Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is riding the wave of progressivism. He is a master surfer. You will love some of the ironic touches.
This is a three-part blog describing the history of the progressive movement. First I’ll report the national history, then California and finally the numbers that prove the connection between the 1892 Peoples Party, the California Progressives and Governor Schwarzenegger in 2003.
The progressive movement was the outgrowth of the baby boom that followed the Civil War. By the mid-1880’s when the leading edge of the baby boom was 20 years old, the first signs were imminent in the form of the Farmers Alliance. Hundreds of thousands of farmers in the central and southern United States began forming coops to buy their supplies cheaply with low-interest credit and to sell their produce at high rates. Many successfully ran for office. Their three nemeses were the railroad monopolies, the high costs they faced from local retail jobbers and the terrible corruption of local politics they experienced. The greatest strength of the Alliance was in Texas and Kansas where they elected entire legislative bodies.
By 1892 the whole baby boom movement was so strong that a convention was held to form a new party, create a platform and run a candidate for president. The party was called The People’s Party, a coalition of the Farmers Alliance, urban radicals and the main labor unions of the day. (See photo) Their candidate was James Weaver. Weaver won 22 votes in the Electoral College, carrying four states and getting more than 9% of the popular vote. (The actual vote total is unknown; corrupt ballot boxes were extensive in the Democratic South). I will discuss the Weaver vote in California, in a separate blog, to show the connection to the progressive Schwarzenegger uprising in 2003.
The Peoples Party platform became the progressive movement’s platform over the next decade and much of it became federal law by 1920.
The major force that brought the Peoples Party platform into Federal law was the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, who borrowed nearly the entire party platform including demands for anti-trust regulation, expanded conservation, a major banking overhaul, progressive income tax, creation of a civil service, implementation of initiatives/referendum and railroad regulation.
While the progressive movement disappeared from sight in the eyes of most American historians, it was a grass roots vision of democracy that was revitalized in 1910 in California with the election of Governor Hiram Johnson and a complete legislative body along with him. Wisconsin already had a progressive governor and then Senator, Bob Lafollette. Two years later, in 1912, the movement became national again when Theodore Roosevelt formed a new progressive party to run for president with Hiram Johnson as his vice-president.