California’s People, Economy, and Politics:
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow California has been known as “the Golden State” for many decades thanks to the Gold Rush, the birth of the Golden Gate Bridge, and more than a hundred years of continuously blooming growth. Even so, some say that the state has lost its shine over the years, and to many others the state’s politics seem unpredictable and turbulent. California’s economy has been plugged in recession since 2007 and the state has suffered severe budget deficits for over a decade. Meanwhile political leaders rise and fall unexpectedly, and special interest groups and wealthy leaders are constantly accused of buying the elections on their behalf. However, issues are more likely to be referred to the voters which are often confused among complex and (sometimes) obscure ballot measures. Moreover, some people say democracy has gone mad, and others agree that California is simply ungovernable.
As tense and dysfunctional as California politics may appear, it seriously affects us all and it has to be understood by examining the past and present characteristics of the state starting with its constantly changing population and economy. The persistent implementation of new technologies and the never-ending arrival of immigrants, have transformed California’s economy and have made its society more diverse and multicultural. To understand the process of California today, we also have to comprehend the past about the evolution of the challenging interests within the state.
Archaeologists believe that the ancestors of American Indians crossed an ice bridge or traveled by sea through Asia to Alaska thousands of years ago and then headed towards the south by foot. On the other hand, Europeans began exploring Californian lands and its coasts in the early 1500s, and the colonization process began around 1759 when the Spanish established their missions and military frontiers. At the same time, about 300,000 Native Americans lived off the coasts. They were brought to the missions as workers, slaves, and converts. By 1849, the diseases and the destruction of their culture reduced the number of their population to a third of what it used to be. The tribes were wiped entirely until the 19th century, and today less than 1 percent of California’s total population is Native American. The remains of Native American communities feel isolated nowadays from a society that has devastated their peoples, cultures, and traditions.
In 1822, Mexico declared its independence from Spain. In 1846, Mexico and the US went on war over the state of Texas. After the US’s victory, Mexico surrendered its lands from Texas to California, and two years later gold was discovered. The Gold Rush began in 1848 followed by hordes of immigrants from all over the US and all over the world, including the first Chinese mine-workers who yielded more than a billion dollars of gold in only five years. The overwhelming growth in population and commerce yielded the new Californians into politics. In 1849, forty-eight delegates assembled a constitutional convention requesting statehood, which was rapidly granted by the US Congress. This Constitution included a bill of rights too, but only white males were allowed to participate at the time. Moreover, Chinese Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans were banned from testifying in court, attending public schools, and owning lands among other prohibitions.
The voters approved the Constitution and San Jose became the first state capital, but due to the heavy rain and flooding, the capital was moved to Vallejo, later on moved to Benicia, and finally settled in Sacramento in 1854, which was much closer to the gold fields. In less than fifty years, California had been part of three different countries, and its population and economy had changed so drastically as hundreds of thousands of immigrants came from all over the world to claim their piece of the Golden State.
At the time, the new booming in technology was in the form of railroads. In 1861 Leland Stanford with the help of some Sacramento merchants, founded the Southern Pacific Railroad. They managed to persuade the Congress into providing millions of dollars in land grants and loans towards a railroad system that would link the eastern United Stated with California expanding the market for California’s products. With this influence, Stanford soon became governor and the railroad builders wanted workers at cheap rates so they imported more than 150,000 Chinese laborers. By 1880s, Southern Pacific Railroads had become the dominant transportation company in the state, and the largest private landowner, owning about 11 percent of the entire state. Soon, the company had so much power that it had created a sinister and corrupted political machine, which helped its allies in every possible way. Those who didn’t want to support the machine lost jobs, businesses, and many benefits. Many people moved to big cities like San Francisco, where there was a high-demand of manufacturing work. Some of those people were Chinese. When a depression occurred in the 1870s, jobs were insufficient and new immigrants were treated very poorly by old immigrants. At that time, Irish immigrants formed the Workingmen’s Party, and small farmers were united under the Grangers. In 1879, these two parties called for a second constitutional assembly hoping to break apart the railroad’s power over the state. The Constitution of 1879 demanded specifically more control over the railroads, utilities, banks, and corporations. On the other hand, this new constitution also banned the Chinese from voting, owning lands, and working for state or local governments. The railroads however, soon regained its powers by controlling the agencies that were created to regulate it. Nonetheless, much of this constitution remains intact today, but efforts to regulate big businesses and control racial relations were recurring themes in California, and still continue today.
The evolution of the railroad gave birth to a new middle class of doctors, merchants, teachers, and workers who demanded a “good government” based on honesty and competence, opposing the corruption from the railroad’s political machine. Therefore, the Progressives were born as a part of the Republican Party establishing the Lincoln-Roosevelt league in 1907. Their leader won the elections for governor in 1910. Among the changes the Progressives were making, they decided to introduce the method of direct democracy, where voters can take part into decision-making towards politics. Some other positive changes made by the Progressives include compensation laws for workers, protection of natural resources through conservation programs, and giving women the right of voting. These reforms caused the death of the railroad’s political machine.
By 1920s, the population in California was of more than 2 million people. Ten years later in the 1930s the Great Depression occurred, and unemployment numbers skyrocketed up to 33 percent by 1933. On the other hand, World War II helped boost the economy, but the state and federal governments invested into California’s tomorrow with the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Central Valley Project. The built of the new dams and canals brought water to the deserted areas of the state, in their efforts to secure agriculture as the state’s centerpiece of economy. Consequently between 1940 and 1946, 500,000 jobs were created by an investment of 35 billion dollars made by the federal government. The creation of these new jobs brought even more immigrants, this time including African American peoples. Meanwhile, discrimination towards Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Mexican Americans kept growing.
As of today, California’s richness continues to grow in every possible way. Although half of the state is owned by state and federal government –mostly deserts and mountains-, only few big corporations take control in the rural areas. California is the nation’s most important farm leader producing about 21 percent of the total dairy products, 400 different foods, and about half of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts consumed in the whole country, including very important businesses in wineries. On the other hand, wages and safety have been the most controversial issues on a never-ending battle between farmers and their workers. Starting in 1960s, some farmers united under the United Farm Workers Union and since then they have accomplished many improvements, but the battle keeps going on today. Some other problems of the agricultural industry include environmental issues such as water contamination, air pollution, and the usage of pesticides; but it also includes the so-called “city problems” due to urbanization such as traffic and over-populated schools. However, the big issue keeps being water because even though cities and farms have to import their water from other parts of the state, farmers use about 80 percent of the total water at a very little cost. This causes a loss of interest from the farmers into an improvement of their inefficient irrigation systems. Nowadays, this problematic is at the top of the mountain when it comes to political issues. California politics are in the eye of the storm when it comes to deal with water between the agricultural industry and the interests of the rest of the citizens.
In contrast, the state’s relief is located on the innovation spawned by defense, technology, and aerospace companies. From San Francisco to San Jose, the Silicon Valley area hosts more than half of the engineers of the entire nation, making this area the centerpiece of technology innovations. Some of the businesses that proliferated the most include computers, software, Internet, nanotechnology, biomedical, and pharmaceutical. Other booming businesses include telecommunications, tourism, and film and television production. All this industries and jobs caused California to be a leader in domestic and international trade. But the state’s economy hasn’t been good all the time. In fact, for the past few years it’s been through many ups and downs, in and out of recession on the 1990s first, and later on right after the events of 9/11. High-tech companies started to fail, workers lost their jobs, and at the same time an energy crisis occurred, leading to shortages on electrical power and escalated gas prices. Also, unemployment reached about 9 percent on the Silicon Valley area, and around 7 percent statewide.
California’s historical archive recalls the many times in which the state has struggled, recovered, renovated, and moved on as a result of its economy and its people adapting to the constant changes over and over. Another quality of the state’s growth and flow is the constant development of small businesses, brought along by immigrants full of energy and optimism who are willing to take any jobs. Thanks to the flowing arrival of immigrants, about 55 percent of California’s immigrants are from Latin America, and 35 percent from Asia. From the total, 75 percent is of working age which is very significant for the state’s economy. However, the achievement of the California dream is not equally allocated in between these groups. By 2012, the monthly income of about 16 percent of Californians fell below the level of federal poverty, and over half of California students qualified for free or reduced-price meals. The breach between upper class and lower class in California is one of the largest in the nation, and it’s constantly growing. Some specialists distress that the middle class in the state may disappear due to an increasing number of poor people. The main problematic of this issue is located between housing and health care services. The dream of owning a house is fading away as less families are able to afford them. Moreover, nearly 23 percent of the state’s population do not have health insurance as they are unable to afford it.
When it comes to elections, the Silicon Valley area tended to be more diverse and vote Democratic, while Southern California tended to be much less diverse and vote Republican. Nonetheless, over the years and with an increasing diversity on its population, Southern California began voting Democratic also, and today the greatest political divisions are in between coastal and inland areas. Still, water, agriculture, and environmental issues are the main problematic of these areas.