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This article surveys the holdings gathered on social and cultural movements at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in the U.S. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was founded at Stanford University by Herbert Hoover in 1919 to collect materials documenting the causes and consequences of World War I. The Hoover Institution is available without charge to all individuals regardless of citizenship, residence, academic affiliation, or lack thereof. Socialist activities during World War I are illuminated by the microfilm collection (10 reels) assembled by Frank L. Grubbs, Jr., as research material for his book "The Struggle for Labor Loyalty." Grubbs' topic was the competition between the pro-war American Alliance for Labor and Democracy and the anti-war People's Council of America, both founded in 1917. The Archives' holdings on the Communist Party, U.S., are far more extensive, and, without question, the single richest source is the Jay Lovestone Papers (330 linear feet). Lovestone a founding member of the party in 1919, played a central role in its internal factional wars of the 1920s, became its general secretary in 1927, and was expelled together with a core of followers in 1929 at the insistence of Communist International headquarters in Moscow.

The article comments on the progressive and the working class vote in California. Progressivism was a middle class movement, and while its leaders might strive to remedy the crassest abuses of industrial society, they were as fearful of concentrated labor power as of unregulated monopoly capitalism. In their zeal for moral reform and efficiency, they were often thrown into conflict with labor and immigrant-dominated political machines in cities. The interpretation that represents Progressivism as a political move by a disaffected middle class, as reformers frightened by the power of monopolistic corporations and fearful of organized labor, rests upon inferences drawn from public statements and, in a few instances, private thoughts of a leadership elite. Few attempts have been made to examine the other side of the coin and determine the response of labor leaders and the labor press. The conclusion that Progressivism was a middle-class movement has not been adequately tested against the voting records of metropolitan areas. It is the hypothesis of this paper that leaders of organized labor in California strongly endorsed Progressivism and that, though Progressivism was originally sustained by middle- and upper-class voters.