Explain how Progressives helped to trigger California's first "giant political earthquake."

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students should first address the need to reduce the Southern Pacific Railroad's extraordinary power over state affairs, and explain how their efforts helped to transform people's relationship to government and their control over the machinery of government. To accomplish this, Progressives established reforms across a range of subjects, from morals laws to labor laws, to transferring the ownership of public utilities to municipalities. Their most important reforms concerned elections and parties, with the goal of ensuring fair political representation. They established direct primaries, in which any party member could become a candidate for office and gain the nomination of their fellow party members through a regular party (primary) election. They designated local and judicial elections as nonpartisan, meaning that no party identification would appear next to names for offices listed on the ballot. They created the practice of cross-filing, which allowed any candidates' names to appear on any party's primary election ballot (without party labels), thus enabling candidates to obtain the nomination of more than one party. They also championed civil service reforms, which disallowed parties in power from rewarding their loyal supporters with government jobs; now such employment had to be earned through demonstration of merit. Most importantly, they adopted direct democracy: the initiative, referendum, and recall, empowering citizens with a great measure of self-government by allowing them to circumvent government altogether in the making of laws. Progressives fundamentally shook the foundations of government by giving the people some of the same powers as elected officials, that of making laws and establishing policies.