He was district administrator of the
Works Progress Administration in 1935 and 1936. Allen was elected as a Democrat to the
Seventy-fifth and
Seventy-sixth Congresses. He was not a candidate for renomination in
1940. He became president of the Duff-Norton Manufacturing Company in
Pittsburgh, from 1940 to 1943. He was commissioned a major in the
United States Army Ordnance Corps in July 1942 and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in February 1943. He served until his discharge in January 1945. After his time in Congress and the Army, he served in a variety of business positions: •
Baldwin Locomotive Works (Sales manager) from 1945 to 1946 • Fisher Plastics Corporation (Vice President) in
Boston, Massachusetts from 1946 to 1947 •
Great Lakes Carbon Corporation (Vice President) from 1947 to 1954 • Pesco Products (President), a division of
Borg-Warner Corporation, from 1954–1957 •
Bucyrus-Erie Company (Vice President in 1957 - 1958, and president in 1958) • Bucyrus-Erie Co. of Canada, Ltd. (chairman of the board and president) • Ruston-Bucyrus, Ltd.,
Lincoln, England (chairman of the board) • Director of the First National Bank of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He retired from business activities in 1962 and moved from Milwaukee, to
Keene, Virginia, where he died on August 9, 1963, aged 60. ==Family and personal life==