The Little People's Century: Industrial Pluralism, Economic Development, and the Emergence of Liberal Republicanism in California, 1942-1946

Abstract

In an August 1942 memo, William T. Sweigert, California attorney general Earl Warren's assistant and adviser, reflected on the profound social and political changes shaping his boss's bid for the governorship that November. “This is going to be the century of little people,” he predicted, “through the medium of large scale organizations and the marvelous methods of mass production.” Emboldened by the reforms of the New Deal and back at work in droves, thanks to the demands of wartime production, working people now represented the fulcrum of politics in California as well as the nation. No Republican candidate, Sweigert counseled Warren, could afford to ignore the leveling effects of modern industrial society on contemporary politics. Republicans, Sweigert implied, needed to discover novel ways to both accommodate and undermine the politics of this proletarian moment. Warren's election in 1942 epitomized the emergence of a liberal Republican party paradoxically committed to building a conservative state capable of enforcing an ambitious vision of social harmony through an enlightened form of capitalism.1