[1] He moved to Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1929 and was a salesman and sales manager for a valve and fittings manufacturing business until 1937.

Allen was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Congresses.

He was commissioned a major in the United States Army Ordnance Corps in July 1942 and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in February 1943.

[1] After his time in Congress and the Army, he served in a variety of business positions: He retired from business activities in 1962 and moved from Milwaukee, to Keene, Virginia, where he died.

Allen married Katharine Hancock Wilson on January 17, 1925.