The End of an Era: California's Gubernatorial Election of 1894

Abstract

I N LATER LIFE, while reminiscing about his days in the White House, Grover Cleveland once called the year 1894 his time of troubles. Students of the Gilded Age have generally agreed with the President's appraisal; one historian labels the twelve months between July 1894 and July 1895 as the annee terrible of American History between Reconstruction and the World War. 1 While California in the nineteenth century has been viewed traditionally as the great exception, in this instance it followed all too closely the pattern of national events. Agrarian unrest, nativism, unemployment, and labor strife bordering on open class-warfare seemed to pervade all layers of society and served to tarnish the image of the Golden State.2 It was in 1894 that the Peoples' Party in California achieved its greatest success. This group of politically minded farmers ran candidates for every state office and in several isolated areas succeeded in displacing the major parties. The Populist brand of God-fearing radicalism was tailor-made to the small farmers of the state who, caught between low commodity prices and high transportation rates,