Washington Commonwealth Federation

WASHINGTON COMMONWEALTH FEDERATION. Though it survived for only a decade, the Washington Commonwealth Federation (WCF) was one of the most active and broad-based, regional Left movements in US history. A coalition of socialists, advocates of Upton Sinclair’s “production for use” proposals, old-age pension supporters, apostles of “technocracy,” and labor activists, the WCF also sought, with short-lived success, to win control of the Washington State Democratic Party.
The federation began in 1934 as “the Commonwealth Builders, Inc.” Its founders, middle-class socialist visionaries, favored electoral action with the goal of a “cooperative commonwealth” to be reached through an array of projects including government-owned large-scale industry and banking, producer- and consumer-owned cooperatives, and small private businesses and farms. Such a vision found fertile soil in Great Depression-era Washington, especially among labor activists engaged in bitter dock and timber strikes, and among the unemployed.

By 1935, the Commonwealth Builders had won support from many key labor and farm organizations. In October of that year, Commonwealth Builders, Inc., officially became known as the Washington Commonwealth Federation. Its members rejected appeals to form a new party like Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party, rather than seeking political power as left-wing Democrats.

Persuasive, radical slogans marked the WCF from its beginnings. The organization championed “production for use and abolition of the profit system.” After a major setback in the 1936 state election, its tone became decidedly more moderate. Concrete reform proposals led to a rapid growth in membership and some key political victories. The WCF became a force to be reckoned with, even if Postmaster General Farley’s rumored toast to “the forty-seven states and the Soviet of Washington” had little basis in reality. Always a minority in Washington politics, WCF legislators could only influence decisions.

When the Communists abandoned sectarianism in favor of the Popular Front strategy in 1935, Party members in Washington State saw their major political task as building and influencing the WCF. Initially rebuffed but permitted to join the federation in 1936, they exercised their organizing skills to bring themselves into key leadership positions.

Early euphoria about WCF prospects turned sour by 1938. Internal conflicts within the labor movement separating craft from industrial unions, combined with large doses of red-baiting, badly weakened the Federation. Communist influence also proved powerful in negative ways, resulting in WCF flip-flops on foreign affairs. After the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Federation newspapers denounced Franklin Roosevelt as a warmonger. From that time until Pearl Harbor, the WCF grew increasingly isolated politically, with sizable defections from its ranks.

During World War II, the organization made a dramatic comeback, winning many legislative seats and sending its leader, Hugh DeLacy, to Congress. In that period, the Washington State legislature enacted model social and civil rights legislation, and the WCF even invented a popular contribution to Left political culture, the hootenanny or folk-song fund-raiser. De Lacy, a former English teacher at the University of Washington, is credited with coining the word “Hootenany,” along with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. Chair of the Federation in the later 1930s and a member of the Seattle City Council in 1937, he was a popular speaker, an attractive candidate and a quiet Communist.

By 1945, the WCF had become the most important single influence in state Democratic Party politics and, in the minds of its leaders, no longer needed. The Federation dissolved into the Democratic Party as a show of unity. Its members looked forward confidently to the future.

Their optimism soon met cold reality. Hugh DeLancy lost his bid for re-election in 1946. The Cold War, red-baiting and the return of the Right to power in Washington doomed even the remarkable success in winning model social programs for the state, mostly reversed during the 1950s. In the end, even the popular memory of this intriguing experiment would be scarred with McCarthyite accusations.

Acena, Albert Anthony. “The Washington Commonwealth Federation: Reform Politics and the Popular Front.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1975.

Cuthill, Skyler. “Building the People’s Republic in Washington State: The Washington Commonwealth Federation, Comintern Foreign Policy and the Second World War.” PhD diss., University of Washington, 2010.

Roth, Catherine. “Fascism and Its Ally, Racism: The Complexities of the Washington Commonwealth Federation’s Stance on Civil Rights During the Great Depression in Washington State.” PhD diss. University of Washington, 2009.

Hugh DeLacy Papers. Special Collections. University of Washington Libraries. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/search/results.aspx?t=k&q=WAUDeLacyHugh3915.xml