7.4: Californians in a World of Revolutions and War

During the early 20th century, more than ever before, Californians were affected by events elsewhere in the world—the construction of the Panama Canal, revolution in Mexico after 1910, and war that began in Europe in 1914 but engulfed much of the world by 1917.

Californians and the Mexican Revolution

Rebellion broke out in Mexico in 1910, and peasant armies calling for tierra y libertad (land and liberty) attacked the mansions of great landowners. A series of governments proved unable to establish stability.

One group of revolutionaries operated from southern California. In Los Angeles in 1907, several exiles from Mexico established a branch of the Partido Liberal Mexicano (PLM, or Mexican Liberal Party). Founded in St. Louis by Ricardo Flores Magón in 1905, the PLM opposed the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, who ruled Mexico with support from great landholders, the church, and the military. When Magón called for revolution in 1907, he was arrested and spent nearly two years in the LA jail while his lawyer, Job Harriman (see p. 225), fought to prevent him from being extradited to Mexico. Magón and his followers, called magonistas, moved toward a radicalism similar to that of the IWW, advocating the overthrow of Díaz and also a redistribution of property and wealth.

In 1910, Magón moved his headquarters to Los Angeles and, when revolution came to Mexico, the magonistas were ready. Early in 1911, they joined with some Wobblies on a foray into the Mexican state of Baja California. They first seized the town of Mexicali. Prominent American anarchists, including Emma Goldman, converged on San Diego to build support for the ragtag army of Mexicans, Wobblies, and adventurers. They took Tijuana in early May but developed little following elsewhere. Soon, a Mexican army arrived to reestablish control, and the magonistas fled back to the United States. Magón, his brother, and a few other leaders were convicted of violating U.S. laws by sending weapons into Mexico.

The growing numbers of Mexican immigrants to southern California combined with the radical agitation of the era to breed what some historians have called a “Brown Scare” during the years 1913 to 1918—a predecessor of the Red Scare of 1919 and a parallel to the anti-IWW activities in San Diego and elsewhere. The radical speeches and publications of Flores Magón and his followers persuaded some white Californians that the Mexican community of Los Angeles harbored dangerous revolutionaries. In 1915, Texas officials announced they had found a “Plan de San Diego” for an invasion from Mexico to coincide with an insurrection by Mexican Americans. When Mexican raiders led by the revolutionary Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico, in 1916, it seemed to confirm rumors of impending insurrection and intensified the Brown Scare. In Los Angeles, the police chief banned the sale of guns and liquor to Mexicans.

War in Europe and Conflict at Home

In the summer of 1914, assassinations by a Serbian terrorist led to world war. By August, two great alliances were attacking each other—the Allies (the British Empire, France, Russia, Belgium, and eventually Italy) versus the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey).

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the United States to be neutral and urged Americans to be neutral in thought as well as deed. Neutrality proved difficult to maintain, however. From the beginning, some Americans advocated that the United States should join the Allies. Others supported neutrality. By 1916, many Americans had lined up on opposite sides over “preparedness”—a military and naval buildup to prepare the United States for war.

In San Francisco in 1916, the city seemed on the verge of a “labor war,” as unions and employers squared off over several issues. In the midst of a strike by longshoremen, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored a mass meeting of the city’s business leaders, drew upon the heritage of the vigilantes to create a Law and Order Committee, bankrolled it with a million dollars, and charged it with restoring “peace and quiet” on the waterfront. The Law and Order Committee then launched a wide-ranging offensive against unions. At the same time, a group of business leaders, including many from the Law and Order Committee, organized a parade on July 22 in support of preparedness. Unions urged their members to boycott the parade, as did Socialists, pacifists, and a few leading progressives. About half an hour after the parade began to wend its way down Market Street, as various parade units were still waiting to join the march, a bomb went off at the corner of Market and Steuart Streets, killing nine people and injuring 40. The search for those responsible soon narrowed to a small group of radical unionists.

Authorities arrested five suspects and began to bring them to trial, one at a time. The first, Warren Billings, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The next, Tom Mooney, was convicted and sentenced to death. By the time of the third trial, of Rena Mooney, the defense had discovered evidence of perjury. Rena Mooney was found not guilty, as was the next defendant, and the prosecution dropped charges against the final defendant. But Billings and Mooney were in prison, Mooney awaiting execution. Radicals and unionists across the country demonstrated for their freedom, but Governor Stephens only commuted Mooney’s sentence from death to life imprisonment, guaranteeing the continuation of the struggle to free the two men.

In March 1917, President Wilson began to move toward war with Germany. On March 1, he made public a decoded message from the German state secretary for foreign affairs, Arthur Zimmermann, to the German minister in Mexico. Zimmermann proposed that, if the United States went to war with Germany, Mexico should ally itself with Germany and attack the United States. Further, Mexico should urge Japan to change sides and oppose the United States and the Allies. If the Central Powers won, Mexico would recover its “lost provinces” of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Zimmermann’s suggestions created outrage and fear among many Californians as the sensationalist press projected the horrors of a Mexican or Japanese conquest of California. Then, in April 1917, the nation went to war against Germany and the other Central Powers.

Californians Go to War

More than 130,000 Californians served in the war. Nearly all were men who became part of the army or navy. A few women served as army nurses or in the Red Cross or other support organizations. Some 4,000 Californians lost their lives on the battlefield or to disease while serving in the military.

The war produced important changes at home. Historians have called World War I the first “total war” because modern warfare demanded mobilization of an entire society and economy. The State Council of Defense sought to build support for the war effort, usually equating opposition to the war with disloyalty.

German-language newspapers were banned. Radicals came under suspicion, and many were arrested. The war altered nearly every aspect of the economy, as the progressive emphasis on expertise and efficiency produced unprecedented centralization of economic decision making. The railroads and the telephone and telegraph systems came under direct federal management. Mobilization extended beyond war production to the people themselves, their attitudes toward the war, and their response to the need for labor. In the midst of war, in 1918, the nation—and the world—were plunged into a serious influenza epidemic that killed many thousands.

Most Californians’ lives were significantly changed by the need for more food, clothing, ships and weapons, and other manufactured goods. One crucial American contribution to the Allied victory was through agriculture, for the war disrupted European farming and increased demand for many products. President Wilson chose Herbert Hoover as federal food administrator. Prior to the war, Hoover, a Californian, had a worldwide reputation as a mining engineer. Before the United States entered the war, he skillfully directed a relief program in Belgium. Now he promoted increased production and conservation of food. Farmers brought large areas under cultivation for the first time, and food shipments to the Allies tripled. In addition to producing more food, California growers significantly increased their cotton production in response to wartime demands.

Demands for increased production when thousands of men were marching off to war opened up jobs for new workers. Employment of women in factory, office, and retail jobs was increasing before the war, but the war accelerated those trends. The war also had a great impact on African American communities. Until the war, about 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the southern states. By 1920, some 500,000 had moved out of the South in what has been called the Great Migration. The number of African Americans in Los Angeles more than doubled, and the black community of LA became the state’s largest—nearly twice the size of the black communities of the Bay Area—and most important center for black business and politics. In 1918, African Americans in LA helped to elect Frederick Roberts, a Republican, as the first black member of the state legislature. Black voters did not comprise a majority in Roberts’s district, however, and he won with support from white as well as black Republicans.

Peace and the Backwash of War

When the war ended on November 11, 1918, church bells pealed and sirens shrieked. Californians thronged into the streets, celebrating the end of the war. One remembered that “it was just like New Year’s eve.” Huge bonfires were lit on the highest hills in San Francisco, and, on the next day, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish religious leaders joined in a massive thanksgiving service in San Francisco’s Civic Center.

Californians soon found themselves embroiled in economic and social conflicts that spun off from the war. The year 1919 saw not only the return of the troops from Europe, but also raging inflation, massive strikes, fear of subversion, violations of civil liberties, and passage of an unenforceable law to prohibit alcohol.

Inflation—which newspapers called HCL, for “high cost of living”—may have been the most pressing single problem Americans faced after the war. Between late 1914 and the end of the war, the cost of living increased by about half, then continued to climb in 1919. Many unions made wage demands to keep up with the soaring cost of living, but, by 1919, employers were ready for a fight. Some companies were determined to return labor relations to prewar patterns. Others planned to roll back prewar union gains.

Against the backdrop of a general strike in Seattle, a police strike in Boston, and a multistate strike by steelworkers—all of which failed—several California unions struck for improved wages and working conditions. In the spring, shipyard workers in Los Angeles went on strike, but lost. Telephone workers struck throughout much of California in June. Telephone companies hired strikebreakers, and by late July most strikers returned to work with no gains. In the fall of 1919, San Francisco longshoremen went on strike; the strikefailed, and the longshoremen’s union was destroyed. Shipyard workers up and down the Pacific coast walked out, but their strike, too, was a failure.

Across the country and in California, many companies discredited strikers by claiming that they were motivated not by legitimate desires to improve wages, but by political commitments to Bolshevism—the radical version of socialism that had taken power in Russia in 1917 and that was soon called Communism. The California legislature, like state legislatures across the country, adopted a state criminal syndicalism law, making it a crime to advocate changes in the economy and government of the sort sought by the IWW or the new Communist Party. In May 1919, a group of veterans formed the American Legion, which not only lobbied on behalf of veterans but also condemned radicals and committed itself “to foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism.”