During what time era did the initiative referendum and recall come into existence in California?

Abstracts

Direct democracy, for better or for worse, has become California's most distinctive and emblematic political institution. Initiative, referendum, and recall elections were added to the state constitution in 1911 as part of Governor Hiram Johnson's “progressive” movement, which redeemed the state from control by “The Octopus”, meaning the Southern Pacific Railroad monopoly that had a stranglehold on the state's economy and government. Progressive reformers expected that California voters would use direct democracy to tame the Octopus and to protect themselves against such wealthy special interests in the future. Over time, however, those same interests proved adept at using direct democracy to serve their own interests. This article surveys the origins of direct democracy in California's progressive movement and traces its history up to the 1970s.

La démocratie directe, pour le meilleur ou pour le pire, est devenue l’institution la plus marquante et la plus emblématique de l’État de Californie. Initiative populaire, référendum et révocation des représentants ont été introduits dans la Constitution de l’État en 1911, dans le cadre de la réforme « progressiste » du Gouverneur Hiram Johnson, destinée à soustraire l’État au contrôle de « La Pieuvre », à savoir le monopole de la Compagnie des chemins de fer du Pacifique sud qui avait la mainmise sur l’économie de l’État et le gouvernement. Les réformateurs progressistes pensaient que les électeurs californiens recourraient à la démocratie directe pour « dompter » la Pieuvre et pour se protéger à l’avenir contre des groupes d’intérêt si riches. Avec le temps, cependant, ces derniers se sont avérés très habiles à utiliser la démocratie directe pour servir leurs propres intérêts. Cet article retrace l’histoire de la démocratie directe, depuis ses origines – qu’elle puise dans le mouvement progressiste de Californie – jusqu’aux années 1970.

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Index terms

Keywords:

California political history, direct democracy, initiative, referendum, recall, Johnson Hiram, Progressive movement, Proposition 13, United States, California, Era, 19th century (late), 20th century

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Notes

1 Thomas E. Cronin, Direct Democracy: The Politics of Initiative, Referendum, and Recall (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 43-54; Thomas Goebel, A Government by the People: Direct Democracy in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 25-132.

2 Charles M. Price, “The Initiative: A Comparative State Analysis and Reassessment of a Western Phenomenon,” Western Political Quarterly 28 (June 1975): 243-262; Thomas Goebel, “’A Case of Democratic Contagion’: Direct Democracy in the American West, 1890-1920,” Pacific Historical Review 66 (May 1997): 213-230; Nathaniel A. Persily, “The Peculiar Geography of Direct Democracy: Why the Initiative, Referendum and Recall Developed in the American West,” Michigan Law and Policy Review 2 (1997): 11-41.

3 See, for example, “The Ungovernable State,” The Economist 391 (May 16, 2009): 33-36; Joel Stein, “State of Insanity,” TIME 173 (June 8, 2009): 64; “The Tyranny of the Majority,” The Economist 393 (Dec. 19, 2009): 47-48; and “The People’s Will,” The Economist 399 (April 23, 2011): 3-16.

4 John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Times Books, 1988), 6-92; William Deverell, Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 9-33.

5 Richard J. Orsi, Sunset Limited: The Southern Pacific Railroad and the Development of the American West, 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). But see also Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011).

6 White, Railroaded; Charles Edward Russell, Stories of the Great Railroads (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1914), 102-211, 226-308; Ward McAfee, California’s Railroad Era, 1850-1911 (San Marino, CA: Golden West Books, 1973), 91-132.

7 Russell, Stories of the Great Railroads, 281-308; Stuart Daggett, Chapters on the History of the Southern Pacific (New York: Ronald Press, 1922); Gerald D. Nash, “The California Railroad Commission, 1876-1911,” Southern California Quarterly 44 (Dec. 1962): 287-305. The logic of railroad rate-setting under monopoly conditions such as prevailed in California was lucidly explained in Ray Stannard Baker, “The Railroad Rate: A Study in Commercial Autocracy,” McClure’s Magazine 26 (Nov. 1905): 47-59.

8 Crocker quoted in Joseph S. O’Flaherty, An End and a Beginning: The South Coast and Los Angeles, 1850-1887 (New York: Exposition Press, 1972), 156; Glenn Chesney Quiett, They Built the West: An Epic of Rails and Cities (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), 267-272.

9 Debates and Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of California, Convened at the City of Sacramento, Saturday, September 28, 1878, 3 vols. (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1880-81); Carl Brent Swisher, Motivation and Political Technique in the California Constitutional Convention, 1878-79 (Claremont, CA: Pomona College, 1930); Neil Larry Shumsky, The Evolution of Political Protest and the Workingmen’s Party of California (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991), 206-218.

10 McAfee, California’s Railroad Era, 91-217; Alexander Callow, Jr., “The Legislature of a Thousand Scandals,” Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 39 (Dec. 1957): 340-350; Mansel G. Blackford, The Politics of Business in California, 1890-1920 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977), 78-95; White, Railroaded.

11 “Bribery in California,” New York Times, Aug. 17, 1891; Salvador A. Ramirez, ed., The Octopus Speaks: The Colton Letters (Carlsbad, CA: Tentacled Press, 1992). The best anecdotal source remains Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker (New York: Knopf, 1938). For substantiation, see McAfee, California’s Railroad Era, 91-217; and White, Railroaded.

12 Frank Norris, The Octopus: The Epic of Wheat, A Story of California (New York: Collier, 1901). See also Deverell, Railroad Crossing, 123-148.

13 R. Hal Williams, The Democratic Party and California Politics, 1880-1896 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1973); J. Gregg Layne, “The Lincoln-Roosevelt League: Its Origin and Accomplishments,” Quarterly Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California 25 (Sept. 1943): 78-101; George Mowry, The California Progressives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 23-85.

14 Samuel G. Blythe, “Putting the Rollers Under the S.P.,” Saturday Evening Post 183 (Jan. 7, 1911): 6-7; Richard Coke Lower, A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993), 1-45; Mowry, California Progressives, 105-134. On Johnson’s role in the Graft Trials, see Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco: The Story of the Union Labor Party, Big Business, and the Graft Prosecution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 180-182, 285-286.

15 Franklin Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1911 (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1911); Mowry, California Progressives, 135-157.

16 Spencer C. Olin, Jr., California’s Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911-1917 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 43-45.

17 Ida Husted Harper, The History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. 6 (New York: National American Woman Suffrage Association, 1922), 27-58; Gayle Ann Gullett, Becoming Citizens: The Emergence and Development of the California Women’s Movement, 1880-1911 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 166-192; Rebecca J. Mead, How the Vote Was Won: Woman Suffrage in the Western United States, 1868-1914 (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 119-149.

18 Inaugural Address of Governor Hiram W. Johnson Before the Senate and Assembly of the State of California, in Joint Assembly, at Sacramento, Tuesday, January 3, 1911 (Sacramento: Supt. State Printing, 1911), 5.

19 Goebel, A Government by the People, 25-90; James D. Barnett, The Operation of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall in Oregon (New York: Macmillan, 1915); Winston W. Crouch, “Direct Legislation Laboratory,” National Municipal Review 40 (Feb. 1951): 81-87; John W. Allswang, “The Origins of Direct Democracy in Los Angeles and California: The Development of an Issue and Its Relationship to Progressivism,” Southern California Quarterly 78 (Sum. 1996): 175-198.

20 V. O. Key, Jr., and Winston W. Crouch, The Initiative and the Referendum in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939), 423-434; Tom Sitton, "California's Practical Idealist: John Randolph Haynes,” California History 67 (Mar. 1988): 3-17; Tom Sitton, John Randolph Haynes: California Progressive (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).

21 John R. Haynes speech to the University Club, 1909, as quoted in Laura Tallian, Direct Democracy: An Historical Analysis of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall Process (Los Angeles: People’s Lobby Press, 1977), 24-25.

22 Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1911, 20, 93-101, 137-142; Key and Crouch, Initiative and Referendum in California, 434-435; Goebel, A Government by the People, 85-90.

23 Samuel E. Moffett, “Constitutional Referendum in California,” Political Science Quarterly 13 (Mar. 1898): 1-18; Samuel E. Moffett, Suggestions on Government, rev. ed. (New York: Humboldt Library, 1899), 192-195.

24 Inaugural Address of Governor Johnson, 5.

25 The word “referendum” is sometimes used generically for all types of direct democracy.

26 Larry N. Gerston and Terry Christensen, Recall! California’s Political Earthquake (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004); Shaun Bowler and Bruce E. Cain, eds., Clicker Politics: Essays on the California Recall (Upper SaddleRiver, NY: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006); Joe Mathews, The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy (New York: Public Affairs, 2006).

27 Joshua Spivak, “California’s Recall: Adoption of the ‘Grand Bounce’ for Elected Officials,” California History 82 (Spring 2004): 20-37; Mark Baldassare and Cheryl Katz, The Coming Age of Direct Democracy: California’s Recall and Beyond (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 1-9.

28 Editorials in Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10 and Sept. 8, 1911, as quoted in Key and Crouch, Initiative and Referendum in California, 437-438.

29 Inaugural Address of Governor Johnson, 6; Johnson quoted in Frederick L. Bird and Frances M. Ryan, The Recall of Public Officers: A Study of the Operation of the Recall in California (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 53.

30 “The Twenty-Three Amendments,” San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 2, 1911; “Another Progressive Victory,” The World To-Day 21 (Nov. 1911): 1299-1300; “The California ‘Revolution,’” World’s Work 23 (Dec. 1911): 133-135; John Randolph Haynes, “The Adoption of the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall by the State of California,” West Coast Magazine 11 (Jan. 1912): 294-296;Key and Crouch, Initiative and Referendum in California, 436-441.

31 George E. Mowry, Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Movement (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1946); John Allen Gable, The Bull Moose Years: Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressive Party (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978); Sidney M. Milkis, Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party, and the Transformation of American Democracy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009); Mowry, California Progressives, 158-194; Olin, California’s Prodigal Sons, 57-69; Lower, A Bloc of One, 46-91.

32 “Grant Recall a Sensation,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 10, 1914; John R. Haynes, “Abuses of Direct Legislation and the Remedies,” California Outlook 17 (Dec. 5, 1914), 13; Franklin Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1915 (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1916), 66-100; Bird and Ryan, The Recall of Public Officers, 271-279.

33 Hichborn, Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1915, 109-119; “California Clings to Her Parties,” Literary Digest 51 (November 13, 1915): 1069.

34 Frank Parker Stockbridge, “The Single Taxers: Who They Are, and What They Are Doing,” Everybody’s Magazine 26 (April 1912):507-522; John Randolph Haynes, “California Sticks to the Initiative and Referendum,” National Municipal Review 12 (Mar. 1923): 116-118; Winston W. Crouch, “The Constitutional Initiative in Operation,” American Political Science Review 33 (Aug. 1939): 634-645.

35 Franklin Hichborn, “Sources of Opposition to Direct Legislation in California,” Transactions of the Commonwealth Club of California 35 (Mar. 3, 1931): 512-539; Gilman Ostrander, The Prohibition Movement in California, 1848-1933 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957); John M. Allswang, The Initiative and Referendum in California, 1898-1998 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 18-26.

36 “Regulating Election Laws,” San Francisco Chronicle editorial, Mar. 14, 1917; Charles M. Price, “Signing for Fun and Profit: The Business of Gathering Petition Signatures,” California Journal 23 (Nov. 1992): 545-548; Richard J. Ellis, Democratic Delusions: The Initiative Process in America (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 44-76.

37 Allswang, The Initiative and Referendum in California, 32-35; Key and Crouch, Initiative and the Referendum in California, 467-468, 480; Ostrander, Prohibition Movement in California.

38 Allswang, The Initiative and Referendum in California, 35-43; California State Board of Control, California and the Oriental (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1920); Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1932), 261-282; V. O. Key, Jr. Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1942), 227-228; Key and Crouch, Initiative and the Referendum in California, 497-498.

39 George W. Bemis, “Sectionalism and Representation in the California State Legislature, 1911-1931,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1935, 229-239; Douglas Smith, “Apportionment Politics, 1920-1970,” in William Deverell and David Igler, eds., A Companion to California Politics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 375-377.

40 Rudolph Spreckels, How the 1922 Water and Power Act Was Defeated (San Francisco: California State Water and Power League, 1923); Franklin Hichborn, “Political Activities of the Power Trust in California,” Public Ownership 14 (Jan. 1932): 3-15; Jay Lawrence Brigham, “Public Power and Progressivism in the 1920s,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Riverside, 1992; James C. Williams, Energy and the Making of Modern California (Akron: University of Akron Press, 1997), 168-198, 237-267.

41 Report of Senate Committee Appointed to Investigate Expenditures For and Against Measures on the Ballot at the General Election Held on November 7, 1922, California State Senate (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1923), 5.

42 David B. Magleby, Direct Legislation: Voting on Ballot Propositions in the United States (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 59-76; David S. Broder, Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money (New York: Harcourt, 2000), 43-90. See also David McCuan, Shawn Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Ken Fernandez, “California’s Political Warriors: Campaign Professionals and the Initiative Process,” in Shawn Bowler, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert, eds., Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 55-79.

43 Carey McWilliams, “Government by Whitaker and Baxter,” series in The Nation 172 (April 14, 1951): 346-348, (April 21, 1951): 366-368, and (May 5, 1951): 418-421; Stanley Kelley, Professional Public Relations and Political Power (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1956), 39-66; Robert J. Pitchell, “The Influence of Professional Campaign Management Firms in Partisan Elections in California,” Western Political Quarterly 11 (June 1958): 278-300; Irwin Ross, The Image Merchants: The Fabulous World of Public Relations (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), 65-83; Richard Rapaport, “In the Beginning: A History of California Political Consulting,” California Journal 22 (Sept. 1991): 418-424.

44 Upton Sinclair, I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked, ed. James N. Gregory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994; orig. pub. 1935); Charles E. Larsen, “The EPIC Campaign of 1934,” Pacific Historical Review 27 (May 1958): 127-147; Fay M. Blake and H. Morton Newman, “Upton Sinclair’s EPIC Campaign,” California History 63 (Fall 1984): 305-312; Greg Mitchell, The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics (New York: Random House, 1992).

45 Helen Woodward, “How to Swing an Election,” The Nation 145 (Dec. 11, 1937): 638-640; Godfrey Montague Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1859-1950 (New York: Chain Store Publishing, 1952), 224-233; Marc Levinson, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2011), 175-176.

46 James E. Hartley, Steven M. Sheffrin, and J. David Vashe, “Reform During Crisis: The Transformation of California’s Fiscal System During the Great Depression,” Journal of Economic History 56 (Sept. 1996): 657-678; David R. Doerr, California’s Tax Machine: A History of Taxing and Spending in the Golden State, 2nd ed. (Sacramento: California Taxpayers Association, 2008), 48-49.

47 John C. Lee and Ralph F. Shawhan, “California Votes on Utopia,” Saturday Evening Post 211 (November 5, 1938): 8-9, 77, 79; Tom Zimmerman, “Ham and Eggs, Everybody!” Southern California Quarterly 62 (Spring 1980): 77-96; Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 197-222; Daniel Hanne, “’Ham and Eggs’ Left and Right: The California Scrip Pension Initiatives of 1938 and 1939,” Southern California Quarterly 80 (Summer 1998): 183-230.

48 Key and Crouch, Initiative and Referendum in California, 565, 572. See also Edwin A. Cottrell, “Twenty Five Years of Direct Legislation in California,” Public Opinion Quarterly 31 (Jan. 1939): 30-45.

49 Magleby, Direct Legislation, 45-46; Center for Governmental Studies, Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California’s Fourth Branch of Government, 2nd ed.(Los Angeles: Center for Governmental Studies, 2008), 44-54; Dubois and Feeney, Lawmaking by Initiative, 127-140.

50 McFadden v. Jordan, 32 Cal. 2d 330 (1948); Anne G. Campbell, “In the Eye of the Beholder: The Single Subject Rule for Ballot Initiatives,” in M. Dane Waters, ed., The Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2001), 131-164. The increased role of courts in the initiative process is discussed in Charles M. Price, “Shadow Government,” California Journal 28 (Oct. 1997): 32-38.

51 Pitchell, “The Influence of Professional Campaign Management Firms,” 287; Daniel A. Smith, “Campaign Financing of Ballot Initiatives in the American States,” in Larry J. Sabato, Howard R. Ernst, and Bruce A. Larson, eds., Dangerous Democracy: The Battle Over Initiatives in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), 75.

52 Wallace Turner, “Rightists in the West Fight Housing Act,” New York Times, May 10, 1964; Thomas Casstevens, Politics, Housing, and Race Relations: California’s Rumford Act and Proposition 14 (Berkeley: University of California Institute of Governmental Studies, 1967); Daniel Martinez HoSang, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 53-90; Daniel Martinez HoSang, “Racial Liberalism and the Rise of the Sunbelt West: The Defeat of Fair Housing on the 1964 California Ballot,” in Michelle Nickerson and Darren Dochuk, eds., Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 188-213.

53 Frank Levy, “On Understanding Proposition 13,” The Public Interest 56 (Summer 1979): 66-89; Clarence Y. H. Lo, Small Property versus Big Government: Social Origins of the Property Tax Revolt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 123-129; Jack Citrin and Frank Levy, “From 13 to 4 and Beyond: The Political Meaning of the Ongoing Tax Revolt in California,” in George G. Kaufman and Kenneth T. Rosen, eds., The Property Tax Revolt: The Case of Proposition 13 (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1981), 1-27; Allswang, Initiative and Referendum in California, 91-96, 102-104.

54 Ibid.,135-139; “Nuclear Power Plants,” California Journal 7 (May 1976): 6-8; “A Question of Power,” TIME 107 (June 7, 1976): 106; William J. Lanouette, “The Nuclear Power Issue,” Commonweal 103 (July 1976): 488-491; Thomas Raymond Wellock, Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998), 147-172.

55 Robert Kuttner, Revolt of the Haves: Tax Rebellions and Hard Times (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980); David O. Sears and Jack Citrin, Tax Revolt: Something for Nothing in California (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982); David D. Schmidt, Citizen Lawmakers: The Ballot Initiative Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 125-146; Daniel A. Smith, Tax Crusaders and the Politics of Direct Democracy (New York: Routledge, 1998), 17-84. For more on Proposition 13, see Robert Cherny’s article in this issue.

56 Magleby, Direct Legislation, 145-151; Cronin, Direct Democracy, 99-123; Daniel H. Lowenstein, “Campaign Spending and Ballot Propositions: Recent Experience, Public Choice Theory, and the First Amendment,” UCLA Law Review 29 (Mar. 1982): 505-641; Smith, “Campaign Financing of Ballot Initiatives,” 71-90.

57 Citizens for Jobs and Energy v. FPPC, 16 Cal 3d 671 (1976); Elizabeth Garrett and Elisabeth R. Gerber, “Money in the Initiative and Referendum Process: Evidence of Its Effects and Prospects for Reform,” in Waters, ed., Battle Over Citizen Lawmaking, 73-95; Center for Governmental Studies, Democracy by Initiative, 281-316; Lowenstein, “Campaign Spending and Ballot Propositions.”

58 Elisabeth R. Gerber, The Populist Paradox: Interest Group Influence and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). See also John Haskell, Direct Democracy or Representative Government? Dispelling the Populist Myth (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001).

59 For discussion and examples, see Peter Schrag, Paradise Lost: California’s Experience, America’s Future, updated ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008); Peter Schrag, California: America’s High Stakes Experiment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, California Crack Up: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010); Broder, Democracy Derailed; and Ellis, Democratic Delusions.

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References

Electronic reference

Glen Gendzel, “The People versus the Octopus: California Progressives and the Origins of Direct Democracy”, Siècles [Online], 37 | 2013, Online since 23 June 2014, connection on 12 August 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/siecles/1109; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/siecles.1109

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When did referendum and initiative start?

What is initiative in the Progressive Era?

Which was the first state to use the initiative process?

Does California have an initiative process?