California Progressive Era

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As a Californian learning about the state’s government, it is essential to know how our state came to be today. On that note, I learned that a majority of the beginning of California’s history was under the ownerships of Mexicans. Some famous contributors that lead to California’s success today is due to Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, Gaspar de Portola, and Sebastián Vizcaíno. This can date back to 1542 where Spain claimed California. However, as the US began to experience the Manifest Destiny, the need to spread from sea to shining sea, Americanizing the territory lead to officiation of California as the 31st state, under the Compromise of 1850. Of course, there has already been settlement in California by the Native Americans that dates back to …show more content…

The role that this specific era played in California was “to reduce power of corrupt political parties and rich corporations that spent large sums to control politicians.” Railroad corporations, mostly towards “The Big Four,” sought all the power and the money, meaning they had more power to control the government. The progressive era allowed Californians to have a nonpartisan local government elections as well as adopting child labor laws, woman suffrage laws, and other conservation policies. The greatest impact we feel today is the direct democracy power that include recall, referendum, and initiative, where we the people have for California have a voice in the state constitution. This allowed us to have the voting right to remove officials even before the term is over, check on legislature for approval or rejection, and writing our own laws by petitions. Unfortunately, initiatives do take place, but most of the time only circulate rather than being adopted into our state constitution. Sometimes unconstitutional laws are passed, but having longer ballots could provide as a light solution. Again, on the other hand, this may confuse voters and actually leaving no effect leaving the initiative back to square one. In doing so, the progressive era brought changes upon the California government system all thanks to the leader of this era, Hiram Johnson, where we still today are learning how to deal with problems head

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