John Randolph Haynes, California Progressive by Tom Sitton (review)

138 Canadian Reviewof American Studies of the Louisiana Acadians. There is also an ample bibliography and a comprehensive index. Despite its shortcomings, the book is to be highly recommended to people interested in the Cajuns in particular, and to those interested in the processes of cultural assimilation and differentiation in general. It breaks new ground and will become an important source for the study of the Cajuns and Louisiana. Bernard Cook Loyola University •••• +. Tom Sitton. John Randolph Haynes, California Progressive. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Pp. ix + 331. Part of the difficulty in coming to terms with the American reform tradition in the twentieth century is the fact that it is so frequently presented as a series of abstractions-modernizer, social controllers, structural and social reformersthat is loses a sense of human presence and complexity. The national figures are accessible, but even now too little is known of that vast number in the second and third tier who actually drove and shaped the process of change at the state and local level. This biography is an exceptionalcontribution to our knowledge of that group. Meticulously researched, competently written and admirably fair minded, it gives an exhaustive account of the life of John Randolph Haynes, a major figure in the history of reform in Los Angeles and in the state of California for forty years, and the individual more responsible than any other for that state's adopting early in the century of the instruments of direct democracy. While it is indeed as the "father of direct legislation" that he is best known, this biography makes clear that his interests and influence extended much further. Haynes was born in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, in 1853. At an early age, his parents moved to a coal mining region in the state where he acquired a lasting awareness of the brutal realities of class and ethnic conflict. At the age of ten, his family moved again, to Philadelphia, where he subsequently attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. His first practice was in an impoverished part of the city, and what he observed there seems to have left a permanent impression on him. In 1887, he moved to Los Angeles with his wife and all of his siblings, immediately plunged into a highly successful medical BookReviews 139 practice and began a career as an investor, with a particular interest in real estate. He was soon wealthy and became a prominent part of the social and businesselite of the city. He was not an active reformer until 1898when, at the age of forty-four, he suddenly took up reform politics. Toe event which triggered the move was a lecture on Christian Socialism by the Reverend William D. P. Bliss. Previously, Haynes had been alarmed about what be saw as deteriorating social conditions, but was pessimistic about the possibilities of reform. Bliss's lecture "transformed this pessimism into a realization that the world could be changed for the better without violent revolution " (27). For the rest of his life, Haynes would continue to hold the Christian_ socialist ideals espoused by Bliss, even after his own religious faith had disappeared and he had become an atheist (a fact which did not stop his continued activeinvolvement in church affairs, including the interdenominational Church Federation of Los Angeles). While direct legislation was one of his earliest and most persistent passions, other causes attracted his energy and his money. He lobbied for safety fenders on city streetcars, prison reform, mine safety legislation, and for prohibition (the latter mostly for others: he enjoyed fine wine and served it freely to his guests in the years leading up to the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment). While these, and a host of other Progressive Era causes were important to him, his second great crusade was the municipal ownership of public utilities, especially electric power. He saw this as a step toward the realization of his socialist ideals, believing that piecemeal and pragmatic change was preferable to an insistence on the sudden and total transformation of society. This same pragmatism was apparent in his willingness to work with sometimes questionableurban politicians in order to protect municipal ownership of electric power. Clearly to the left...