by Jennifer Phipps
Imagine
the difficulties of today trying to organize such disparate groups as
welfare mothers, members of Democratic Party clubs, AFL-affiliated
members, militant radicals, civil rights activists, liberals and labor
unionists. Yet, that is
what two politically-left organizations accomplished in Washington State
during the 1930s and 1940s. The Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF)
and the Washington Pension Union (WPU) were broadly successful political
organizations with tens of thousands of members and a great deal of influence.
For the better part of a decade they mobilized a broad coalition of
progressive Washington State residents into a political caucus that
could at times dominate the state Democratic Party. And they used that
power to re-write laws and social policy. By the end of the 1930s
Washington State had some of the most liberal and comprehensive pension
and welfare policies in the nation.
Members
of the Communist Party played a central role in both the Washington
Commonwealth Federation and the Washington Pension Union. Although
neither had been founded by the Party, by the late 1930s Party members
were in key positions and mostly able to control these mass
organizations with their
broad spectrum of activists and supporters behind initiatives,
candidates, and issues that advocated a diverse reform agenda. The
Party's influential position reflected an important shift in strategy
away from advocacy of immediate revolution towards building
Popular-Front relationships with reformist organizations. Communists
used the Popular-Front strategy after 1935 to broaden the base of the
Party and build left coalitions. That year, the
Comintern declared that the first priority of the Communist
Parties everywhere was stopping the rise of fascism, and the way to do
that was to join with other progressive forces. Paul Buhle and
Dan Georgakas note in the Encyclopedia
of the American Left the implications of the Popular-Front
orientation for the CP: “This
policy entailed a strategic reorientation of major proportions.
The communists would work within non-Left, mass institutions,
including the AFL and labor or labor-farmer parties.”[i]
There was
great opportunity in the strategy, but also tension.
Communists had to consider what it would take to keep these
coalitions and their supporters interested in their issues and then how
to integrate these concerns into Party strategy.
During this time the Communist Party worked very hard to balance
the institutional pull of reformist proposals that would speak to the
broadest number of people with a core ideological belief in the
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
Opponents of WCF and WPU denounced the organizations as
“Communist fronts.” They were said to be nothing more than pawns or
agents following orders of their puppet masters in the Soviet Union.
Detractors used the label “Communist front” or “front
group” with more and more frequency, especially as momentum developed
behind their initiatives. Until
the WCF and WPU dissolved, even dissenters
within PF organizations agreed that Communists were an important
influence on the left wing of the Democratic Party, and sometimes on
public opinion. Perhaps the
greatest source of strength of the PFers as Washington Governor Arthur
Langlie noted, was that they worked “tirelessly for their issues.”
Regardless of how their detractors labeled them, Communists and
Popular Front organizations contributed to the passing of significant
social policy for Washington state residents beginning in the 1930s that
remain with us today.
Washington Commonwealth Federation
Groups
that formed the WCF in 1936 included the Grange, United Producers, the
Liberty Party, Bellamy Clubs, Continental Committee Technocrats,
Democratic Party Clubs, Commonwealth Builders, reformers, liberals,
trade unionists, and Communists Through the late 1930s and 1940s people
known to be members of the Communist Party were WCF-supported candidates
for the Seattle City Council and Washington State Legislature.
Among the Communists elected to office were
Hugh DeLacy, Kathryn Fogg, H.C. Armstrong,
N.P. Atkinson, and Lenus
Westman. Historian Albert Acena, who authored the major study of the
Washington Commonwealth Federation, described the organization as “one
of the most successful political efforts of the Communist Party in the
New Deal Period.”[ii]
The WCF
flourished from 1935 to 1945. It
grew out of an earlier organization, the Commonwealth Builders. The Commonwealth Builders had connections to Upton
Sinclair’s End Poverty in California movement. In 1934 Sinclair ran
for governor in that state on a platform of “production for use.”
That phrase aptly summarizes the program of the Commonwealth
Builders, which promoted the idea that the state should buy the land or
factories that had gone bankrupt and utilize the acquisitions to employ
able-bodied people now out of work.
In 1934 the Commonwealth Builders managed to elect a block of new
legislators pledged to embrace liberal and progressive causes.
In 1935
the Commonwealth Builders enlarged its reach by renaming itself the
Commonwealth Federation. The
new Federation aimed to broaden its base through affiliation with other
progressive groups, with one exception:
it continued to exclude Communists.
Despite their formal exclusion, CP activists demanded admission.
They envisioned the WCF as a crucial component of what might
evolve at some point in the future into a genuinely revolutionary
movement. In 1936, members
of the Communist Party went to the WCF convention as uninvited guests.
Over time, individual Communists won acceptance by volunteering
time and services to advance WCF causes. Communists frequently chaired
committees, ran for office, and eventually even assumed WCF leadership
positions.
Like its
predecessor, the WCF was a political organization that functioned inside
the Democratic Party, nominating left-wing Democrats for office. One of
the organization’s key assets was its weekly newspaper which changed
names repeatedly over the course of several years. Starting as the Commonwealth
Builder, it became the Commonwealth News in 1935, the Sunday
News in 1936, the Washington New Dealer in 1940, and the New
World in 1943. Party members Howard Costigan and Terry
Pettus edited the WCF
newspapers from 1936 until the New World folded in 1948.
The WCF
Preamble and Platform adopted on November 26, 1938, at the State
Convention, reflected the organization’s perspective on the economic
and social issues of the day, but was framed in terms that a broad
majority of people could relate to through reference to world events.
The Preamble begins:
The people of the United States have a proud heritage of
democracy and an undying hope for social justice and economic well-being.
Today powerful and sinister forces living by special privilege threaten
this American heritage. Enemies
of democracy within are linked in spirit and program with fascist allies abroad who are waging aggressive wars
against all democracies and threatening the peace of the world.
It ends:
Our state of Washington has yet to carry
out on a state scale the spirit and principles of the national New Deal program.
The work already done needs to be improved and the problems yet untouched, solved, if we are
to make our democracy continue to live and work. [iii]
The WCF’s diverse reform
proposals encompassed measures that were both broad and tangible,
including Social Security, public ownership policies (natural resources,
public utilities and natural monopolies and public control of national
credit), labor rights, farm policies, public housing, public health,
consumer protection, the needs of independent business, education,
youth, progressive taxation, and international relations (an endorsement
of the New Deal’s “Good Neighbor” policy toward Latin America).
Once
accepted as WCF members, the Communists embraced the Commonwealth
Federation program while still managing to rhetorically criticize the
apparent failures of the capitalist economic system.
At one point the WCF even proposed a very radical “Production
for Use” bill in the Washington Legislature.
When the Legislature failed to pass the bill, WCF activists
gathered enough signatures to place the measure on the 1936 General
Election ballot as Initiative 119.
Many historians argue that the defeat of the “Production for
Use” initiative signifies the final effort by Communists in the WCF to
enact genuinely radical proposals. Henceforth, CP-sponsored efforts were
limited to more modest proposals—all of which had reform of the
current system as their focus, including pensions, a graduated state
income tax, public power, benefits for the unemployed, and public health
issues.
Public
health became a vehicle for the WCF to appeal to the general public and
build support. The
Washington Commonwealth Federation newspapers devoted considerable space
to health and nutrition. For
example, an article entitled “Diet Given for Family of Five”
delineates exactly what constituted an adequate diet for families with a
minimal amount of money to spend on food and even specified precise
servings of milk, fruits, vegetables, breads, fats, sugars, and meats.[iv]
Other
techniques of public-health education were employed by WCF leader and
secret Party member Hugh DeLacy, who organized meetings around
public-health issues while a member of the Seattle City Council.
His remarks in a health-related meeting in September 1939 closely
echoed a recent U.S. Public Health Service Milk Sanitation Survey.
The statistics he sent to the President of the Parent Teachers
Association indicated his close connection with important New Deal
officials: the United
States Public Health Service rated Seattle’s milk supply at 74% for
raw milk, 55.8% for pasteurized milk,
and 55% for pasteurizing plants.
He noted the USPHS regarded 90% to be the standard under which
consumers could feel reasonably well protected.
Even
though the WCF concentrated primarily on reformist ideas and proposals
after 1936, its effect on politics in Washington State should not be
underestimated. The legacy
of the WCF can be found in several different outcomes.
The first of these is the remarkable fact that Washington voters
elected Communist popular-front members (running as Democrats) to the
state legislature. In their
role as representatives, Communists constituted a clearly identifiable
segment on the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Through such a solid institutional base they functioned as a very
strong and visible political pressure group.
The WCF also promoted racial justice, highlighting the case of
The Scottsboro Boys. The
only exception to what was generally a progressive influence in the
state was the unfortunate stand of both WCF and Communist Party in
advocating the relocation of the Japanese-Americans residents of
Washington to internment camps during the Second World War.
Washington Pension Union
The
Washington Pension Union was an outgrowth of the WCF. Founded in 1937 by
Howard Costigan and other WCF activists, it outlasted the parent
organization which folded in 1945. But well before then the WPU had
become the most important Popular Front organization
in the state. One of
a number of organizations that sprang up to represent the interests of
senior citizens after
the Social Security Act passed in 1935, the WPU was different from the
Townsend clubs and most others in trying to create an actual union to
fight for improved pensions. The
WPU also advocated a number of other social policy issues in addition to
Old Age Pensions, seeking to raise public awareness on general
assistance grants and aid-to-dependent children program.
Historian Margaret Miller’s,
The Left’s Turn: Labor, Welfare, Politics and Social
Movements in Washington State is the best source on the WPU.[v]
Groups
that formed the WPU included Aid-to-Dependent-Children mothers, labor
unionists, timber workers, civil rights activists, pensioners, peace
activists, and Communists. By
the late 1930s the WPU claimed to have a membership in excess of 30,000,
probably an exaggeration. But in the 1940s it was powerful enough to win
some very important electoral victories including initiative measures
that liberalized state pension programs. It also helped elected
Communists to political office, including William Pennock, Emma Taylor,
and Tom Rabbit.
The WPU
Resolution on Old Age Pensions, in part, at least, inspired by popular-
front Communists, roused those on the liberal left as well as the
general public with its inspiring language.
The Resolution began:
The present paradox of a paltry old age pittance is being
reluctantly administered to the aged people of this state by a heartless
administration even though unbiased pools of the voters of the state show a
majority of our citizens favor a more adequate old age pension of $60 a month
for every one over 60 in need in this state.[vi]
Older workers in
the 1930s were frequently the first to be fired, the last to be hired.
There is no question but that they were the most vulnerable
population during the Great Depression.
From 1920 to 1930 Washington State had the fastest growing
elderly population in the nation. Pensions seemed to be a natural issue for popular-front
organizing efforts as the need to begin paying them seemed to be
universally accepted even among white collar and educated Americans.
The
Constitution of the WPU sometimes reflected the strident rhetoric of the
time, evoking nationalist sentiment for the war against the Fascists.
In this regard the WPU preamble declared:
We, the members of the Washington Pension Union, subscribe to
the following
propositions:
1.
Victory in our just, Peoples’ War against the Hitlerite Barbarians is the only guarantee of freedom from wants
and other freedoms.
2. Victory
can be won only by the mobilization of the entire
human resources of our country.
To this end a war-time pension program must provide for the maximum participation of all senior citizens
in the offensive on the home front.
3.
To win victory and insure a just and lasting
peace, we must fight on all fronts.[vii]
The WPU
adopted an organizational structure like that of a union or political
party, composed of locals, county councils, a state board and an
executive committee. Strategically,
the WPU used ties to the Democratic Party and organized labor to
advocate for social welfare policies. As WPU members, Communists became
active in Democratic Party precinct and district committees.
They sought to use the legal system and state government to
discredit Republican administrations and to enact progressive reform.
This was demonstrated especially in the 1940s when they built
support for political candidacies, largely in the Democratic Party, and
used initiative campaigns to liberalize public assistance.
Communists used the initiative process not only to set state
policy, but also to educate and involve voters.[viii]
In the
1940s the WPU gained momentum at least partially due to the optimism and
energy of William Pennock, and soon surpassed WCF membership totals.
This may have been due to the popularity of pensions and active
support for the war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
Popular-front politics at this time meant diversifying
constituencies to include African Americans and women, although the WPU
was not considered inherently egalitarian.
The Union was, however, flexible enough to accommodate female
activists.[ix]
The work
of the WPU led to reform and social policy unprecedented for its time.
By 1949 Washington State claimed the third-highest Old Age
Assistance grants in the nation, the second-highest General Assistance,
and the highest payments for Aid to Dependent Children,
The Pension Union’s measures also received two-to-three times
the number of required signatures to get on the ballot, and once on the
ballot earned hundreds of thousands of votes.
In a very practical way, then, WPU’s ideas and strategies spoke
to people in this state. Perhaps
most important of all, for left and liberal activists, the WPU
functioned as a stepping-stone for the politically ambitious.
Conclusion
Through
the WCF and WPU the Communists used the popular-front strategy to
challenge, and, in some instances, reform and soften some of the
harshest aspects of the economic system.
Communists sought to organize large coalitions of people from the
liberal left who also challenged the system during the Great Depression.
They employed the political process in a multi-faceted strategy
to advocate reforms that included seeking elective office, circulating
petitions for the initiative process, holding both elective and
appointed positions in the Democratic Party, and working closely with
organized labor. The
inherent tension in this strategy for both organizations was that the
more the Communists reached out to liberals and reformers, the more
reformist their program became. Nowhere
could this be seen more clearly than in the WPU. In 1935 the Communists repudiated the Social Security
Act, denouncing it as a liberal reform.
Yet this “reformist palliative” soon became the staging area
for the popular-front reform politics of the late 1930s and 1940s.
©
copyright Jennifer Phipps 2002
Next:
Race
and Civil Rights: The '30s & '40s
Notes:
[i]Mari
Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas, eds., Encyclopedia
of the American Left (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 147.
[ii]Albert
Acena, The Washington
Commonwealth Federation: Reform Politics and the Popular Front
(Seattle: University of Washington
Dissertation, 1975), iv
[iii]Robert
Burke Papers, Accession 2948, University of Washington Special
Collections.
[iv]Commonwealth
Builder, 8 December
1934. Microfilm A4102, University of Washington Library.
[v]Margaret
Miller, The Left’s Turn:
Labor, Welfare, Politics and Social Movements in Washington State,1937-1973.
(Seattle: University of Washington Ph.D. Thesis, 2000)
[vi]Robert
Burke Papers.
