Communists in Idaho: What the Evidence Shows, 1919 to 1945

Ask most Idahoans how many Communists lived in Idaho before 1945 and you will hear either a confident big number or a confident zero. The record supports neither. What it supports is a small set of documents that must be read carefully, and a list of things nobody has yet checked. That makes this lesson the most important training lesson in the module: it teaches the discipline that the next lessons depend on.

From Socialist Party to Communist Party

The Communist movement in the United States began after the Russian Revolution of 1917, when factions inside the American Socialist Party broke away and formed Communist organizations. The Idaho Socialist vote of 1912 (lesson 3) therefore cannot be the Communist vote, and any writer who treats the two as continuous has to prove the continuity, person by person.¹ That is the first control: a Socialist label, an IWW card and a Communist membership are three different facts.

Four kinds of evidence, four limits

1. Votes

The University of Washington's Mapping American Social Movements project publishes Communist Party election votes by state and county for 1922 to 1946, derived from the dataset ICPSR 00001 (DOI 10.3886/ICPSR00001.v3). The project treats the tallies as an indication of how many voters were loyal Party supporters. This module's research file adds its own caution, which this lesson adopts: ballot access and party labels varied, and votes do not equal membership or individual political belief.²¹ The individual Idaho county values on that map have not been transcribed for this lesson.

For one statewide election, a figure is available. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections lists 491 votes (0.26 percent) for the Communist candidate William Z. Foster and 526 votes (0.28 percent) for the Socialist candidate Norman Thomas.³ The same figures appear on Wikipedia's page for the 1932 Idaho presidential vote, which lists the compilers Menendez and Scammon and the National Archives among its sources.¹³ Two compilations that agree are better than one, but both are secondary. The Leip page as read for this update shows no attribution to a state report, so this lesson no longer says the Atlas cites one. The original Idaho Secretary of State canvass has not yet been acquired and compared with the figures.¹

Read plainly, the chart supports a narrow conclusion. By 1932, the number of Idahoans voting for either the Socialist or the Communist presidential candidate was in the hundreds, compared with nearly twelve thousand Socialist votes in 1912. The sources used here do not say why. Candidates for the explanations (the Red Scare of 1919 and 1920, the end of the lumber strike movement, the wartime prosecutions, the New Deal's appeal to labor voters) are plausible and are not proved by these numbers.

2. Membership files

A University of Washington Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights project page by James Gregory and Rebecca Flores is a source guide to Communist Party membership in Washington, Oregon and Idaho from 1922 to 1945. It draws on Comintern party files and the papers of Earl Browder.⁴ The project's methods note adds two details a reporter needs: the 1922 to 1934 figures are average dues collections, while the 1937 to 1945 figures are start-of-year registrations, and officials of the time believed registrations ran 10 to 20 percent above dues. The project's own introduction puts District 12 at between 2,000 and 3,000 members at its late 1930s peak, and it names no Idaho members.⁹ That is a regional peak and not an Idaho figure. The crucial fact is administrative. The Communist Party organized the Pacific Northwest as a multi-state unit called District 12, so its registration and dues records are district records. A district total cannot be reported as an Idaho total, and the research file for this module says so in plain terms: regional series "cannot be relabeled as Idaho membership totals."¹ The underlying archival reels were not inspected for this lesson. The project's map page says membership by state or district for 1922 to 1950 is available on an interactive map; whether that map offers an Idaho line has not been read for this lesson, so the statement that Idaho cannot be isolated is held open until someone opens the map.

3. Ballots and election documents

The Idaho State Archives holds an Ada County election ballot for November 7, 1944 (item MS2/1625). Its finding aid lists Republican, Democratic, Prohibition and Socialist tickets. The finding aid does not establish a Communist ticket for that election, and an absence of a Communist ticket in the description is not proof that none existed in other counties or years.⁵

4. Newspapers

The Library of Congress's Chronicling America holds digitized Idaho titles that include the Lincoln County Times, the Minidoka Irrigator and the Idaho Labor Herald. The Idaho State Historical Society's Idaho Digital Newspaper Project, according to this module's research file, claims more than 80 titles from 1863 to 1925. Both research files are blunt about the limit: the presence of a title in a catalog proves nothing about a story in it, and similar newspaper vocabulary does not prove a party organization.⁶⁷ Someone has to read the dated issues.

What the sources used here do not show

• They do not show how many Communist Party members lived in Idaho in any year.
• They do not show any named Idahoan to have been a Communist Party member. The research file for this module requires "individual proof for any named person's party membership or allegation," and that rule governs this module too.¹
• They do not show that Idaho had a statewide Communist organization separate from District 12.
• They do not show Nazi or fascist organizations in Idaho in the 1930s. The question is open. A search for it turned up discussion of the Silver Shirts and fascism in Washington State in the 1930s, but nothing that this module has verified for Idaho. Lesson 5 returns to this gap.

In their own words and in the record

This module was asked to find first hand accounts (memoirs, testimony, letters, party publications) and second hand accounts (reporters, historians, officials) for each movement. For Idaho communism before 1945 the search came back close to empty, and that result belongs in the lesson.

A negative result worth stating

• No first hand Idaho Communist account was found. Searches for Idaho organizers, unemployed councils, Smith Act defendants and congressional witnesses from Idaho returned nothing Idaho-specific. Absence in a search is not proof that none exists, and the Idaho State Archives and local newspapers have not been read page by page.
• The state-level repression record belongs to Washington. The University of Washington project documents the Fish committee (1930), the Canwell committee (1948), the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in Seattle (1954 to 1956) and the Seattle Smith Act trial (1952). Those are Washington events, and no named Idaho Communist appears in the project's summaries.¹⁰
• No Idaho equivalent was found. No Idaho loyalty board, Idaho un-American activities committee or Idaho Smith Act case turned up. Lesson 6 repeats this for the 1950s.

The nearest documented cases

• September 30, 1922, Idaho Falls (IWW, not Communist). A local anniversary column in the Post Register reports that E. B. Damon and Tony Slack were arrested on criminal syndicalism charges with Industrial Workers of the World literature, each held on a $5,000 bond.¹¹ This is a single secondary source derived from an old newspaper. The outcome of the charges is not in the column, and a charge is not a conviction. It shows that arrests of radicals under state law continued after the 1919 and 1920 Red Scare, and it is also a reminder of the first control in this lesson: an IWW matter is not a Communist Party matter.
• The 1960 Coeur d'Alene strike. The only Idaho-specific work found on alleged Communist influence in a labor action is a 1968 study by E. T. Fee, The 1960 strike of the Coeur d'Alenes: An examination of alleged Communist influence, known so far only from a University of Idaho bibliography record.¹² It falls after this lesson's period and has not been read. Its title shows the word "alleged," which is the right word until someone reads the work.

The honest summary of this section is that the first and second hand record for Idaho communism before 1945 is thin, and a writer should say so instead of filling the gap with national material.

People and personalities

No Idaho Communist Party member, organizer or candidate is documented by name in the sources gathered here, and this module does not name any. That is a rule and also a finding. The two names above (Damon and Slack) appear only as people arrested on an IWW charge in 1922, according to one column, and the lesson draws no conclusion about their politics beyond the charge. Candidates on a printed ballot are a different matter: a name on a Communist Party ballot line would be a public record, but the Idaho ballots examined list Republican, Democratic, Prohibition and Socialist tickets only.

For the regional movement, the University of Washington project profiles Washington State figures and the national leaders whose files supply the numbers. Readers who want personalities should start there and keep clear which state each person lived in.

Evidence at a glance

What each kind of evidence counts, and what it does not

Evidence	What it counts	What it cannot show	Status here
Presidential votes, 1932	491 Communist and 526 Socialist ballots (0.26% and 0.28%)	Party members, or why people voted	Two secondary compilations agree; canvass not seen
UW membership series, 1922 to 1945	Dues (1922 to 1934) and registrations (1937 to 1945) for District 12 (WA, OR, ID)	Idaho-only membership	District totals only; Idaho map line not checked
Ballots	Parties on one Ada County ticket, Nov 7, 1944	Any other county or year	Finding aid only
Newspapers	What a paper printed on a date	The size of a party organization	Titles listed; dated issues not read
Hearing testimony	That an allegation was made	Membership or guilt	No Idaho hearing found

Allegations are evidence of allegations

The research file lists the United States Senate's published executive-session transcripts of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (the McCarthy transcripts) as an original hearing-record index. Its limitation note applies to everything written about "Communists" in any state: "witness allegations and investigative assertions are not findings of guilt."⁸ When a later lesson quotes a politician's claim about Communists in Idaho (lesson 6), the claim is reported as the politician's claim and is not treated as a count.

A sentence that survives a fact-check

Compare three versions of a sentence about Idaho in the 1930s.

1. "Idaho was full of Communists in the 1930s." No source supports this.
2. "There were no Communists in Idaho." Nothing in the sources proves a negative either; membership files exist for the district and have not been examined for Idaho names.
3. "In 1932, according to two published compilations of the vote, 491 Idahoans voted for the Communist presidential candidate and 526 for the Socialist candidate; the Communist Party's Pacific Northwest records are organized by multi-state district and do not give Idaho membership totals." This sentence is long, but every clause can be sourced.

Source notes for reporters

• Order the Idaho Secretary of State's 1932 canvass from the Idaho State Archives and compare it with the Leip figures before publishing them as official.
• Ask the Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights project whether its District 12 data can be broken down by Idaho county, and cite its answer.
• Read dated issues of the Idaho Labor Herald and the Twin Falls Times for specific events, and attribute each claim to the issue.
• Never name a living person or a family as Communist on the basis of a hearing allegation.

Still open

• Original official canvasses for 1912 and 1932.
• Idaho entries in the UW Communist vote map, county by county.
• Any Idaho prosecutions under criminal syndicalism or sedition laws after 1919.
• Any Idaho organizations sympathetic to European fascism or Nazi Germany in the 1930s. A search for Idaho chapters of Pelley's Silver Legion found only national material.
• Whether the interactive University of Washington membership map offers an Idaho line.
• Whether Mine-Mill and other Idaho CIO unions faced Communist-affiliation fights around 1949 and 1950; no Idaho item has been verified.
• The location and content of E. T. Fee's 1968 study of the 1960 Coeur d'Alene strike.

Learn more

• University of Idaho Idaho Bibliography record for the Fee study: The 1968 work on alleged Communist influence in the 1960 Coeur d'Alene strike; the record is a catalog entry only.
• Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects: The University of Washington's Communist Party project; start with the maps and its methods notes.
• Chronicling America: Search for Idaho newspapers by date, title and phrase.
• Idaho State Archives: Order the 1932 canvass and ballots; ask the reference desk for finding aids.

Notes

1. Jeff A. Pierson, Political Radicalism in Idaho, 1900-1945: Socialist and Communist Evidence Controls (Oct. 17, 2026) and Communism and Political Radicalism in Idaho: Evidence and Source Dossier (Oct. 17, 2026), Dropbox research folder 12_Communism_in_Idaho. Working references; originals not yet checked. ↩
2. James Gregory, "Communist Party votes by states and counties, 1922-1946," University of Washington (ICPSR00001-v3, DOI 10.3886/ICPSR00001.v3). Read it online. ↩
3. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, Idaho, 1932. Read it online. Third-party tabulation. Corrected in 2026-10: the page as read shows no attribution to a state report, so the earlier statement that it cites one was removed. Original canvass not yet inspected. ↩
4. James Gregory and Rebecca Flores, "Communist Party membership in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, 1922-1945," University of Washington. Read it online. The source explanation was inspected; the underlying archival reels were not. ↩
5. Idaho State Archives, "Ada County election ballot, November 7, 1944" (MS2/1625), finding aid. Read it online. ↩
6. Library of Congress, Chronicling America, Idaho digitized newspaper title index. Read it online. ↩
7. Idaho State Historical Society, "Searchable catalogs" (Idaho Digital Newspaper Project). Read it online. ↩
8. U.S. Senate, "Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (McCarthy transcripts)." Read it online. ↩
9. James Gregory, "History of Communist Party in Washington State: Introduction," University of Washington Pacific Northwest Labor and Civil Rights Projects. Read it online. A secondary, university-hosted source; the District 12 peak range is Gregory's statement. ↩
10. "Red Scare campaigns in Washington State," University of Washington Communism in Washington State project. Read it online. Covers Washington only; no Idaho item found. ↩
11. "Looking back: this week in eastern Idaho history" (Sept. 30, 1922 item), Post Register. Read it online. A local anniversary column; single source, to be checked against the 1922 paper. Neutral stance. ↩
12. E. T. Fee, The 1960 strike of the Coeur d'Alenes: An examination of alleged Communist influence (1968), University of Idaho Idaho Bibliography record ibp1503. Read the record. Catalog record only; the work was not opened and its stance is unknown. ↩
13. "1932 United States presidential election in Idaho," Wikipedia. Read it online. A tertiary page used to cross-check the Leip figures; its cited compilers are Menendez, Scammon and the National Archives. ↩