Hiram Johnson

Hiram Johnson was born in Sacramento on September 2, 1866. His father, Grove Lawrence Johnson, was a Republican U.S. Representative and a member of the California State Legislature whose career was marred by accusations of election fraud and graft. His mother, Annie De Montfredy, was a descendant of a family of French Huguenots who had emigrated to escape religious persecution after the Edict of Fontainebleau. Annie was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution as the result of her descent from Pierre Van Cortlandt and Philip Van Cortlandt. Johnson had one brother and three sisters.[1]

After attending public schools and Heald College, Johnson worked as a shorthand reporter and stenographer in law offices. He eventually studied law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a member of the Chi Phi Fraternity. After his admission to the bar in 1888, Johnson set up a legal practice in Sacramento.

In 1902, Johnson moved to San Francisco, where he served as assistant district attorney and became active in reform politics. He attracted statewide attention in 1908 when he assisted Francis J. Heney in the prosecution of Abe Ruef and Mayor Eugene Schmitz for graft. After Heney was shot in the courtroom in an attempted assassination, Johnson took the lead for the prosecution and won the case, though only Ruef served prison time.

Johnson during his tenure as governor

Johnson and newly elected Lieutenant Governor A.J. Wallace, right, in the Los Angeles Herald, November 9, 1910

In 1910, Johnson won the gubernatorial election as a member of the Lincoln–Roosevelt League, a Progressive Republican movement running on a platform opposed to the Southern Pacific Railroad. During his campaign, he toured the state in an open automobile, covering thousands of miles and visiting small communities throughout California inaccessible by rail.[2]

In office, Johnson was a populist who promoted a number of democratic reforms: the election of U.S. Senators by direct popular vote, cross-filing, initiative, referendum, and recall elections. Johnson's reforms gave California a degree of direct democracy unmatched by any other U.S. state at the time.

Johnson was also instrumental in reigning in the power of the Southern Pacific Railroad through the establishment of a state railroad commission. On taking office, Johnson paroled the convicted Southern Pacific train bandit Chris Evans but required that he leave California.

Although initially opposed to the bill, Johnson gave in to political pressure and supported the California Alien Land Law of 1913, which prevented Asian immigrants (excluded from naturalized citizenship because of their race) from owning land in the state.[3]

Time cover, 29 Sep 1924

In 1916, Johnson ran successfully for the U.S. Senate, defeating Democrat George S. Patton Sr., and assuming office on March 16, 1917. Johnson was elected as a staunch opponent of American entry into World War I, and allegedly said, "The first casualty when war comes is truth." However, this quote may be apocryphal.[5] As a staunch isolationist, Johnson voted against the League of Nations during his first term.

During his Senate career, Johnson served as chairman of the Committees on Cuban Relations (Sixty-sixth Congress), Patents (Sixty-seventh Congress), Immigration (Sixty-eighth through Seventy-first Congresses), Territories and Insular Possessions (Sixty-eighth Congress), and Commerce (Seventy-first and Seventy-second Congresses).

In the Senate, Johnson helped push through the Immigration Act of 1924, having worked with Valentine S. McClatchy and other anti-Japanese lobbyists to prohibit Japanese and other East Asian immigrants from entering the United States.[3]

In the early 1920s, the motion picture industry sought to establish a self-regulatory process to fend off official censorship. Senator Johnson was among three candidates identified alongside Herbert Hoover and Will H. Hays. Hays, who had managed President Harding's 1920 campaign, was ultimately named to head the new Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in early 1922.[6]

As Senator, Johnson proved extremely popular. In 1934, he was re-elected with 94.5 percent of the popular vote because he was nominated by both Republicans and Democrats and his only opponent was Socialist George Ross Kirkpatrick.[7]

In 1943, a confidential analysis of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee made by British scholar Isaiah Berlin for his Foreign Office stated that Johnson:

is the Isolationists' elder statesman and the only surviving member of the [William E.] Borah-[Henry Cabot] Lodge-Johnson combination which led the fight against the League in 1919 and 1920. He is an implacable and uncompromising Isolationist with immense prestige in California, of which he has twice been Governor. His election to the Senate has not been opposed for many years by either party. He is acutely Pacific-conscious and is a champion of a more adequate defence of the West Coast. He is a member of the Farm Bloc and is au fond, against foreign affairs as such; his view of Europe as a sink of iniquity has not changed in any particular since 1912, when he founded a short-lived progressive party. His prestige in Congress is still great and his parliamentary skill should not be underestimated.[8]

In 1945, Johnson was not present to vote against ratification of United Nations Charter, but made it known that he would have voted against ratification; only Senators Henrik Shipstead and William Langer actually cast votes opposed.[9]

He married Minne L. McNeal during his time as San Francisco Assistant District Attorney. The couple had two sons.

From 1917 to 1929, he resided at the Riversdale Mansion in Riverdale Park, Maryland.

The front page of the Los Angeles Times for August 7, 1945, reporting the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and the death of Johnson.

Having served in the Senate for almost thirty years, Johnson died in the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on August 6, 1945, the same day as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. He was interred in Cypress Lawn Memorial Park in Colma, California.

Johnson gained some recognition in the media and general public during the 2003 California recall election because he was the most important person behind the introduction of the law that allowed state officials to be recalled. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the eventual winner, referred to Johnson's progressive legacy in his campaign speeches.

On August 25, 2009, Governor Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, announced that Johnson would be one of 13 inducted into the California Hall of Fame.

As of January 2021, Johnson remains California's longest-serving United States Senator, though he would be surpassed by Dianne Feinstein if she serves through April 13.[11]

The Hiram Johnson papers reside at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.[12]

Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California is named in his honor.

• List of United States Congress members who died in office (1900–49)

• Blackford, Mansel Griffiths. "Businessmen and the regulation of railroads and public utilities in California during the Progressive Era." Business History Review 44.03 (1970): 307–319.
• Feinman, Ronald L. Twilight of progressivism: the western Republican senators and the New Deal (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981)
• Le Pore, Herbert P. "Prelude to Prejudice: Hiram Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and the California Alien Land Law Controversy of 1913." Southern California Quarterly (1979): 99–110. in JSTOR
• Lower, Richard Coke. A Bloc of One: The Political Career of Hiram W. Johnson (Stanford University Press, 1993)
• McKee, Irving. "The Background and Early Career of Hiram Warren Johnson, 1866–1910." Pacific Historical Review (1950): 17–30. in JSTOR
• Miller, Karen A.J. Populist nationalism: Republican insurgency and American foreign policy making, 1918–1925 (Greenwood, 1999)
• Olin, Spencer C. California's prodigal sons: Hiram Johnson and the Progressives, 1911–1917 (U of California Press, 1968)
• Olin, Spencer C. "Hiram Johnson, the California Progressives, and the Hughes Campaign of 1916." The Pacific Historical Review (1962): 403–412. in JSTOR
• Olin, Spencer C. "Hiram Johnson, the Lincoln-Roosevelt League, and the Election of 1910." California Historical Society Quarterly (1966): 225–240. in JSTOR
• Shover, John L. "The progressives and the working class vote in California." Labor History (1969) 10#4 pp: 584–601. online
• Weatherson, Michael A., and Hal Bochin. Hiram Johnson: Political Revivalist (University Press of America, 1995)
• Weatherson, Michael A., and Hal Bochin. Hiram Johnson: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, 1988)

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Hiram Johnson

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hiram Johnson.

Wikisource has the text of the 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Johnson, Hiram Warren".

United States Congress. "JOHNSON, Hiram Warren (id: J000140)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.

• Guide to the Hiram Johnson Papers at the Bancroft Library
• Hiram Warren Johnson at Find a Grave