much less from this party.19
The national Progressive party disintegrated during Woodrow Wilson's first term, and America's entry into World War I further dampened reform efforts throughout the nation. Winning the war became the nation's top priority; the Wilson administration and Congress became preoccupied with European affairs, national resources were directed to the war effort, and dissent was stifled.20
However, as Burt Noggle, Otis L. Graham, Jr., Eugene M. Tobin, and others have demonstrated, progressivism did not expire on the European battlefield. Although the popular mood of the nation in the decade after the War to End All Wars has been described as materialistic and intolerant, and 1920s presidents had little interest in social change, reform did linger on. It was most notable in the attempts of some former Bull Moosers to reorganize, in the efforts of a small group of feisty western senators to block retrenchment, in the determination of social welfare organizations to advance social reform measures, in the 1924presidential bid of Robert La Follette, and in campaigns for public ownership of water and power facilities. Progressivism in the "Roaring Twenties" might not have been as successful as it was decades earlier, but it was not moribund.21
In fact, it was highly visible in California, where, as Jackson K. Putnam had observed, postwar progressivism, "while sharply challenged and perhaps oveshadowed by contrary forces, did not 'die' but lived on in a different and possibly less attractive form." Hiram Johnson, the movement's figurehead, moved on to the U.S. Senate, and many former insurgents abandoned reform; but progressives continued to occupy state offices, protect reform successes, and battle conservatives for more reform, while maintaining their fears of racial minorities and the far left. In this second thrust of California progressivism, the forces were kept together by the more left-wing leaders of the original insurgency such as John Haynes and Franklin Hichborn, by a few moderates such as Clement C. Young and Herbert C. Jones, and by younger activists—sometimes in coalitions with leftists and even conservatives.22
As many of the moderate insurgents retired from the political arena, John Haynes became a much more important figure in the later years of California progressivism. His enthusiasm for further reform would be mirrored by his drives for progressive and leftist objectives at the national and local levels. After the war he continued to support the educational arm of the American Socialist movement with generous donations to the League for Industrial Democracy. His home became an occasional overnight shelter for LID officials Harry W. Laidler and Norman Thomas on their trips to the West, and Haynes tried to establish a $100,000 trust fund for the LID in the 1920s. He also supported national and local Socialist publications and party functions, and again donated "$100 Socialist libraries" to American colleges. He continued his association with leftists of local and national importance in his network of social democrats who supported leftist goals. And during the war he began his close friendship with Socialist novelist Upton Sinclair, providing help and expertise for some of Sinclair's books, money for Sinclair's needy associates, and funds to republish Cry for Justice , Sinclair's anthology of social protest essays.23
But Haynes again drew the line of his support for socialism when he declined to contribute to Norman Thomas's 1932 and 1936 presidential campaigns as the Socialist party's nominee. "I think I realize as much as you do that civilization can only survive through a radical change in our capitalistic condition," he wrote to Thomas. But the doctor feared thata vote for Thomas was a half vote for Republican conservatives, and campaign money would be virtually wasted. The New Deal program of state capitalism did not go far enough for his taste, but it was better to support Franklin Roosevelt's limited progress than risk a return to the policies of the 1920s.24
Besides his left-wing political associations, Haynes supported many other political and social reform groups in the 1920s and 1930s. He was very active in the National Popular Government League, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the American Indian Defense Association; and he contributed to the National Consumers League, national organizations devoted to outlawing child labor and legalizing birth control, and many others. In the early 1920s he became a benefactor and activist for Paul Kellogg, who published Survey , a journal for social welfare workers. By the mid-1920s Haynes even began describing himself as a sociologist (as well as a physician, though he had retired from medicine by this time). Because of his interest in social work, he served on several state, county, and city social welfare commissions. His activism in municipal social work placed him squarely in Otis L. Graham's category of old progressives who were more likely to support the New Deal, few though they were. Haynes's embrace of the New Deal included political cooperation in the 1930s with many Democrats in Congress and in the state legislature, continuing his nonpartisan method of political activism since early in the century.25
Locally, Haynes's service on social welfare and other city and county boards was only one of his many interests in furthering progressivism. Active in the Municipal League and other groups, he worked throughout the 1920s and 1930s to protect municipal direct legislation and civil service and to promote municipal ownership. A member of the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners from 1921 until his death in 1937, he spearheaded the expansion of the city's water and power system in an official capacity, as well as from behind the scenes. Throughout the period he was deeply involved in local politics, working with "bosses," Socialists, labor leaders, and others to protect progressive gains of earlier years and give other groups more access to city decision making. In his many battles with local conservatives, led by Los Angeles Times editors and corporate executives, he emerged as the most important local progressive leader of that era.26
The same depth and vigor of his postwar activism in local and national reformist politics can be seen in his devotion to California progressivism. Before the war he was one of many who contributed to thesuccess of the insurgents. During the European conflict, as some former progressive leaders left the scene, Haynes became a major adviser to Governor William D. Stephens, successor to Hiram Johnson. From that time until 1922, the doctor had tremendous influence in the governor's appointments to public offices and official positions on various issues. Although Haynes tried to push the very moderate Stephens to the left, he failed, especially in his efforts to mitigate Stephens's policy toward labor radicals. Nonetheless, the doctor helped to secure Stephens's election as governor in 1918, and Stephens responded by appointing Haynes to several state commissions, two labor arbitration committees, and the University of California Board of Regents.27
While advising the state's chief executive, Haynes also kept more than one eye on the legislature. In 1919 he began paying part of the lobbying expenses of state labor leader Paul Scharrenberg. After that year, Haynes subsidized the lobbying of progressive journalist Franklin Hichborn at nearly every session until the doctor's death. Hichborn kept tabs on state lawmakers and alerted the doctor to impending legislation. With these warnings Haynes could halt or help to stop many anti-progressive bills with pleas to governors, sympathetic legislators, and interest groups. His most visible work along these lines was a six-year crusade to prevent alteration of the state's initiative law; his money, activism, and friends saved this measure, as well as many others he favored.28
Haynes also tried to advance new progressive objectives, such as the 1922 state Water and Power Act. He joined Rudolph Spreckels of San Francisco in sponsoring this initiative for regulation of water and hydroelectric power resources in California. The two spent considerable sums of their own money—but much less than the private power companies trying to crush the initiative. In this case money talked: the initiative was defeated handily in three elections.29
Haynes again worked with Spreckels in the 1924 state campaign for Robert La Follette's presidential bid. Along with Francis Heney, William Kent, Fremont Older, and other variously left-wing progressives, many of whom had joined Spreckels and Haynes in supporting Woodrow Wilson's reelection in 1916, the group backed the old Wisconsin senator with a national coalition of labor, Socialists, and other groups. La Follette ran as a Progressive; but he was deprived of a ballot spot for that party in California and had to be listed as the Socialist candidate that year. This designation spurred the conservative press to shower further abuse on Spreckels, Haynes, and other La Follette leaders, but it did littleto impede their campaigning. Although La Follette lost in the Coolidge landslide, he far outdistanced his Democratic rival in California.30
The Water and Power Act and La Follette campaigns were fought without benefit of the type of closely knit organization that had characterized the Lincoln-Roosevelt League of 1910. One casualty of the departure of some of the moderate state progressives during the war was the unity within the insurgent ranks. After the war Haynes and other left-wing reformers tried on several occasions to reunite progressives split by personal animosities and political differences. In 1920 Haynes organized a meeting in Sacramento to bring together the old leaders and renew the insurgent spirit. A year later he advanced his idea of creating another state Progressive party along the lines of a national party advocated by Amos Pinchot and other former Bull Moosers. William Kent also tried his hand by hosting a meeting at his home in Kentfield in 1923 for similar objectives. Without the backing of Hiram Johnson and other moderates, however, the meetings failed to achieve their purposes. While progressives did continue to work together at times, the old unity was noticeably absent in the new era.31
What harmony there was would be sorely needed in 1923, a low point for progressive fortunes. Governor Stephens had been defeated in the 1922 election and was succeeded by Friend Richardson, an apostate progressive turned reactionary in the eyes of Dr. Haynes. Richardson quickly began dismantling state humanitarian commissions created by the progressives, and encouraged lawmakers to emasculate the initiative and other reform laws and remove progressives from office. The governor was backed in this endeavor by the Better America Federation (BAF), a Red Scare-era band of superpatriots who carried on an assault against radicals, organized labor, civil liberties, and progressivism in general. The BAF published anti-labor literature, encouraged students to spy on disloyal teachers, and diligently campaigned to elect legislators in agreement with its "American Plan."32
Dr. Haynes was a prominent leader in countering both Richardson and the BAF. Resigning from his position on the State Board of Charities and Corrections before Richardson could fire him, Haynes rallied progressive leaders to block the governor's "economy" budget and most extreme appointments. Throughout the next four years Haynes was one of Richardson's chief adversaries, though the governor won many of the battles. Against the BAF Haynes did much better. After a number of BAF-endorsed legislators were elected, Haynes fought the BAF in speeches, publications, and initiative campaigns, attracting affected interest groups in his crusades. In the midst of this activity he helped to create the Progressive Voters League as a temporary defense strategy. Supplying much of its operational expenses, Haynes joined the league officers in establishing an organized opposition to Richardson and running candidates for state offices against BAF supporters. Successful in the 1924 election, the league remained intact to contest Richardson in 1926 and won.33
The progressives returned to power in the administration of Governor Clement C. Young, and Dr. Haynes's influence rose once again. One of the increasingly fewer old progressives still actively advocating reform, Haynes continued to be a major progressive strategist and benefactor. Governor Young appointed him to state commissions charged with recommending revisions to the state constitution and taxation system and relieving Depression-Era unemployment. Haynes offered advice on appointments and policy positions (which the governor frequently followed), while also lobbying the state legislature to restore programs cut by Richardson, to protect progressive laws, and to propose new ones.34
With Young's reelection defeat in the 1930 primary, Haynes and the remaining progressives were barred from the governor's office. The doctor did, however, continue to work with like-minded legislators to thwart the retrenchment actions of new governors and conservative law-makers. The 1932 and 1934 elections brought waves of New Deal Democrats to Sacramento, and Haynes found it expedient and easy to work with them for common goals. By this time progressivism had disappeared, replaced by New Deal liberalism as the dominant reform force.35
In spite of his personal limitations and the political obstacles he faced, Dr. Haynes made significant contributions to California and local reform as a leading social democrat of the state. He was instrumental in promoting social reform among wealthy capitalists with whom he associated in business spheres, and he gave generous financial and personal aid to progressives and the left. Particularly in the areas of direct legislation and public ownership, his leadership and activism were determining factors in the success of these measures, both locally and statewide.
A quarter of a century ago, Spencer Olin concluded that California progressivism was "an impressive effort to improve the living conditionsand to increase the wages of urban and rural workers, as well as to assimilate immigrants into American society."36 Far short of the hopes and expectations of left-wing progressives, it did accomplish some degree of success in improving the social welfare of the state's citizens, as well as modifying its political system. As the historiography of California progressivism increasingly casts it in a more conservative and class-interest mold, we should remember that the movement did have a left wing of atypical progressives, such as John Randolph Haynes, who played a significant role in the limited achievements of progressivism in the Golden State.
Continues...
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Table of Contents
CONTRIBUTORS:William Deverell
Tom Sitton
Anne F. Hyde
Mary Ann Mason
Gerald Woods
Sherry Katz
Judith Raftery
Mary Odem
Douglas Flamming
George J. Sanchez
Jackson K. Putnam