Frank Merriam | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Merriam in the 1930s | |
| 28th Governor of California | |
| In office June 2, 1934 – January 2, 1939 | |
| Lieutenant | George J. Hatfield |
| Preceded by | James Rolph |
| Succeeded by | Culbert Olson |
| 31stLieutenant Governor of California | |
| In office January 5, 1931 – June 2, 1934 | |
| Governor | James Rolph |
| Preceded by | H. L. Carnahan |
| Succeeded by | George J. Hatfield |
| Member of theCalifornia State Senate from the33rd district | |
| In office January 7, 1929 – January 6, 1931 | |
| Preceded by | Cadet Taylor |
| Succeeded by | Ralph H. Clock |
| 41stSpeaker of the California State Assembly | |
| In office January 1923 – October 1926 | |
| Preceded by | Henry W. Wright |
| Succeeded by | Edgar C. Levey |
| Member of theCalifornia State Assembly from the70th district | |
| In office January 8, 1917 – January 3, 1927 | |
| Preceded by | Joseph A. Rominger |
| Succeeded by | Morgan Keaton |
| 17thState Auditor of Iowa | |
| In office 1899–1903 | |
| Governor | L. M. Shaw Albert B. Cummins |
| Preceded by | Cornelius G. McCarthy |
| Succeeded by | Beryl F. Carroll |
| Member of theIowa House of Representatives from the68th district | |
| In office 1896–1898 | |
| Preceded by | D. H. Young |
| Succeeded by | Bion A. Baker |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Frank Finley Merriam (1865-12-22)December 22, 1865 Hopkinton, Iowa, U.S. |
| Died | April 25, 1955(1955-04-25) (aged 89) Long Beach, California, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Elnora Hitchcock (m. 1889; divorced) |
| Education | Lenox College |
| Profession | Journalist,politician |
Frank Finley Merriam (December 22, 1865 – April 25, 1955) was an AmericanRepublican politician who served as the 28thgovernor of California from June 2, 1934, until January 2, 1939. Assuming the governorship at the height of theGreat Depression following the death of GovernorJames Rolph, Merriam defeatedDemocratic nomineeUpton Sinclair in the1934 election. Merriam also served as theState Auditor of Iowa from 1900 to 1903, and served in both theIowa andCalifornia state legislatures.
Merriam was born in 1865 inHopkinton, Iowa, the eldest of 11 children. In 1861, his father Henry C. Merriam and uncle Charles E. Merriam enlisted in Company K, 12th Iowa Infantry. Both were captured at theBattle of Shiloh, held as prisoners of war atLibby Prison, and returned to Iowa.
After graduating fromLenox College at Hopkinton in 1888, Merriam served as the principal of the Hopkinton schools for two years and superintendent of schools atPostville for one year. He was a school superintendent inWisner, Nebraska.[1] He next became the editor of theHopkinton Leader, a newspaper.
In 1904, he moved to Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he owned and published theMuskogee Evening Times. He moved toLong Beach, California in 1910 with his second wife, Nellie, to attend to family obligations.[2][3] There he worked in the advertising department of theLong Beach Press.[4]
Merriam was elected to theIowa House of Representatives as a Republican at the age of 31 in 1896.[5] Two years later, Merriam was elected asIowa State Auditor, a post he would hold until 1903.[6] In 1910 at the age of 44, Merriam moved toCalifornia. Following seven years of living in the state, Merriam was elected to theCalifornia State Assembly in 1916, representing the Long Beach area, beginning his rise in California politics.
In 1922, while still serving in the Assembly, Merriam presided over the successful election campaign of formerBull Moose member and Republican candidate for governorFriend Richardson. Name recognition from Richardson's successful campaign among fellow Republicans helped Merriam be elected by the Republican majority in the Assembly as itsSpeaker in 1923. During the 1926 general elections, Speaker Merriam ran as a primary candidate forlieutenant governor. However, state Republicans instead voted forBuron Fitts as the party's candidate for that office.
Following his departure from the Assembly that year, Merriam took a two-year hiatus from state politics. He returned in the 1928 elections after he was elected to theCalifornia State Senate. After two years in that body, Merriam won the nomination for lieutenant governor and, along with the Republican candidate for governor,San Francisco Mayor James Rolph, was elected to office in the1930 elections.[7][8]
On June 2, 1934, Governor Rolph was pronounced dead ofheart failure at Riverside Farm inSanta Clara County. Upon the news of the Governor's death, Lieutenant Governor Merriam was sworn in as governor.
Nearly immediately after assuming the governorship, Merriam faced labor agitation, particularly by members of theInternational Longshoremen's Association on the docks ofSan Francisco. Beginning in May 1934, longshoremen along theWest Coast walked off the job to strike, protesting against the ILA national leadership's negotiated settlements with transportation and cargo companies. Longshoremen demanded six-hour days,closed shops, and the right to unionize freely. Activity in theports of San Francisco andOakland ground to a halt.Teamsters soon joined the longshoremen in their walk-out. Popular support for the strikers also grew from various segments of the urban working-class, left unemployed by theGreat Depression. By the strike's second month, violence had begun to break out along theEmbarcadero asSan Francisco Police clashed with the strikers during attempts to escort hired labor to the docks. Municipal officials accused the ILA's ranks filled withCommunists and otherleft-wing radicals.
As governor, James Rolph had consulted with other West Coast governors such asJulius L. Meier ofOregon andClarence D. Martin ofWashington to bring in theU.S. Department of Labor in order to settle the dispute. After his unexpected death in June, these efforts were suspended. Furthermore, negotiations between thefederal government and local ILA organizers failed to yield any agreement.
On July 5, 1934, as more attempts to open thePort of San Francisco were made by employers, hostilities between strikers, their sympathizers, and the police reached their zenith. Later known as "Bloody Thursday", San Francisco Police shottear gas at strikers and sympathizers onRincon Hill, followed by a charge on horseback. Later, protestors surrounded a police car and attempted to overturn it, but were met by gunshots in the air, and quickly afterwards, shots into the crowd itself. Later in the day, police raided an ILA union hall, shooting tear gas into the building and into other local hotels.
Merriam, only governor for a month, threw the state government into the fray. As reports of growing violence in San Francisco reachedSacramento by the minute, Merriam activated theCalifornia Army National Guard, deploying regiments to San Francisco's waterfront. In the weeks before "Bloody Thursday", Merriam had remained updated on the ongoing labor dispute, threatening only to activate the Guard if the situation grew too serious. Behind the public scenes, however, the Governor had confided to fellow Republicans that ordering the Guard into San Francisco would ruin him politically.[9] The events of July 5, however, proved to be a turning point. In addition to the Guard's deployment, federal troops of theU.S. Army were placed on stand-by in thePresidio if the situation grew beyond the Guard's control.
Merriam also ordered the halt of construction on theSan Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge until the violence in San Francisco subsided.
Within the day, 1,500 Guardsmen armed with fixedbayonets andmachine guns patrolled the waterfront, with an additional 5,000 state troops on reserve. Explaining to theUnited Press the following day, Merriam placed full blame of "Bloody Thursday" on the politicalLeft. "The leaders of the striking longshoremen are not free from Communist and subversive influences...There will be no turning back from the position I have taken in this matter."[10]
Following the funerals of the two men slain on "Bloody Thursday", the San Francisco Labor Council voted for ageneral strike. For four days from July 16 to July 19, the activity in the city ground to a halt. MayorAngelo J. Rossi requested more Guardsman in the city, and in meetings with generals, plans were drawn to imposemartial law over the entire city. However, with a heavily armed National Guard presence along the waterfront, violence did not break out again. In the meantime, the police, now backed up by National Guardsmen, raided and arrested militant and radical offices of theInternational Longshoremen's Association (ILA) leaders and sympathizers. By July 19, the General Strike Committee and the Labor Council ordered an end to the strike, demanding its picketers to acceptarbitration from the federal government. With the strike broken by its less militant leadership, longshoremen grudgingly returned to work.
Less than three years later, Governor Merriam was called upon to intervene in another labor dispute, theStockton Cannery Strike of 1937 in which one person died and 50 injured. Merriam refused to call up the National Guard this time, but did play a significant role in mediating between the two sides after the violence to get the canneries open and save the $6 million spinach crop.[11]
In the aftermath of the Longshore Strike, Merriam was highly praised by the conservative San Francisco press for his perceived victory over the strikers. During the strike, state Republicans nominated the Governor to run for a full term in the general election that November. Merriam, however, had threatened not to deploy theCalifornia National Guard to San Francisco if the party would not nominate him.[12]
Running against Merriam in the 1934 elections was formerSocialist Party memberUpton Sinclair, who had surprisingly won the nomination of theDemocratic Party for governor. A third-party candidate,Raymond L. Haight of theCommonwealth-Progressive Party, also challenged Merriam.
During the campaign, Sinclair promoted theEPIC project, asocialist work program to ensure universal employment for all Californians, complete with the state control of factories, the opening of farmcooperatives and the creation of acabinet-level California Authority for Production agency to oversee state employment.
The Commonwealth Party's Haight relied on centrists from the Democrats who believed that Sinclair had driven the party too far to the left.
Merriam's campaign rallied state conservatives into the so-called "Stop Sinclair" movement. Among supporters wereMGM studio headLouis B. Mayer, media tycoonWilliam Randolph Hearst, andLos Angeles Times publisherHarry Chandler. During the campaign, Mayer turned multiple studio lots inLos Angeles into propaganda machines, churning out fake newsreels to be played before feature-length films in the state. One notable newsreel includedSoviets arriving in California to vote for Sinclair.[13] Also during the campaign, Merriam frequentedfootball games and public events, and on one occasion, attended a hospital talking to deaf mutes through an interpreter. Many such events were quickly publicized by the conservative press.[9]
The result of the 1934 general election saw Merriam defeating Sinclair by 259,083 votes receiving 49% of the vote to Sinclair's 38%. Haight garnered 13%.[14] After the election, Merriam announced that the result was "[a] rebuke to socialism and communism."[15]
The 1934 general election is generally remembered as one of the most hotly contested elections in California history. It has also been cited by political historians as one of the first modern elections, due to the various uses of popular media and rhetoric to both popularize and demonize candidates.
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Upon beginning his full term, Merriam immediately faced an ever-shrinking state budget and growing deficit. In an effort that later angered many powerful conservative backers who had originally supported his 1934 candidacy, as well as challenging his own deep-seated conservatism, Merriam proposed to theLegislature a tax increase of nearly $107 million. The tax reform laws included instituting a statepersonal income tax modeled after theFederal Income Tax of 1934, which had been created by the Democratic-controlledCongress, and raisingsales taxes to 3%. The Legislature agreed and passed the tax reform law in 1935.[16] William Randolph Hearst, whose newspapers provided one of the bulwarks of the governor's 1934 campaign, complained bitterly over the reformed tax laws. The Hearst-ownedSan Francisco Examiner's editorial shortly after the reform bills' passage read: "extortionate and confiscatory taxation will mean ... devastation of business, paralysis of industry."[12]
Fanning the growing rift between Merriam and conservative Republicans,right-wing author and playwrightCharles Gilman Norris penned letters that became widely circulated thanks to Hearst's newspaper empire, complaining of Merriam's reforms. "The minute the proposed State Income Tax becomes law, my wife,Kathleen Norris, and myself will put both our homes — the one inPalo Alto and our ranch nearSaratoga — up for sale and move out of the State. There is no alternative for us. We pay 52% of our income now to theFederal Government atWashington and under the proposed State Income Tax Law, we shall have to pay an additional 18%, so that out of every dollar we earn from our writings, 70¢ will go out in taxes!"[12] Hearst supporters challenged Merriam's and the Legislature's 1935 reform laws in a special referendum in 1936 with Proposition 2. The proposition would automatically repeal the tax reforms and would in the future require the support of two-thirds of the Legislature and approval of voters by statewide referendum before any newincome tax could be imposed. The measure, however, was defeated.[17] While theState Senate was controlled by Republicans, the cruciallower houseAssembly, where finance bills originated, was split between conservative and socialist-leaning Democrats. Merriam proceeded with appeasing the closely divided Legislature by praising the federalTownsend Plan, while complaining to conservatives and othercapitalist supporters that he was surrounded by fanatics.[12]
By the 1938 general election, Merriam had lost much support from the right due to the tax reform laws and support forSocial Security, while he garnered little support or sympathy from the left due to his troubled relationship withlabor unions and the squelching of the Longshore Strike. In the primaries, the Democratic Party nominated State SenatorCulbert Olson, a formerEPIC and Upton Sinclair supporter as well as an unabashed supporter of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt'sNew Deal. Republicans, meanwhile, renominated Merriam for a second full term.
Merriam lost to Olson by 220,715 votes, ending the Democratic isolation from the governorship that had lasted for forty years beginning with the election of GovernorHenry Gage.
Merriam resided in theBluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California.[18]
After his defeat, Merriam retired from public life. In 1941 he joined the California Society of theSons of the American Revolution. Following the death of former Governor and U.S. SenatorHiram Johnson in 1945, a brief write-in campaign for Merriam appeared, though it only garnered 500 votes. He died at home in Long Beach of a heart attack, at age 89, on April 25, 1955.[19]
| California Assembly | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of theCalifornia State Assembly from the70th district 1917–1927 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | State Auditor of Iowa 1899–1903 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Speaker of the California State Assembly 1923-1926 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Lieutenant Governor of California 1931–1934 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Governor of California 1934–1939 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Republican nominee forGovernor of California 1934,1938 | Succeeded by |
| Under Spain (1769–1822) |  | |
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| Under Mexico (1822–1846) | ||
| Under U.S. military (1846–1850) | ||
| U.S. state (since 1850) | ||
| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
