The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-31
CALIFORNIA;
 ACHIEVEMENT
daFollette.s .Magazine.l


 California has planted the banner of Peoples. Rule far afield. She has stormed the bulwarks of The System and reduced them to ruins In their place she has erected a structure oi representative government, founded on truth, fashioned with democracy and gilded with righteousness, that will stand forever as monument to the intelligence and might of an American electorate.
 What the people of California have wrought belongs not to them alone; it is the whole nations gain. It dis turbs the civic sIumber of the unthink- ing everywhere. It encourages the faint-hearted. It shows the Half is not unattainable. It gives added zeal to the zealous, renewed faith to the faithful. It makes more distinct the Inspiring sound of myriad feet marching onward in the progressive movement, marching with f1rmer tread and more nearly perfect unison.
 Think what the achievement of Oc- tober Tenth in California means: A State, notoriously boss-rtdden, its gov ernment the plaything of corrupt busi- ness and corrupt politics, at last re- claimed-completely reclaimed-by the people. Consider for a moment this picture of the old order drawn by the Los Angeles Tribune:
 For more than generation the Southern Pacific railroad governed this State as absolutely as it chose. It owned the successive Legislatures. Usually it controlled the Governor. Always 1t named the State Board of Equalization and the Board of Rail- road Commissioners. It placed crea- lures of its own on the bench even of the highest courts. It demoniated r. 4-sA ies to the avarice of organized vice in return for political support. It was the government of California and year after year, in alliance with vari- ous forms of Special Privilege and Private Interests, 1t dictated Tegisla- ton, executive acts, and Judicial de- cisions blocked any rate regulations of taxation. and, shielded by the law. oppressed the people. California had lost it's sovereignty. Representative government had been destroyed ''
 That is a terse and truthful state ment of California's plight. It was not different, except perhaps in degree, from the situation in which other States found themselves in those days from that in which some are strug- gling even in the present day. Then came Heney and Spreckels and Burns to make war on The Beast in San Francisco. Then came Hiram Johnl son, with an honest and unbought Legislature. to kick the Southern Pacific out of the government of the State,' and to formulate in statutes and constitutional amendments the po- slitical will of the people. Now come the voters themselves making secure the progress achieved by the Cover nor and the Legislature, and writing into the fundamental law of the State the instruments whereby public opin- ion may at all times and without findrance shape the public policies in to law.
 They have placed in their Constitu- tion the initiative and referendum to protect themselves against the mis- takes or indifference of their represen- tatives in the Legislature. With these instruments in their hands, it will always be possible for the people to demand a direct vote and to repeal a bad law which the Legislature has enacted, or to ehact by direct vote good measure which the Legislature has failed to consider.
 They have provided themselves with the recall to enable the people to dis miss from public service a representa- tive whenever he shall cease to serve the public interest. Now no jackpot politician, no railroad judge, can hold his office in defiance of the will of a constituency whose commission he. has dishonored
 They have abolished the unjust dis crimination that denies women their right to the ballot, thereby making their government not a mems govern ment, but genuinely and completely PEOPLES government.
 All honor to the men and women who bore the brunt of this great bat. .tle All honor to that free and un- afraid people who rebuked the forces of political evil. They have wrought intelligently and sanely and we'll. They have achieved a revolution with the peaceful weapons of public dis cussion and the ballot. They stand at the threshold of a new and better social order, wherein there is equality of opportunity, wherein none may take unjustly that which belongs to all, wherein government is truly of, by and for. the people.