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Earl Warren's New Deal: Economic Transition, Postwar Planning, and Higher Education in California

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

John Aubrey Douglass
Affiliation:
Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley

Extract

World War II was a time of unprecedented industrial growth and urban and suburban expansion in California. War mobilization ushered in new types of postindustrial and technology-based industries. Military bases were established up and down the Pacific Coast. Factories suddenly materialized, supplying military hardware, jobs, and, in turn, attracting a new wave of migrants.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2000

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References

Notes

1. Cited in Postwar California, Monthly Digest of Information Published in Cooperation with the California Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission and the Bureau of Public Administration, University of California, 1:1 (March 1944): 2.

2. Warren, speech before the first meeting of the California State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission, 22 March, cited in Postwar California 1:2 (April 1944): 2.

3. See Dorothy C. Tompkins, “Recent Trends in State Planning and Development,” Bureau of Public Administration—University of California, Berkeley, 25 April 1949.

4. On the California Progressive movement, see Mowry, George E., The California Progressives (Berkeley, 1951)Google Scholar, Olin, Spencer C. Jr., California's Prodigal Sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917 (Berkeley, 1968)Google Scholar, and California Politics, 1846–1820: The Emerging Corporate State (San Francisco, 1981); Lane, J. Gregg, “The Lincoln-Roosevelt League: Its Origin and Accomplishments,” Quarterly of the Historical Society of Southern California 25 (09 1943)Google Scholar; Starr, Kevin, Material Dreams: Southern California through the 1920s (New York, 1990)Google Scholar; and Inventing the Dream: California Through the Progressive Era (New York, 1985); Sitton, Tom, John Randolph Haynes: California Progressive (Stanford, 1992)Google Scholar; on the issue of water as a major political and economic issue in California, see Pisani, Donald, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850–1931 (Berkeley, 1984).Google Scholar

5. As cited in Harvey, Richard, Earl Warren: Governor of California (New York, 1969), 164166Google Scholar

6. “California Speeds Postwar Planning,” New York Times, 23 March 1944; “Coast Ready with Program for War's End,” Oklahoma City Times, 30 June 1944. The national effort to guide the postwar economy has received little scholarly attention, and the exploits of California and Earl Warren are no different. There are a number of interesting biographies on Warren, but they are largely journalistic in approach and neglect any analysis of the circumstance and products of the Warren administration beyond the battles with the California Medical Association and one or two bills. Little attention is given to the policy framework of postwar planning. They instead focus an examination of Warren's personality and interpersonal and political relations, or on his years as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. These studies include Irving Stone's promotional biography for the 1948 presidential campaign, Earl Warren (New York, 1948); the most recent biography by Ed Cray, Chief Justice: A Biography of Earl Warren (New York, 1997); see also Schwartz, Bernard, Super Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court (New York, 1983)Google Scholar; White, Edward G., Earl Warren: A Public Life (New York, 1982)Google Scholar; Harvey, , Earl Warren (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Severn, Bill, Mr. Chief Justice: Earl Warren (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Katcher, Leo, Earl Warren: A Political Biography (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Weaver, John D., Warren: The Man, The Court, The Era (Boston, 1967)Google Scholar; Harvey, Richard, “The Political Approach of Earl Warren, Governor of California” (Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1959);Google Scholar

7. Lotchin, Roger W., Fortress California 1910–1961: From Warfare to Welfare (New York, 1992), xv, 171Google Scholar; see also California Cities and the Hurricane of Change: World War II in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego Metropolitan Areas,” Pacific Historical Review 62:3 (08 1994): 393420.Google Scholar

8. Rhode, Paul, “The Nash Thesis Revisited: An Economic Historian's View,” Pacific Historical Review 62:3 (08 1994): 363392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. California State Chamber of Commerce, Economic Survey of California and Its Counties (California State Chamber of Commerce, 1948), 823.

10. M. I. Gershenson, Division of Labor Statistics and Law Enforcement, State Department of Industrial Relations, presentation to the Citizens Tax Committee, San Francisco, 5 February 1943.

11. Ibid.

12. McWilliams, Carey, California: The Great Exception (Santa Barbara, 1979), 233, 342.Google Scholar

13. See Foster, Mark S., Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West (Austin, 1989)Google Scholar; Adams, Stephen B., Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington: The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur (Chapel Hill, 1997).Google Scholar

14. Cleland, Robert Glass, From Wilderness to Empire: A History of California (New York, 1959), 411.Google Scholar

15. Arnold, Robert K. et al. , The California Economy, 1947–1960 (Menlo Park, Calif, 1960), 247260Google Scholar; Southern California Associates of the Committee for Economic Development, National Defense and Southern California, 1961–1970, Los Angeles, 12 1961.Google Scholar

16. Cleland, Robert Glass, California in Our Time (New York, 1947), 318.Google Scholar

17. Kiplinger Magazine, February 1948, cited in McWilliams, California: The Great Exception, 233.

18. Nash, Gerald D., The American West Transformed: The Impact of the Second World War (Bloomington, 1985), 1719Google Scholar; see also idem, World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy (Lincoln, Neb, 1990)Google Scholar, Johnson, Marilyn, The Second Gold Rush (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993)Google Scholar, Bullough, William and Orsi, Richard, The Elusive Eden: A New History of California (New York, 1988), 442458.Google Scholar

19. See Earl Warren, “My Plan for Health Insurance,” Look Magazine, 22 June 1948; Warren's plan reflected a similar plan proposed by a commission appointed by then-governor Hiram Johnson in 1915 but rejected by California voters as a constitutional amendment in 1918.

20. Warren's first attempt at a health insurance bill came during the 1945 legislative session which was defeated; he then returned for another attempt at the bill in 1949, and at the peril of his ambition to be reelected governor in 1950.

21. As cited in Richard Harvey, Earl Warren: Governor of California, 164–66.

22. Warren, Earl, The Memoirs of Earl Warren (Chicago, 1977), 232.Google Scholar

23. Mervyn Rathborne (Congress of Industrial Organizations Secretary in California) to Governor Earl Warren, 20 October 1944, Warren Papers, Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission Files, California State Archives (henceforth Warren Papers).

24. Ibid.

25. Warren, speech before the first meeting of the California State Reconstruction and Re-Employment Commission, 22 March cited in Postwar California 1:2 (April 1944): 2.

26. Sacramento Bee, 28 January 1946, 1; Office of the Director of Planning and Research, California Reports on Planning (Sacramento, 02 1948).Google Scholar

27. The National Resources Planning Board published a series of pamphlets intended to address postwar planning, including: “After Defense—What?” (August 1941), “After the War—Full Employment” (January 1942), “Better Cities” (April 1942), “Postwar Planning” (September 1942), and “Demobilization and Readjustment” (June 1943); Somers, Herman Miles, Presidential Agency: OWMR, Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion (Cambridge, Mass., 1950)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Council of State Governments, Interstate Committee on Postwar Reconstruction and Development, Wartime and Postwar Problems and Policies of the States (Chicago, 05 1944).Google Scholar

28. “Three States Parley on Postwar Program,” Portland Journal, 15 May 1944.

29. “Report of the Citizen's Tax Committee to the California Legislature,” in California Assembly Journal (15 March 1943): 851.

30. See California Statistical Abstract, 1961 (Sacramento, 1961), 61.

31. See Dorothy C. Tompkins, “The General Fund Surplus Problem in California,” Bureau of Public Administration, University of CaliforniaĐBerkeley, March 1943.

32. Warren, Earl, California Assembly Journal (15 03 1943), 847.Google Scholar

33. Interview with A. Alan Post (former legislative analyst to the California legislature and the Joint-Committee on Finance), Berkeley, 21 May 1990.

34. Ibid.

35. Earl Warren, 1943 Inaugural Address, pp. 11–12.

36. The 1943 Subdivision Map Act, the 1945 Community Redevelopment Act, and the 1947 State Redevelopment Act and the State Conservation and Planning Act demanded county and municipal planning in return for state funds; California Reports on Planning, 1–20.

37. Julian McPhee to the California Assembly Interim Committee on Postwar Rehabilitation, 18–19 October 1944, Berkeley.

38. See also Sexson, John, “Postwar Problems of Education,” California Journal of Secondary Education 19:3 (04 1944): 163166Google Scholar; Lounsbury, John L., “Postwar Planning for the Junior Colleges,” California Journal of Secondary Education 19:3 (04 1944): 188190Google Scholar; idem, Some Problems in Postwar Planning,” Junior College Journal 14:8 (04 1944): 360366Google Scholar; “Preliminary Report of the Armed Forces Committee on Postwar Educational Opportunities for Service Personnel,” Washington, D.C., 27 October 1943, submittal to Congress.

39. Ibid.

40. Warren, Memoirs, 226.

41. “Crowded California,” Newsweek, 11 October 1948, 36.

42. Warren, Memoirs, 215–17; Pettitt, George A., Twenty-Eight Years in the Life of a University President (Berkeley, 1966), 34.Google Scholar

43. San Diego Union, 25 October 1943.

44. “California Has Been Thrust by the War into Its Industrial Future,” Oakland Post-Enquirer, 29 May 1944.

45. Warren speech before the Association of General Contractors, Palace Hotel, San Francisco, 11 December 1942, Warren Papers.

46. “Leaders See 1944 as Year of Hope and War Victories,” LA Times, 3 June 1944.

47. Ralph Smedley to Earl Warren, 1 December 1944, in Warren Papers.

48. “House Resolution No. 186,” California Assembly Journal (15 May 1941): 3109.

49. “Report of the Subcommittee on Postwar Planning,” 30 December 1942, California Assembly Journal (3 May 1943): 3162; see also “House Resolution No. 78, pursuant to HR 186,” 30 January 1943; Weber, Charles W., California Assembly Journal (3 05 1943): 3167.Google Scholar

50. Tompkins, “Recent Trends in State Planning and Development.”

51. “Report of the Committee on Legislative Organization: The Procedure of Planning in State Government,” California Assembly Journal (3 May 1943): 3167–72.

52. Ibid., 3169.

53. “House Resolution No. 186,” California Assembly Journal (15 May 1941): 3109.

54. California Assembly Journal (3 May 1943): 3171.

55. Cited in Katcher, Earl Warren, 217.

56. “State Appropriates $10,000,000 to Match City and County Funds for Local Plans and Sites,” Western Cities, June 1944; “California Votes $112,000,000 Works,” New York Times, 4 June 1944; “Special Session Results with Praise of Warren, San Francisco Examiner, 15 June 1944.

57. Harvey, Earl Warren: Governor of California, 68.

58. California Assembly Journal (10 April 1943): 1954–55; Proceedings of the Governor's Conference on Employment, 5–6 December 1949 (Sacramento, 1951), 10.

59. Interview with Alan Post, 21 May 1990.

60. Laws Relating to the State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission (Sacramento, 1946).Google Scholar

61. Warren, speech before the first meeting of the California State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission, 22 March cited in Postwar California 1:2 (April 1944): 2; see also Sacramento Bee, 28 January 1946: 1; Office of the Director of Planning and Research, California Reports on Planning (Sacramento, 02 1948)Google Scholar; Tompkins, “Recent Trends in State Planning and Development,” 7.

62. Using monies allocated by the legislature, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Roy Simpson conducted a “Study of a Method of Equalization of the Burden of Supporting the State's Program of Education,” and a “Study of the Supply and Demand for Teachers in California.” Both studies were completed with the assistance of faculty and administrators at the University of California, Stanford, and the University of Southern California. In turn, Strayer presented his recommendations in a report entitled “The Administration, Organization and Financial Support of the Public School System, State of California,” which was then incorporated into the “Report of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Readjustment Education” to the Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission, dated 12 January 1945 and dubbed the “Strayer Report.”

63. “Report of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Readjustment Education,” 2–3.

64. Charles Bursch, “Memoranda from the State Department of Education Concerning State Aid for School Housing in Rural Areas and in Other School Districts with Low Financial Ability,” State Department of Education, 18 December 1944.

65. The report also suggested that secondary schools and junior colleges serve a similar function to that of the “Conservation Corps camps and the Youth Administration” of the New Deal: providing “a program of work experience…. Every secondary school program in the State of California should include productive work. This will require cooperation with industry, with agriculture, with forestry, and with business and commerce.” “Report of the Citizens Advisory Committee on Readjustment Education,” 5–6.

66. See Falk, Charles, The Development and Organization of Education in California (New York, 1968), 107141.Google Scholar

67. Registration Data for California Institutions of Collegiate Grade, 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1943,” California Schools 15:5 (05 1944): 115126.Google Scholar

68. Sexson, John A., “Postwar Problems of Education,” California Journal of Secondary Education 19:3 (04 1944): 163166.Google Scholar Robert Gordon Sproul to Dean E. T Grether, Dean Gordon S. Watkins, and Dean C. B. Hutchison, 1943, cited in Pettitt, George A., Twenty-Eight Years in the Life of a University President (Berkeley, 1960), 77.Google Scholar

69. Eells, Walter Crosby, “The Junior College in the Postwar Period,” Junior College Journal 14:2 (10 1943): 52.Google Scholar

70. State Reconstruction and Reemployment Commission, “Postwar Objectives of Public Education in California,” a report of the Project Committee on Postwar Objectives of Public Education, chaired by Gilbert H. Jertberg (State Board of Education) to the Citizens Advisory Committee on Readjustment Education, February 1945.

71. Robert Gordon Sproul, Inaugural Address as President of the University of California, 22 October 1930 Berkeley, UCA.

72. Ibid.

73. See Douglass, John A., “On Becoming an Old Blue: Santa Barbara's Controversial Transition from a State College to a Campus of the University of California,” Coastlines (Spring 1994): 611.Google Scholar

74. University of California, Board of Regents, Minutes, 19 January 1945; “The Origin and Functions of the Liaison Committee of the State Board of Education and the Regents of the University of California,” Joint Staff for the Liaison Committee and the Technical Advisory Committee, August 1957 revision, Liaison Committee Minutes and Reports, Sacramento, CSA.

75. Deutsch, Monroe E., Douglass, Aubrey A., and Strayer, George, A Report of the Survey of the Needs of California in Higher Education (Berkeley, 1948).Google Scholar

76. See Douglass, John A., “Californians and Public Higher Education: Political Culture, Educational Opportunity and State Policymaking,” History of Higher Education Annual, vol. 16 (1996), 71104.Google Scholar

77. Ibid., 39–40.

78. Ibid.

79. Enrollment projections were based on two federal reports, the National Resources Planning Board's National Development Report, Part I (Washington, D.C, 1943), 6970Google Scholar. and the President's Commission on Higher Education, Higher Education for American Democracy (Washington, D.C., 1947), 1:39.

80. See Douglass, John A., “Brokering the Master Plan for Higher Education,” California Politics and Policy, 1997.Google Scholar

81. California Statistical Abstract, 1961 (Sacramento, 1961), 61.

82. Ibid.

83. 1960 Statistical Abstract of the United States (U.S. Government, 1960), 205.

84. California Statistical Abstract, 1961, pp. 157–58, 168.

85. Ibid.

86. See Douglass, “Californians and Public Higher Education.”

87. Statistics from annual enrollment reports in California Schools, 1942–50.

88. California Statistical Abstract, 1961, pp. 157–58, 168.

89. Pomeroy, Earl, The Pacific Slope (New York, 1965), 299.Google Scholar

90. Arnold, Robert K. et al. , The California Economy, 1947–1960 (Menlo Park, Calif., 1960), 247260Google Scholar; see also Southern California Associates of the Committee for Economic Development, National Defense and Southern California, 1961–70, Los Angeles, December 1961.

91. The dynamics of postwar economic development, including the investment in research universities, is the focus of a growing body of research. See Mowery, David C., Science and Technology Policy in Interdependent Economies (Boston, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gibbons, Michael et al. , The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies (Thousand Oaks, Calif., 1994)Google Scholar; Paul Romer, “Why, Indeed, In America?: Theory, History and the Origins of Modern Economic Growth,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 1996; Council of Economic Advisers, “Supporting Research and Development to Promote Economic Growth: The Federal Government's Role,” October 1995.

92. Gentry, Curt, The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

93. California Statues, 1947, c. 1408.

94. Warren speech, op cit., 11 December 1942.