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Great Plains Quarterly
Great Plains Studies, Center for
Fall 2012
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS, HENRY WALLACE
AND "GIDEON'S ARMY," AND THE
PROGRESSIVE PARTY IN MONTANA,
1937-1952
Hugh T. Lovin
University of Washington
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MONTANA, 1937-1952" (2012). Great Plains Quarterly. 2820.
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NEW DEAL LEFTISTS, HENRY WALLACE
AND "GIDEON'S ARMY," AND THE PROGRESSIVE
PARTY IN MONTANA, 1937-1952
HUGH T. LOVIN
Many forces occupied America's sociopolitical terrain to the left of New Dealers who
dominated U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's
administration of the 1930s. Some fastened
themselves temporarily to the New Dealers'
coattails. Ideologically motivated, others touted
their special panaceas for ending the Great
Depression that had begun in 1929, and certain
of the mainstream Democratic Party's expatriates added to this cacophony by pursuing
their own agendas. Comprised principally of
the Democratic Party's out-of-power people,
another group wanted to restore Roosevelt's
reforming to its 1933-34 height, change the
federal government's thrust to the leftward
in. certain particulars, and impose New Dealstyle reform programs in states where the
Democratic Party's conservative wing had
gained the upper hand.
Subscribing to the last proposals, self-defined
New. Deal Leftists in Montana, a group whose
members often labeled themselves as "progressives," in part because they traced their political identities to the Bull Moosers' Progressive
movement in 1912, judged themselves as
Roosevelt's only truly committed followers in
the state. But they wanted more social change
than Roosevelt's forces had accomplished and
in 1937 broke away from the more conservative
Democratic Party majority in Montana. It was
a divorce between sides that had tired of their
togetherness. l Then these Leftists reasserted
numerous New Deal principles but sought to
expand the scope of existing New Deal programs, tried to elect like-minded Montanans
to public offices in 1938-48, and generally supported Montana liberalism in 1947-52. It was a
fight that the Leftists lost.
But even in failure, the Leftists' course was
remarkable. They supplied another yardstick
with which to measure the dimensions of the
Key Words: Communism, Democratic Party, Harry
Truman, Korean War
Hugh T. Lovin, a PhD graduate of the University of
Washington (1963), is professor emeritus of history
at Boise State University. He has also taught at the
University of Alaska, and at what was then known as
Kearney State College in Nebraska. He is the editor
of Labor and the West, an anthology published by
Sunflower University Press (Manhattan, KS), and his
work has appeared in many different historical journals.
[GPQ 32 (Fall 2012): 273-86)
273
274 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
many realignments within the Democratic
Party that happened after 1932. A scholar
labeled these readjustments "Aftershocks of the
New Deal Earthquake."z Such realignments
continued to happen. The most dramatic
incidents included Dixiecrats migrating to the
Republican Party in the 1940s to the 1970s and
Green Party members to the Democrats after
the 2000 elections. 3 Meanwhile, among groups
that rebelled earlier against the Democratic
Party in the wake of Roosevelt's New Deal.
of the 1930s, Montana's New Deal Leftists
believed so strongly in their principles that
they bolted from their old party instead of
muddling through within the Democratic
Party's reigning coalition. 4 Moreover, these
Montanans acted independently in a state
where their political realignment seemingly
had reasonable prospects for enduring. There,
Montanans' old-time flirtations with radicals
had left behind a residue of nineteenth-century
Populist and early twentieth-century Socialist
thinking as well as living remnants of a strong
Nonpartisan League movement of farmers
which made an appreciable showing in the
1920s despite conservative efforts to suppress
it. And in the northeastern sector of the state,
Communist ideas and certain practices flourished briefly in the 1930s in Sheridan County
and attracted sympathizers in neighboring
Daniels and Dawson Counties. 5 Nonetheless,
complex historical time-and-place conditions
precluded Montana's New Deal Leftists from
succeeding either in making their political
realignment permanent or, along the way,
becoming the main architects of the sociopolitical order they envisioned.
Furthermore, Montana's New Deal Leftists,
even though they failed in the end, contributed
a significant chapter in the historical annals of
movements in the 1930s and 1940s by plainspeople who were especially dissatisfied with
the achievements of Roosevelt, his national
administration, and Little New Deal forces in
certain states. As in Montana, these dissidents
threatened to disrupt conventional political
life, and their dissonance received considerable
nurture from a political milieu that seemingly
gave them a fighting chance to prevail. Even
more than in Montana, a rich and dissenting
Populist heritage from the nineteenth century
remained intact, as in Kansas, Nebraska, and
the Dakotas. In several Plains states, Socialist
ideas thrived among these anti-New Deal
critics, and they proposed modifications to
mainline New Dealers' programs that they
judged economically too weak and socially
constrained by middle-of-the-road conventionality. More important, as in Montana, the
ranks of these activists in the Plains included
many survivors of Arthur Townley's earlier
Nonpartisan League movement, especially in
the Dakotas, who helped to promulgate and
struggle for left-of-the-New-Deal measures. 6
They, too, constituted a lively component of socalled aftershocks of the New Deal earthquake.
Scholars have written at length about only a
number of these developments outside Montana.
Among the more dramatic examples of such
Plains dissent, Milo Reno's Farmers' Holiday
Association spread from Iowa to Plains farmers who liked the association's ideologies and
radical direct action practices. Sometimes with
Communist intervention, these farmers participated in incidents such as ones at Loup City,
Nebraska, and Sisseton, South Dakota, in 1934,
that had disturbing sociopolitical implications'?
Different radical activists helped to convince
12,487 electors in Nebraska and 36,708 in
North Dakota to vote for William Lemke, the
Union Party opponent of Roosevelt in the 1936
elections. Meanwhile, other elements called for
drastic changes and received a hearing in the
Plains states for their scheme to create a farmerlabor party that would implement productionfor-use economics in the nation. The latter
became a force in South Dakota politics and
generated considerable interest in successful
farmer-labor party activity in Minnesota. 8
In the following pages, this narrative
focuses on New Deal Leftists in Montana
who, like other discontented plainspeople,
attempted to establish better conditions for
Americans. The Montanans' journey began
in 1937; their political aspirations were largely
frustrated in the ensuing decade. In 1947,
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
through a political marriage of convenience
for both sides, the Montana leftists joined
Henry Wallace's national third-party movemenr, and the leftist-controlled Montana
Progressive Party emerged from these nuptials. After 1947, though the Montana party
encountered numerous tribulations, it survived but prospered little until explosive disputes over Korean War issues and election-day
setbacks destroyed it early in the 1950s.
A BLEAK FiRST DECADE FOR MONTANA
LEFTISTS
After breaking away from the Montana
Democratic Party conservatives in 1937, these
New Deal Leftists created the Montana Council
for Progressive Political Action (MCPPA),
and through it, tried to impose their agenda
in state and federal circlesY Subsequently, the
MCPPA movement expanded, and by the end
of 1940 its largely middle-class founders had
lost part of their influence to like-minded but
politically more left-of-center agrarians and
labor unionists. The newly dominant components included agrarian representatives of the
Farmers' Educational and Cooperative Union
(Farmers Union for short), which was organized in 1902 and whose strength was rooted
in the prairie counties of eastern Montana; a
few leaders of American Federation of Labor
(AFL) locals; and industrial unionists of the
newly established Committee for Industrial
Organization (CIO). The latter belonged
mainly to one CIO affiliate, the International
Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers
Union and its locals at Butte, Anaconda, East
Helena, and Great Falls.1O After 1940, Farmers
Union representatives controlled the MCPPA
by selecting a majority of the organization's central committee, supplying most of its funding,
and providing nearly all of the financing when
the Farmers Union and several labor groups
launched a weekly newspaper, the People's Voice.
Herman "Cap" Bruce, often a spokesman
for Farmers Union interests, edited the People's
Voice until 1948, when a controversial figure,
Harry Billings, followed Bruce. Enemies of
275
the Voice even accused Billings of holding
pro-Communist ideas, and a columnist at the
University of Montana's student newspaper
alleged that Billings provided a forum to "any
crackpot, poolroom pink who feels like blowing off a little steam."ll The Voice, which was
published at Helena until 1969, remained the
MCPPA's main editorial voice. A few weeklies
admired the MCPPA, and Hamilton newspaper publisher Miles Romney transformed his
weekly into a MCPPA mouthpiece.
In common with aggrieved farm and labor
groups in different locales, MCPPA Leftists
criticized Roosevelt's federal administration
and Democratic majorities in Congress. They
denounced the Democrat-controlled regimes
in Montana's state government in 1938-46.
For instance, they faulted Democrats in power
for not compelling industrialists to bargain collectively with their workers despite new federal
laws such as the Wagner Act of 1935; they
deplored resistance from the same Democrats
to their demands for government-guaranteed
"cost of production" pricing of agricultural
products; and they lamented that Democrats in
power failed to mandate more generous hours,
wages, and social benefits for wage earners, the
aged, and handicapped people. The Leftists proposed local reforms including more restrictions
on gambling and fewer state controls on wildlife.
Also, MCPPA Leftists charged, Democrats in
Montana had created political machines that
corrupted the state's government.J2
Active in state politics starting in 1938 and
claiming to speak for all Montana "liberals and
progressives," the MCPPA engaged in political
action to correct the ills that it deplored. It
helped U.S. Senator James Murray, a conspicuous liberal in Congress, to stay in office during
the next eight years. 13 Otherwise, the MCPPA
usually boosted in vain when it biennially
endorsed sympathetic Democrats for state and
congressional offices. Even the MCPPA's favorite choices, Jerry O'Connell and Leif Erickson,
repeatedly lost in elections. Despite MCPPA
support, O'Connell failed, in 1940 and 1942,
to regain the U.S. congressional seat that he
could not retain in 1938. Erickson, sometime
© 2012 Center far Great Plains Studies, University afNebraska-Lincaln
276 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
Sidney lawyer and a sitting Montana Supreme
Court jurist, polled 89,224 votes but failed in the
contest for governor of Montana in 1944. Then
Erickson prevailed over veteran U.S. Senator
Burton Wheeler in the 1946 Democratic primary. However, despite strong support from
the MCPPA, which had assailed Wheeler in
the past for his many disputes with Roosevelt,
Erickson succumbed in the general election to a
conservative Republican, Zales Ecton.14
HENRY WALLACE'S PROGRESSIVES
Despite little success, the MCPPA group
persevered until it could seize what it deemed
better political openings. Its wait ended shortly.
On September 26, 1946, U.S. Secretary of
Commerce and former u.S. Vice President
Henry Wallace criticized President Harry
Truman on grounds that Truman's foreign
policies could provoke a war with the Soviet
Union. Retorting privately, Truman labeled
Wallace "a pacifist one hundred percent."
Wallace also aired numerous reservations
about Truman's domestic policies, especially
those that had neither ended social and racial
discrimination nor effected social justice for
legions of other less privileged Americans.
In reply, Truman expelled Wallace from his
cabinet, and Wallace replied by renewing his
attacks, thus raising speculation that Wallace
might become the Democratic Party's U.S.
presidential nominee in 1948. 15
Tired of inhabiting a political wilderness since 1937, MCPPA people sensed many
opportunities for them to exploit by attaching
the MCPPA apparatus to Wallace's movement,
and Wallace's allies piqued the Montanans'
interest. Nationally, Wallace's supporters
organized the Progressive Citizens of America
(PCA) to boost for Wallace's cause, and
Montana Farmers Union leaders were among
the first to endorse the new organization.
Then, partly on account of Farmers Union
influence, the MCPPA had metamorphosed
into the PCA's voice in Montana by the end
of 1947, and its chapters at Butte and several
other towns organized Wallace for President
clubs.'6 Here, like in the old MCPPA, Farmers
Union agrarians positioned themselves at the
forefront and ensured that Chester Kinsey, the
Montana PCA's first secretary, led the Wallace
for President movement in Montana. Former
manager of a cooperative organization in eastern Montana and a Farmers Union organizer,
Kinsey finally became the Montana Progressive
Party's state secretary when it was created several months later. Subsequently, most of the
Montana Farmers Union leadership continued
to boost for Wallace even though James Patton,
national president of the Farmers Union organization, later campaigned for Truman in the
1948 national elections and insisted that the
Montana Farmers Union not officially endorse
Wallace's U.S. presidential candidacy in 1948.'7
In short, the MCPPA forces had been
finessed into Wallace's camp to their own
liking. For the most part, these Montana
Leftists had acted on the premise that Wallace
sought the Democratic Party's U.S. presidential
nomination. But Wallace was persuaded, late
in 1947, to lead an independent Progressive
Party and run for the United States presidency on this third party's ticket.'8 Many of
his neW Montana allies disliked this choice,
and Romney-an old MCPPA supporter and
the (Hamilton) Western News publisher-predicted that nationally "labor leaders and liberals" would not "stand up and be counted" for
Wallace and his new party over the 10nghaul.'9
Nonetheless, most of Wallace's new Montana
followers stuck by him. In supporting Wallace,
they ignored the weakening of his movement
in 1948 on account of considerable Communist
influence in his camp. Communists could
be members of the new Progressive Party;
Progressives like C. B. "Beanie" Baldwin, who
was deemed "close" to the Communist Party,
managed Wallace's presidential campaign;
and Wallace reportedly eyed some of these
same controversial Leftists, among them
Harry Dexter White, for posts in his U.S.
presidential administration. Consequently,
many of Wallace's early liberal supporters, now
offended by Communist machinations in the
Progressive Party, established the Americans
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
fot Democratic Action and several similar
organizations to oppose Wallace. 2o
When this anti-Communist resistance to
Wallace intensified, most of the MCPPA crowd
renewed their support for him. Having antecedents in radical rural agrarian and urban labor
circles likely influenced some to make this
choice. Others judged Wallace's Progressive
Party to be suitable political machinery for
them over the long term. Meanwhile, different MCPPA activists argued that Wallace
deserved strong support because he proposed
many of the social betterment measures that
the MCPPA had called for since 1937. Others
believed a theory that Wallace's third party
might evolve into a liberal-labor coalition that
could replace the Democratic Party at federal,
state, and local levels. 21 Consequently, just a
handful of MCPPA activists deserted, most
of them going to Americans for Democratic
Action, which charged that "Communist dominated [labor] unions" and "Communist apologists" controlled the new Progressive Party.22
Wallace's so-called Gideon's Army thus
passed its first tests in Montana, whereupon
his partisans circulated nominating petitions
by which Montana laws allowed third parties
to place their nominees on the state's election
ballot. However, Kinsey negated this work by
selecting another procedure that Montana
laws permitted-naming Wallace and his
vice presidential running mate, U.S. Senator
Glen Taylor, at a nominating convention.
On June 26, 1948, such a convention was
held at Helena, and the Montana Progressive
Party was launched. But by not following, in
June, certain procedures that Montana laws
prescribed, it was necessary for Wallace and
Taylor to be selected again, this time at a party
conclave on September 4, 1948. 23
With the Wallace-Taylor ticket safely on the
Montana ballot, Gideon's Army recruited new
followers statewide. Principally a handful of
Mine-Mill labor unionists, certain radicals, and
reform-minded professionals were added. For
example, Henry Maury-a Helena attorney,
former Socialist activist, courtroom attorney
for numerous radicals, and lately a convert
277
to MCPPA idealism-became a Montana
Progressive Party warhorse. 24 In the opposite
political spectrum, Montana Communists
newly involved themselves in Montana Progressive Party affairs; like Communists in
California, they backed Wallace despite their
party's national leadership demanding that its
locals desist until the Com intern authorized
this course. Such directions arrived belatedly in the summer of 1948. 25 Meanwhile,
the Montana Communist Party, composed of
seventy-one people in 1948 {according to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation's estimates}
participated in the Montana Progressive Party
by exercising the Communists' influence in
several Farmers Union locals and a number
of Mine-Mill unions at Butte and Great Falls.
More important, a Montana Communist Party
official, John Hellman, led what he described
as a "left" faction in the Montana Progressive
Party. Most of Hellman's followers were MineMill union radicals. 26
Growing more slowly in the political middle,
the Montana Progressive Party absorbed several small groups that had, since the 1930s,
advocated generous pensions for the aged
and whom the conservative-minded Montana
legislature had riled. More consequential, the
party recruited successfully in a few different middle-class circles. For instance, party
organizers converted Jerome Locke and most
of his Missouri Valley Association associates.
This group proposed a U.S. Missouri Valley
Authority similar to the Tennessee Valley
Authority that New Dealers had established
in the 1930s. A politically influential activist,
Locke once presided over the irrigation farmminded Yellowstone Valley Association and
flirted in the 1930s with midwestern radicals
who wanted to organize a nationwide farmerlabor party, but finally focused politically on
federally controlled economic development
in the Missouri River Basin despite resistance
from Montana stockgrowers and commercial
forces. Wanting no federal controls on the
state's water resources, the resisters characterized the Missouri Valley Authority plan·
a "socialist" scheme.27 In short, in 1948 the
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
278 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
Montana Progressive Party had gradually
become a broader coalition of forces, partly by
adding special interest groups at a time when
pollsters' data revealed that the Progressive
Party was losing ground nationally. According
to one poll, 51 percent of Americans wrote off
the Progressive Party because they believed
that Communists controlled it. 28
Adding these forces to the Montana Progressive Party coalition undercut the hegemony
of the Farmers Union and its middle-class allies
in the party, and intraparty conflicts ensued.
A major dispute centered on the party's next
political strategies. Led by Hellman, his faction {mostly Mine-Mill radicals} proposed that
in addition to the Wallace-Taylor ticket, the
party try to elect its own third-party candidates
for Montana congressional offices, important
elective posts in the state government, and
many state legislative seats. 29 This proposal
evoked stiff opposition. Admirers of U.S.
senator Murray argued that, were the Montana
Progressive Party to run its own senatorial candidate, it would jeopardize Murray's chances
of winning reelection in 1948. Furthermore,
this group contended that Murray deserved
help from the party because he tended toward
their idealism even though he recently voted
in Congress for several of Truman's Fair Deal
proposals and supported the Truman administration's alliances with "reactionary" elements
in Greece and Turkey for anti-Communist reasons. These activists also posited that Murray
deserved to win with Montana Progressive
Party help because he professed to be a good
"friend" of "labor," the "middle class," "small
business," and "professional men and women."30
Furthermore, it was argued that running
Montana Progressive Party nominees for
state elective offices could deprive "liberal
Democrats" of just enough votes to win over
Republicans in 1948. And doing so seemed
doubly impermissible in light of Montana New
Deal Leftists always helping such Democrats to
win since MCPPA days.31 Also, People's Voice
editor Bruce contended that "with a full slate of
candidates on the Progressive Party ticket, the
hue and cry would be raised that [the] Moscow
[regime in the Soviet Union] is trying to get
control of Montana.,,32
On September 4, 1948, this dispute ended
when, at the Montana Progressive Party's state
convention, Hellman's forces retreated and
only a Wallace-Taylor ticket appeared on the
Montana ballot in November. The victorious
camp also wrote a platform composed of thirtyfive planks, which included public ownership
of utilities, improvements in the nation's social
security system, the forty-hour workweek, guaranteed annual wages, better unemployment
benefits, and new restrictions on gambling
in Montana. 33 Conversely, Hellman's radical
faction prevailed in Silver Bow County {an
industrialized sector, including Butte and
Anaconda, where Mine-Mill unions exercised
considerable influence}. There, Montana
Progressive Party radicals placed a slate of
five candidates for the state legislature on the
ballot over opposition from the Silver Bow
Trades and Labor Assembly {which had sided
with Democrats statewide in order to stymie
Republicans in the coming elections}. The
Progressive slate included three miners, a
retired railroad industry employee, and a MineMill union organizer. 34
Begun with vigor, the Montana Progressive
Party's election campaign lost its momentum.
In part the campaign faltered because Wallace
appeared in Montana only once, and Taylor
staged just a few rallies in this state. 35
Moreover, Taylor's campaign style evoked
criticism of the Wallace-Taylor ticket. Taylor's
stumping, his critics alleged, exhibited showmanship {earlier he was a local entertainer in
Idaho} but little intellectual depth. 36 At the
same time, nearly nationwide "vilification"
of Wallace and Gideon's Army harmed the
Montana Progressive Party ticket in Montana.
According to People's Voice editor Bruce, party
locals lacked enough resources and access to
"channels of communication" to rebut such
"red herring propaganda" successfullyY
The party's electoral prospects improved
briefly when the national Mine-Mill union organization endorsed Wallace, and most of its state
and local unions followed suit. Also, several of
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
the CIO's United Mine Workers local unions in
Montana supported the Wallace-Taylor ticket. 38
But lethargy returned after this upturn
even though the Progressive Party's national
organization advanced $2,000 for the Montana
Progressive Party to expend on bettering its
electioneering. 39 Most of the windfall paid for
printed material and the expenses of party
campaigners. Nonetheless, the party encountered new problems. Belatedly, much of its labor
support evaporated when unions, other than
certain local Mine-Mill groups, rallied behind
Democrats in the 1948 elections. Secondly,
Montana collegians remained mostly disinterested despite considerable student support for
Wallace in other states, and Montana's population contained few Jewish and other ethnic
minorities that were Progressive Party mainstays in major urban areas.40 Thirdly, Montana
Progressive Party sympathizers tended to withhold their help on grounds that, given the realities of Montana's politics, the Wallace-Taylor
ticket could not win because the "kept press"
of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company
opposed it. Different Montanans judged the
Montana Progressive Party and its national
parent as irrelevant inasmuch as they believed
that both parties' ideology grappled little with
American socioeconomic conditions late in
the 1940s. Even Wallace Progressives sometimes agreed, saying their movement's thinking seemed to echo many of the bygone New
Deal's responses to Great Depression tribulations in the 1930s. For example, Verda Barnes,
Progressive Party National Committee member
who supervised Progressive election campaigns
in the Far West in 1948, had concluded that
American farmers, workers, and small business people fared "pretty well" in post-World
War II times and would generally support the
Progressive Party only when "their plight," as in
the 1930s, became "so desperate they have nothing to lose by so doing.'>41
ON THE SAME COURSE
On election day 1948 the Wallace-Taylor
ticket polled only 3.3 percent of all votes
279
in Montana but as much as 10.6 percent in
Roosevelt County (an eastern Montana stronghold of the Farmers Union) and more in Silver
Bow County than in any other.42 Nonetheless,
the Montana Progressive Party's conservative
and radical factions saw silver linings in the
election outcomes. The former claimed that
because the party nominated only a WallaceTaylor ticket, Murray preserved his U.S. Senate
seat, and that in the Democratic Party's 1948
landslide in Montana, the party helped liberalminded Democrats to prevail by running no
candidates.43 Conversely, the same group could
not brag because one of its favorites, Judge
Erickson of the Montana Supreme Court, ran
third in the primaries among Democrats seeking
the state's governorship.44 For its part, Hellman's
"left" camp claimed vindication for its liking
for third-party political action. The camp's five
nominees for the state legislature from Silver
Bow County polled 30 to 40 percent of the
10,000 votes by which each could win.45
Even though certain Gideons credited it
with an "impact of vital importance" in 1948,
the Montana Progressive Party lost members in
the next two years to the Democratic Party, and
its national parent fared worse, losing much of
its political "center and right."46 The Montana
Progressive Party faithful warned the defectors
that changing sides made them "apologists for
war [with the Soviet Union] and increased militarization" because of Truman's foreign policies
and his desire for a universal military training
program for all youth. But such rhetoric deterred
few from leaving. The defectors typically
decided, as Senator Murray had done recently,
to recant their latest political pasts and make
their peace with Truman and his 1948 victors.
(As for Murray, he anticipated a new place in the
Montana Democratic Party where Murray and
newcomers Congressmen Mike Mansfield and
Lee Metcalfwere influential liberal voices.) Many
of these Montana Progressive Party expatriates
particularly applauded Mansfield and Metcalf for
supporting new proposals for a federal Missouri
Valley Authority even though Truman had
downplayed the scheme after his party's whipping in the 1946 midterm elections.47
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
280
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
These defections left the Montana Progressive Party weakened but active and still
dominated by Farmers Union activists and
their middle-class and labor union allies.
Their protege-Kinsey, Montana Progressive
Party state secretary-remained at the helm.
Much of the party's "sporadic activities" in
1949 centered in the organization's Progressive
Club at Great Falls.4s On a different front, the
old Montana Progressive Citizens of America
was reorganized and assigned a key role in the
coming Montana Progressive Party campaign
in 1950 at which it would explain and defend
the party's reform ideologies. The party's
plans also entailed backing Wallace if he ran
a second time for the u.s. presidency in 1952.
Meanwhile, the Kinsey-led agrarians and their
helpers united with the party's Hellman-led
radicals to attack the Truman administration's
foreign policies more vigorously. Their main
targets included Truman's Marshall Plan to
prevent the Soviet Union from expanding
its sphere in Europe. Taking their cue from
Wallace, who had characterized the Marshall
Plan as "give guns to people when they want
plows," these critics charged that the Marshall
Plan would precipitate "Cold War Calamity.'>49
Using this unity to their own advantage,
Hellman's radicals demanded third-party political action to elect the mayor and aldermen
for three wards in Great Falls. The in-power
side acquiesced, despite past MCPPA and MPP
practices, in trying to elect liberal Democrats
to Montana public offices. The third-party
strategy little benefited the radicals, proving,
both sides concluded, that "only 10 percent
of the people at Great Falls will support a
Progressive Party candidate," and double this
number might be "high pressure[d]" to do so. 50
NEW TROUBLES: KOREAN WAR DISPUTES
AND POOR SHOWINGS AT THE POLLS
This new comity in the Montana Progressive Party between the in-power group and the
radicals lasted until June 25, 1950, after which
time the party splintered because of developments in Korea and the Truman administra-
tion's response. On this date, North Korea's
"Red Army" attacked the South Korean
republic, and Truman sent American armies to
defend the latter. Similarly, Korean war issues
wreaked havoc with Progressives and to a large
extent doomed Wallace's third party nationally
after Wallace more or less sided with Truman
on the need for American intervention in
Korea. Even more detrimental to Progressive
unity, Wallace withdrew from the national
Progressive Party. In turn, Progressive Party
organizations in twenty-two states deplored
Wallace's choice, and a Montanan accused
him of deserting "us when we needed him the
most.,,51
In Montana, the same developments so
split the Progressive Party that it lost members to the Democratic Party even though the
departers once hated it. Meanwhile, Hellman's
radicals denounced the Korean War on its face
and accused Truman of helping the corrupt
Syngman Rhee regime to remain in power in
South Korea. Conversely, the Truman administration's actions in Korea were praised in
opposite party circles, among them the bulk of
the party's Farmers Union people. They viewed
Truman as a fighter against Communist aggression in Korea. Disputing this interpretation,
antiwar radicals exploited the new differences
so outrageously that the state-level leaders of
the Farmers Union intervened. Guided by the
thinking of Patton, their national president
who approved of Truman's Korea policies, these
leaders deprived Hellman of his place as an organizer in the Farmers Union, and they cleansed
their state and most local organizations of nearly
all Communists and their sympathizers. In
fighting back, they also repudiated the Farmers
Union's old ties to the Montana Progressive
Party and threatened to withdraw all Farmers
Union subsidization of the People'S Voice. 52
Exploiting this turmoil, radicals seized
enough power to position the Montana
Progressive Party more firmly against any
American involvement in Korean warfare.
Hellman replaced Kinsey as the party's state
secretary. 53 At the same time, these radicals
gained an important supporter of their antiwar
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
stance. Billings, the new editor of the People's
Voice, provided the radicals an editorial voice
on grounds that he had detected "silent, but
very real· and very widespread resentment" in
Montana "over the Korean war." In saying so,
Billings replicated distaste for the war in many
circles nationwide. 54
More than just denouncing the Truman
administration's Korean policies, Hellman's
group, Billings, and several other Montana
Progressive Party figures called-as the national
Progressive Party organization had done earlier-for a negotiated peace settlement in
Korea. All of them argued that the United
States had no alternative because American
forces had been driven back from the KoreaChina boundary at the Yalu River to the region
surrounding the Thirty-Eighth Parallel border
between North and South Korea. There, it was
pointed out, American and Chinese armies
could only wage inconclusive campaigns that
cost many soldiers their lives. 55 Maury, the
Helena lawyer and Montana Progressive Party
activist, called this proposal "a glorious work
for peace." In an "Open Letter" to Truman, two
Montana Progressive Party officials plugged
for "peace instead of slaughtering American
[soldier] boys in Korea," and other writers
accused "war-making monopolies" of prolonging the war. 56 The Montana Progressive Party's
antiwar forces next organized "peace" rallies at
Great Falls and several other towns. Korean
War supporters fought back, charging that
Communists had inspired the rallies, and at
Conrad they recorded the names of persons
participating in a local "peace" rally.57
Korean matters aside, Hellman's forces
demanded third-party political action in
the 1950 elections but were persuaded at a
state-level convention for selecting Montana
Progressive Party nominees to shorten sail so
much that only two candidates were selected
(one for state railroad commissioner and
another for the U.S. House of Representatives).
In Silver Bow County, radicals nominated two
of their own to seek seats in the state legislature. Thus, the Montana Progressive Party
abandoned the old strategy of the MCPPA and
281
their own party of helping liberal Democrats
to prevail in Montana elections. However, the
Montana Progressive Party gained no ground
on election day. At best, the party's candidate
for railroad commissioner (Lawrence Price,
party officer and vice president of the Cascade
County Trades and Labor Council) polled
about 1 percent of the statewide vote. In Silver
Bow County, radicals fell by the wayside, polling about 40 percent of the 10,000 votes each
needed to win. In Flathead County, a Montana
Progressive Party sympathizer won a place in
the next state legislative session. 58
Following the 1950 elections, little remained
of the political coalition that had comprised
the Montana Progressive Party in better days,
but the Hellman-led camp barely managed
to keep the party alive in the next two years.
Trying to infuse new energy and attract more
followers to the party, Hellman issued a mimeographed bulletin and publicized the party in
sympathetic publications. 59 He also launched a
campaign aimed especially at helping western
Montana miners who had contracted silicosis. By his proposal, compensation to victims
of occupational diseases must be paid from
employers' contributions to Montana's stateadministered workmen's compensation system.
In particular, a party figure added, by Hellman's
proposal the Anaconda Copper Mining Company would at last be held "responsible for
compensation to silicosis victims." Then, in
1951, the party began a drive to secure 18,000
signatures on petitions for a ballot initiative
so that the proposal was enacted. Hellman's
forces collected about 2,000 signatures before
a committee composed of labor union and
Farmers Union representatives commandeered
the drive. But these efforts were negated by
opponents who blocked the initiative from
a place on the Montana ballot. They called
the proposal "dangerous and destructive to
Montanans in every walk of life.,,6o
When the 1952 elections neared, Hellman
anticipated good returns from the Montana
Progressive Party by capitalizing on opposition
to Truman's Korean War policies, the party's
recent third-party political action practices, and
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-lincoln
282 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY. FALL 2012
Unexpectedly, O'Connell declined to run
again for office on grounds that he had abandoned strenuous political roles because of his
worsening health, and Hellman revamped the
party's course when his forces could not agree
on another nominee in place of O'Connell.
Finally, third-party political action remained
the party's strategy in the 1952 general elections. But only Hellman and Lawrence Price,
a party official and carpenter by vocation
and labor unionist, ran for a state and a
congressional office, respectively, alongside
the national Progressive Party's U.S. presidential nominees-San Francisco attorney
Vincent Hallinan and California Eagle publisher Charlotta Bass. 64
AN INGLORIOUS POLITICAL ENDING
FIG. 1. Jerry J. O·Connell. Member. U.S. Congress.
House of Representatives. 1937-1939. Courtesy
of Montana Historical Society Research Center
Photograph Archives. Helena. MT.
a relatively innocuous platform that resembled
the party's 1948 and 1950 platforms. 61 More
important in Hellman's view, his plan entailed
selecting a prominent U.S. Senate nominee
who could be juxtaposed on the campaign
trail to Republican U.S. Senator Zales Ecton
and Democratic U.S. Congressman Mike
Mansfield. Hellman described these people as,
respectively, an apostle of "reaction ism" and an
apologist for Truman's Korean "war policies."
For this role, Jerry O'Connell seemed an ideal
choice even though his critics accused him of
close kinship with American "Communists and
fellow travelers.,,62 Formerly a U.S. congressman
from Montana who failed to win reelection
in 1938, 1940, and 1942 despite support from
the Montana New Deal Left, O'Connell had
sided with Wallace in his fight against Truman
in 1946-48, helped to establish Wallace's
Progressive Party at its national convention
in 1948, and was executive secretary of the
Progressive Party in Washington State until at
last he returned to Montana where he opened a
law office in Helena. 63
Because of poor 1952 electoral outcomesless than 1 percent of the votes statewide for the
Hallinan-Bass ticket and 2.4 percent of the balloting for Hellman-the Montana Progressive
Party disbanded even though the Progressive
Party's national organization remained in business until 1955. 65 Already Hellman had abandoned the party, and most of his old followers
sided against a handful of labor union radicals
who wanted to resurrect it. This large majority
backed away from the Montana Progressive
Party remnant partly because none of the MineMill locals in western Montana seemed likely
to supply any resources to rebuild the party or,
as resurrectors proposed, to create a new party
that functioned as the unions' own vehicle for
left-liberal politics. To restore the party in any
form, the same people also reasoned, invited
repression from federal authorities and chieftains of the country's anti-Communist AFL
and CIO labor federations. Such speculation
was reasonable. Allied politically to Truman
and his Democratic regulars, CIO heads had
already expelled their Mine-Mill unions, in
part because of their support of Wallace's
Progressive Party in 1948.66 Moreover, MineMill official Clinton Jencks was just one of
several of the Mine-Mill international union's
secondary-level officials who had already run
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
athwart the federal government's antisubversive machinery during the nation's Cold
War with the Communist world. And it was
common knowledge in Montana that in the
Red Scare of the 1950s, federal agents closely
monitored Montana Communists, other local
radicals, and their labor union sympathizers. One of the latter even complained that
a federal agent hassled him because he had
criticized capitalism too harshly and opposed
American involvement in the Korean War. 67 .
Other Montanans subjected to such targeting included Hellman, whom U.S. Justice
Department authorities later indicted for violating the anti-Communist Smith Act of 1940.
His criminalization persisted until the U.S.
Supreme Court freed him. 68
In sum, complicated time-and-place historical conditions so beset the Montana Council
for Progressive Political Action and its successor, the Montana Progressive Party, for nearly
twenty-five years that success was elusive,
and many participants in the two groups'
political realignment were driven back into
the Democratic Party from which they had
bolted. Moreover, the survival of the broader
coalition of leftist forces became increasingly
problematical after 1948 for several reasons.
For instance, when the Montana Progressive
Party coalition expanded in 1948 from its
heavily radical farm and urban labor composition, stress was created, tension threatened
to divide the party, and Mine-Mill radicals
manipulated the new conditions in politically
divisive ways. Meanwhile, it proved difficult for
the party to endure when, in the 1940s, many
electors judged the party's ideas to be irrelevant
to post-World War II conditions in America.
In another instance of trouble for the coalition, Korean War issues splintered it so badly
after 1950 that Mine-Mill unions gained the
upper hand but could not save the party from
extinction. In a different fatal development,
anti-Communist ideas and governmental
antisubversive measures prospectively threatened the radical remnant of the old Montana
Progressive Party so much that most of these
frightened radicals sought cover by abandon-
283
ing their rebellious politics. In other words, the
wages of the historic Montana Progressives'
political realignment-as one of the aftershocks of what scholar James Sundquist called
the New Deal earthquake-amounted to very
little in proportion to these Montanans' political efforts. Painfully, Montana Progressive
activists learned the lesson that it was risky
to become an independent political force,
and the outcome from doing so was inevitably
unpredictable because, down the road, historical time-and-place conditions intruded and
often could not be changed. Small wonder that
Montana's New Deal Leftists gambled and lost.
However, these unsuccessful Montana forces
shared plentiful company when they failed in
the end. Across the Plains, left-of-the-New-Deal
groupings-whose dissent focused from the
outset on criticism of Roosevelt and his mainline New Dealers, sometimes to the point of
accusing the latter of doing nothing about the
country's Great Depression maladies-generally achieved little more than the Montanans
did. Another of the so-called afterthoughts in
the New Deal earthquake, these groups at least
enlivened Great Plains politics for a time.
NOTES
1. Michael P. Malone, "The Montana New
Dealers," in The New Deal: The State and Local
Levels, ed. John Braeman, Robert H. Bremner, and
David Brody (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1975), 2:240-64.
2. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party
System: Alignment of Political Parties in the United
States, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution, 1983),240-68 (qtn. 240).
3. Starting with V. O. Key, author of the pathbreaking Political Parties and Pressure Groups (1948),
numerous scholars have theorized about such
political behavior by analyzing conditions under
which political party coalitions typically form and
collapse. Others have focused on related issues
such as the crucial roles that interest groups play in
these developments. For examples, see Sundquist,
Dynamics, 35-49; John H. Aldrich, Why Parties?
The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties
in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995), 159-240, 319n23; Allen J. Cigler and Bartlett
A. Loomis, eds., Interest Group Politics (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2012).
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
284 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
4. For a better understanding of political behavior in groups such as Montana's New Deal Left,
see Stephen Skowronek, Presidential Leadership
in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal, 2nd ed.
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011).
5. Jeffrey A. Johnson, "They Are All Reds Out
Here": Socialist Politics in the Pacific Northwest
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008);
Arnon Gutfield, Montana's Agony: Years of War and
Hysteria, 1917-1921 (Gainesville: University Presses
of Florida, 1979); Verlaine Stoner McDonald, The
Rise and Fall of Communism in Northeastern Montana
(Helena: Montana Historical Society, 2010).
6. Contrarily, for examples of scholarship about
favorable and important New Deal implications for
the Plains, see Geoff Cunfer, "The New Deal's Land
Utilization Program in the Great Plains," Great
Plains Quarterly 21, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 193;
Peter Fearon; "Relief for Wanderers: The Transient
Service in Kansas, 1933-35," Great Plains Quarterly
26, no. 4 (Fall 2006): 245; Teresa M. Houser, "New
Deal Experimentation and the Political Economy of
the Yankton Sioux," Great Plains Quarterly 31, no. 3
(Summer 2011): 205.
7. John L. Shover, Cornbelt Rebellion: The
Farmers' Holiday Association (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1965); Lowell K. Dyson, Red
Harvest: The Communist Party and American Farmers
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 71-77,
99-122.
8. David H. Bennett, Demagogues in the Depression: American Radicals and the Union Party,
1932-1936 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University
Press, 1969),267; William C. Pratt, ''Another South
Dakota or the Road Not Taken: The Left and the
Shaping of South Dakota Political Culture," in The
Plains Tradition: Essays in South Dakota Political
Culture, ed. Jon K. Louk, John C. Miller, and
Donald G. Simmons Jr. (Pierre: South Dakota State
Historical Society Press, 2011), 120-12.
9. J. M. Peterson, "What Is the Montana
Council for Progressive Political Action?," n.d. (leaflet), C. B. Baldwin Papers, Collection MSS 343, box
2, Special Collections, University of Iowa Libraries,
Iowa City.
10. Charles Kinsey to Cap Bruce, May 10,
1940, People's Voice Records, 1937-67, Collection
MC 40, box 3, folder 34, Montana Historical
Society, Helena; Laurie Mercier, Anaconda: Labor,
Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 61-62,
111; William C. Pratt, "The Montana Farmers
Union and the Cold War," Pacific Northwest
Quarterly 83 (April 1992): 64.
11. "Oral History Interview of Harry and
Gretchen Billings," by Steve Kelley, November
18, 1974, 2-6, 8, OH 2209, Montana Historical
Society; Kelley, "The People's Voice: Harry and
Gretchen Billings," copy in "Oral History Interview
of Delano Bliss Drury," May 23, 2002, OH 2009,
Montana Historical Society; "Helena Member
Receives Hillman Foundation Award," n.d. (clipping), Montana Typographical Union #95 Papers,
Collection MC 88, box 11, folder 15; Montana Kaimin
(Missoula), April 26, 1950, 2 (qtn.).
12. Malone, "Montana New Dealers," 258-61.
13. Michael P. Malone and Dianne G. Dougherty,
"Montana's Political Culture: A Century of Evolution," in The Montana Heritage: An Anthology of
Historical Essays, ed. Robert H. Swartout Jr. and
Harry W. Fritz (Helena: Montana Historical Society
Press, 1992), 189; MCPPA advertisement, Columbia
Falls (Montana) Review, (clipping), n.d., Daniel S.
McCorkle Papers, Collection MC 59, box 8, folder
4, Montana Historical Society.
14. Ellis L. Waldron, Montana Politics since
1864: An Atlas of Elections (Missoula: Montana
State University Press, 1958), 306; "Oral History
Interview of Harry and Gretchen Billings," 35; H.
S. Bruce to C. B. Baldwin, March 5, 1946, Leif
Erickson to Baldwin, November 21, 1946, Baldwin
Papers, box 2.
15. John C. Culver and John Hyde, American
Dreamer: The Life and Times of Henry A. Wallace
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 419-26 (qtn.
425); Edward L. Schapsmeier and Frederick H.
Schapsmeier, Prophet in Politics: Henry A. Wallace
and the War Years, 1940-1965 (Ames: Iowa State
University Press, 1970), 178.
16. Pratt, "Montana Farmers Union," 64; People's
Voice (Helena), January 9, 1948, 2, May 21, 1948,3;
"Proceedings of the Second Annual Convention
of the Montana Progressive Citizens of America,"
February 2, 1948, n.p., Records of the Progressive
Party (hereafter PP Records), Collection MSS 160,
box 37, folder 57, Special Collections, University of
Iowa Libraries, Iowa City.
17. Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army (New
York: Marzani and Munsell, 1965), 3:608, 610;
William C. Pratt, "Rural Radicalism on the Northern
Plains, 1912-1950," Montana the Magazine of
Western History 42 (Winter 1992): 53; William C.
Pratt, "The Farmers Union and the 1948 Henry
Wallace Campaign," Annals of Iowa 49 (1988):
359-68; People's Voice, October 22, 1948, 1.
18. Culver and Hyde, American Dream, 449-55.
19. Romney to H. L. Maury, February 18, 1948,
Henry Lowndes Maury Papers, Collection MC 177,
box I, folder 2, Montana Historical Society.
20. Culver and Hyde, American Dream, 478-90;
Alonzo Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry
S. Truman and American Liberalism (New York:
Columbia University Press), 1973; Schapsmeier
and Schapsmeier, Prophet, 168, 189, 190; Thomas
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
NEW DEAL LEFTISTS
W. Divine, "The Eclipse of Progressivism; Henry
A. Wallace and the 1948 Presidential Election"
(PhDdiss., University of North Carolina, 2000);
Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The American
Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself (New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), 114-15, 118-19,
121-24.
21. MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 1:51, 105; 3:77172; William C. Pratt, "Farmers, Communists, and
the FBI in the Upper Midwest," Agricultural History
63 (Summer 1969): 71; Dan Gillmer, ''A Year in the
Days of Gideon's Army and Years to Come," National
Guardian [New York] .1 (November 1, 1948): 7;
People's Voice, February 6, 1948, 2.
22. Americans for Democratic Action Publicity
Department, "Henry A. Wallace: The First Three
Months" (mimeographed), n.d., Mike Mansfield
Papers, Collection MSS 65, Series XIV, box 8,
folder 19, K. Ross Toole Archives, Mansfield Library,
University of Montana (qtns.); Thomas W. Divine,
"Dubious Alliance: Communists and Progressives
at the 1948 Progressive Party Convention" (master's
thesis, University of North Carolina, 1993),52.
23. People's Voice, June 18, 1948, 1, July 2, 1948, 1;
John Hellman to Curtis D. MacDougall, August 22,
1953, PP Records, box 56, folder 236.
24. "Biographical Note" in "Guide to the Henry
Lowndes Maury Papers, 1938-1959" (Helena:
Montana Historical Society Archives), 2; Maury to
J. O. Bernard, March 22, 1948, Maury to Senator
Glen Taylor, November 24, 1948, Maury Papers, box
1, folder 2.
25. Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in America
(New York: Random House, 2003), 308-9; Joseph
R. Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 19431957 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1972), 162-67.
26. Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Communist
Party Membership by State," January 7, 1949,
Harry S. Truman Papers, President's Secretary's
File "Federal Bureau of Investigation," folder
"Communist Party," Harry S. Truman Library,
Independence, MO; Pratt, "Montana Farmers
Union," 65; Hellman to MacDougall, September 30,
1953, PP Records, box 37, folder 57 (qtn.).
27. "Official Call for the Montana State Convention of the Progressive Party" (clipping), no
source, People's Voice Records, box 6, folder 1;
Jerome G. Locke, A Sign of the Times (n.p.: selfpublished, 1935); Locke to Nathan Fine, March
13, 1937, Thomas G. Amlie Papers, box 61, State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison; Jules E.
Karlin, "The 1948 Elections in Montana," Western
Political Quarterly 2 (March 1949): 110 (qtn.).
28. Culver and Hyde, American Dream, 481.
29. Hellman to MacDougall, September 30, 1953,
PP Records, box 37, folder 57.
285
30. H. L. Maury to Senator Glen Taylor, July 2,
November 24, 1948, Maury to Henry A. Wallace,
December 27, 1948, Maury Papers, box 1, folder 2; C.
B. Baldwin to Senator James Murray, March 3, 1947
and untitled attachment (qtns.), James E. Murray
Papers, Collection MSS 91, box 954, folder 17, Toole
Archives.
31. People's Voice, August 27, 1948, 1, September
3, 1948, 1, September 10, 1948, 1.
32. H. S. Bruce, ''A Word of Warning," People's
Voice, August 20, 1948, 4.
33. People's Voice, September 10, 1948, 1.
34. People's Voice, October 15, 1948, 8, October
22, 1948, 7; Mercier, Anaconda, 102; Ellis Waldron, Montana Legislators, 1864-1979: Profiles
and Biographical Directory (Missoula: Bureau of
Government Research, University of Montana,
1980),96.
35. Montana Wallace for President Committee,
"Bulletin," n.d. (mimeographed), PP Records, box
37, folder 57; MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 3:765;
People's Voice, May 14, 28, 1948, 1.
36. On his campaign style, see F. Ross Peterson,
Prophet without Honor: Glen H. Taylor and the Fight
for American Liberalism (Lexington: University Press
of Kentucky, 1974); Richard Neuberger to Charles
Angoff, June 15, 1948, Richard Neuberger Papers,
Collection AX 78, box 9, Special Collections,
University of Oregon Library, Eugene; Pittsburgh
Press, March 2,1948 (clipping), Baldwin Papers, box
54.
37. Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, Prophet, 194;
Culver and Hyde, American Dreamer, 467-70;
Bruce, ''A Word of Warning," 4.
38. Official Proceedings of the 44th Convention of
the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter
Workers (n.p., 1948), 217; Pratt, "Montana Farmers
Union," 65n6.
39. Untitled typescripts, n.d., Henry A. Wallace
Papers, microfilm roll 45, frames 326, 331, Special
Collections, University of Iowa Libraries.
40. MurrayS. Stedman Jr. and Susan W. Stedman, Discontent at the Polls: A Study of Farmer
and Labor Parties, 1827-1948 (New York: Russell
and Russell, 1967), 117; Sarimel Lubell, The Future
of American Politics, 3rd ed; (New York: Harper
Colophon Books, 1965), 93, 197-99.
41. Verda Barnes to Henry A. Wallace, September 5, 1950, Wallace Papers, roll 47, frame 394.
42. Waldron, Montana Politics, 326; Pratt, "Rural
Radicalism," 53. The Wallace-Taylor ticket fared
better in Montana than in the nationwide elections
where it received 2.3 percent of the votes.
43. Donald E. Spritzer, Senator James E. Murray
and the Limits of Post-war Liberalism (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1985), 266-67; Karlin, "1948
Elections," 109.
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
286
GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, FALL 2012
44. Oregonian (Portland), July 21, 1948, 10.
45. Hellman to MacDougall, August 22, 1953, PP
Records, box 56, folder 236.
46. L. L. Price to Harry Billings, November
16, 1948, People's Voice Records, box 5, folder 12;
Hellman to MacDougall, September 30, 1953, PP
Records, box 37, folder 57; People's Voice, December
3, 1948, 3; James [?] to MacDougall, January 23,
1954, PP Records, box 56, folder 236.
47. Spritzer, Murray, 180, 181; Malone, "Montana
New Dealers," 261, 263; People's Voice, November
10, 1950; Great Falls (Montana) Tribune, August 6,
1952 (clipping), Mansfield Papers, Series XIV, box
15, folder 23.
48. "Montana Progressive Party Report on Organization," June 17-18, 1949 (mimeographed), PP
Records, box 15, folder 63 (qtn.); "Synopsis of Status
of Party Organizations," n.d. [1949], (mimeographed),
Baldwin Papers, box 28.
49. People's Voice, December 12, 1948, 1; Culver
and Hyde, American Dreamer, 452, 457 (1st qtn.);
"Cold War Calamity," National Guardian 2 (February
22, 1950): 3 (2nd qtn.).
50. "Montana Progressive Party Report on Organization," June 17-18, 1949 (mimeographed), PP
Records, box 15, folder 63.
51. Schapsmeier and Schapsmeier, Prophet,
198-209; New York Post, August 8, 1950 (clipping),
Wallace Papers, roll 47, frame 71; C. L. Burke to
Wallace, August 27, 1950, Wallace Papers, roll 47,
frame 343 (qtn.).
52. Dyson, Red Harvest, 201; Pratt, "Montana
Farmers Union," 65-66.
53. Montana Progressive Party, "Progressive
Bulletin," n.d. (mimeographed), McCorkle Papers,
box 8, folder 2.
54. Harry Billings to William Coburn, November
5, 1950, People's Voice Records, box 12, folder 14
(qtn.); David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter:
America and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion
Books, 2007), 4-5, 149,608,628.
55. C. B. Baldwin, "The Progressive Party and
the Smoke-Filled Room," National Guardian 4
(April 9, 1952): 2; "News from the Progressive
Party," September 20, 1951 (mimeographed),
Baldwin Papers, box 28; Jerome G. Locke to T. o.
Thackeray, January 16, 1953, Baldwin Papers, box 9.
56. People's Voice, November 23, 1951, 2, April
13,1951, 2, April 27, 1951, 2.
57. People's Voice, November 9, 1951, 1, February
1, 1952, 1.
58. "Progressive Party Election Returns," December 1, 1950 (typescript), Wallace Papers, roll 47,
frame 776; Montana Progressive Party, "Progressive
Bulletin," n.d. (mimeographed), McCorkle Papers,
box 8, folder 2 ; Waldron, Montana Politics, 338.
59. John Hellman, "Report to Readers: How
Montana Does It," National Guardian 4 (May 22,
1952): 2; Hellman to MacDougall, August 22, 1953,
PP Records, box 56, folder 236.
60. Hellman to MacDougall, August 22, 1953,
PP Records, box 56, folder 236; H. S. Bruce to T. o.
Thackeray, January 18, 1952, Baldwin Papers, box 9;
Montana Standard (Butte), April 6, 1952 (clipping),
Mansfield Papers, Series XIV, box 15, folder 23.
61. People's Voice, August 22, 1952, 4.
62. People's Voice, March 14, 1952, 1; Great Falls
Tribune, March 24, 1952 (clipping), Mansfield
Papers, Series XIV, box 15, folder 23; Park County
News (Livingston, MT), October 5, 1950 (clipping),
Montana Governors' Papers, Collection MC 35,
box 124a, folder 6, Montana Historical Society.
Republicans assailed Mansfield on many of the
same grounds. F. Ross Peterson, "McCarthyism
in the Mountains, 1950-1954," in Essays on the
American West, ed. Thomas G. Alexander (Provo,
UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1976).
63. "Biographical Notes," n.d. (mimeographed),
PP Records, box 48, folder 216; "Liberal's Defeat:
A Case History of the Defeat of O'Connell,"
The Nation 147 (November 26, 1938): 564-65;
Malone, "Montana New Dealers," 261; MacDougall,
Gideon's Army, 2:521; Vernon L. Pedersen, "Jerry
O'Connell, Montana's Communist Congressman,"
Montana the Magazine of Western History 62
(Spring 2012): 3-22.
64. Great Falls Tribune, April 4, 1952 (clipping),
Mansfield Papers, Series XIV, box 15, folder 23; Jerry
O'Connell to Curtis D. MacDougall, March 4, 1954,
PP Records, box 58, folder 256; People's Voice, June
6, 1952, I, August 1, 1952, 4.
65. "Where Are the Radicals?" Fortune 46
(October 1952): 115; Waldron, Montana Politics,
352, 356; Jon Bennion, Big Sky Politics: Campaigns
and Elections in Modern Montana (Missoula:
Five Valleys Publishing, 2004), 171; Hellman to
MacDougall, August 22, 1953, PP Records, box 50,
folder 236.
66. Max M. Kampelman, The Communist Party
vs. the C.I.O.: A Study in Power Politics (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1957), 167; Robert H. Zieger,
The CIO, 1935-1955 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1995),278,280-81; Klehr and
Haynes, American Communist Movement, 123-24.
67. Mercier, Anaconda, 66; "Editor's Note," n.d.
(typescript), People's Voice Records, box 9, folder 3;
People's Voice, February 1, 1952, 2-3. On the Jencks
matter, see James J. Lorence, "Mexican-American
Workers, Clinton Jencks, and Mine-Mill Activism
in the Southwest, 1945-52," in Labor's Cold War:
Local Politics in a Global Context, ed. Shelton
Stromquist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2008), 204-55.
68. Pratt, "Montana Farmers Union," 65, 66n11;
People'S Voice, April 14, 1956; National Guardian 10
(May 26, 1958): 7, {June 9, 1958),3.
© 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln