John Randolph Haynes

John Randolph Haynes PDF Author: Tom Sitton
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804720670
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
For four decades, John Randolph Haynes (1853-1937) was in the forefront of social-reform crusades and political action in Los Angeles and California, with his most important legacies in the fields of direct legislation and public ownership of utilities. He was the individual most responsible for the adoption of the initiative, referendum, and recall in Los Angeles in 1902 and in California in 1911. His vigilant protection of these measures thereafter and his promotion of direct legislation throughout the nation earned him the title "father of direct legislation" in California. From 1910 until his death, Haynes's chief priority was to shape the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power into a glowing example of public ownership of utilities. Today, LADWP operates the world's largest municipal water and electrical power generation and distribution system, continuing to serve the needs of an ever-growing region whose extent even Haynes could not have envisaged. In many ways, Haynes is an enigma. He was not a typical progressive, having amassed a fortune in his medical practice and in real estate, mining, and other capitalistic ventures. However, he spent a large portion of his wealth to promote a form of gradual, democratic socialism in the United States. Haynes advocated the transformation of the nation's economy and government, yet he campaigned for morality laws that limited personal freedom. Haynes's motivation was not social status or money, both of which he had before his conversion to social reform. Nor was it political power: he never ran for office (except as a temporary freeholder) or created a personal political machine. His primary motive was a perhaps arrogant yet honest desire to aid in the creation of a more just society by improving the living and working conditions of the less fortunate. In one way or another, Haynes participated in all the major social and political events that shaped California and Los Angeles in a most dynamic era of their development. In a broader sense, Haynes's life serves as a yardstick with which to measure other progressives of his time and as a key for understanding the motivation of those idealists who helped shape our present political institutions.

Chester H. Rowell and the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, 1907-1910

Chester H. Rowell and the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, 1907-1910 PDF Author: Victor Bogart
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description


John Randolph Haynes

John Randolph Haynes PDF Author: Tom Sitton
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804720670
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
For four decades, John Randolph Haynes (1853-1937) was in the forefront of social-reform crusades and political action in Los Angeles and California, with his most important legacies in the fields of direct legislation and public ownership of utilities. He was the individual most responsible for the adoption of the initiative, referendum, and recall in Los Angeles in 1902 and in California in 1911. His vigilant protection of these measures thereafter and his promotion of direct legislation throughout the nation earned him the title "father of direct legislation" in California. From 1910 until his death, Haynes's chief priority was to shape the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power into a glowing example of public ownership of utilities. Today, LADWP operates the world's largest municipal water and electrical power generation and distribution system, continuing to serve the needs of an ever-growing region whose extent even Haynes could not have envisaged. In many ways, Haynes is an enigma. He was not a typical progressive, having amassed a fortune in his medical practice and in real estate, mining, and other capitalistic ventures. However, he spent a large portion of his wealth to promote a form of gradual, democratic socialism in the United States. Haynes advocated the transformation of the nation's economy and government, yet he campaigned for morality laws that limited personal freedom. Haynes's motivation was not social status or money, both of which he had before his conversion to social reform. Nor was it political power: he never ran for office (except as a temporary freeholder) or created a personal political machine. His primary motive was a perhaps arrogant yet honest desire to aid in the creation of a more just society by improving the living and working conditions of the less fortunate. In one way or another, Haynes participated in all the major social and political events that shaped California and Los Angeles in a most dynamic era of their development. In a broader sense, Haynes's life serves as a yardstick with which to measure other progressives of his time and as a key for understanding the motivation of those idealists who helped shape our present political institutions.

The Arena

The Arena PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American essays
Languages : en
Pages : 696

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The World's Work

The World's Work PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 878

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Book Description
A history of our time.

The Allure of Empire

The Allure of Empire PDF Author: Chris Suh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197631614
Category : Japan
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The Allure of Empire traces how American ideas about race in the Pacific were made and remade on the imperial stage before World War II. Following the Russo-Japanese War, the United States cultivated an amicable relationship with Japan based on the belief that it was a "progressive" empire akin to its own. Even as the two nations competed for influence in Asia and clashed over immigration issues in the American West, the mutual respect for empire sustained their transpacific cooperation until Pearl Harbor, when both sides disavowed their history of collaboration and cast each other as incompatible enemies. In recovering this lost history, Chris Suh reveals the surprising extent to which debates about Korea shaped the politics of interracial cooperation. American recognition of Japan as a suitable partner depended in part on a positive assessment of its colonial rule of Korea. It was not until news of Japan's violent suppression of Koreans soured this perception that the exclusion of Japanese immigrants became possible in the United States. Central to these shifts in opinion was the cooperation of various Asian elites aspiring to inclusion in a "progressive" American empire. By examining how Korean, Japanese, and other nonwhite groups appealed to the United States, this book demonstrates that the imperial order sustained itself through a particular form of interracial collaboration that did not disturb the existing racial hierarchy.

The Grizzly Bear

The Grizzly Bear PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 644

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Lincoln and California

Lincoln and California PDF Author: Brian McGinty
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1640126074
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The ties that bound Abraham Lincoln to California, and California to Lincoln, have long been overlooked by historians. Although the great Civil War president has been the subject of thousands of books, his important relationship with the Western state, both before and during the war--the part it played in bringing on the great conflict and the help it gave him in winning it--have been little described and imperfectly understood. In Lincoln and California Brian McGinty explains the relationship between the president and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln's lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln's close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union. McGinty demonstrates that California was in large part responsible for beginning the Civil War, as the principal purpose of its conquest in the Mexican War was to acquire land into which the Southern states could extend their cotton-growing and slaveholding empire. The decision of California's first voters to exclude slavery from the state but to enact virulently racist legislation encouraged Southerners' hope that, if they established a separate republic, it would become an independent slave nation with the power to extend its territory to the Pacific coast of North America and into the Caribbean and Latin America. Lincoln's opposition to their plans unleashed the Civil War. As the struggle played out, however, the hopes of the proslavery Confederates were ultimately defeated because California played a vital role in helping Lincoln save the Union. Lincoln and California shines new light on an important state, a pivotal president, and a turning point in American history.

The Liberator

The Liberator PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1911

Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1911 PDF Author: Franklin Hichborn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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A Bloc of One

A Bloc of One PDF Author: Richard Coke Lower
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804720816
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
This is the first full-length study of one of the major political figures of twentieth-century America, Hiram Johnson (1866-1945). Elected governor of California in 1910, reelected in 1914, and elevated to the United States Senate in 1916, he characteristically cut his own political path, bringing an apocalyptic intensety to the many battles he waged. Armed with a sharp wit, a talent for invective, and a capacity for self-righteousness, he invigorated the political order around him with the passion he invested in it. Stubbornly independent, he pursued his goals with a fighter's determination. For Johnson, politics was an art not of compromise but of confrontation. As he himself put it, he preferred to be a "bloc of one." Johnson began his political career as an insurgent, a progressive in the stamp of Robert La Follette and Theodore Roosevelt. As governor he thoroughly revamped California's political and social order, creating a legacy that can still be felt today. He helped shape a progressive movement on the national level as well, and was Theodore Roosevelt's running mate on the Progressive party ticket in 1912. Johnson left the governorship in 1917, midway through his second term, to enter the United States Senate, where he served until his death in 1945. Arriving on the eve of America's entry into World War I, he continued to define himself as a reformer but quickly embraced a second cause as well, becoming one of the nation's most adamant proponents of American isolationism. He opposed American entry into the League of Nations in 1919, fought persistently against U.S. entanglement abroad throughout the inter-war years, and from his deathbed voted in 1945 against American entry into the United Nations. Although today he is best remembered as a fierce and uncompromising isolationist, his accomplishments in the Senate as a progressive - such as his decade-long fight for Hoover Dam - were significant and lasting. Johnson's public career encompasses and illuminates almost all the significant political issues, both domestic and international, in American life during the first half of the twentieth century.