History: 79-420: History Research Seminar: Government Commissions, Bureau Records

Major White House files from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The centerpiece of the Truman files is the President's Secretary's file while the Eisenhower files are centered on the Confidential File and the Whitman File of the Eisenhower White House Central Files. The Cold War takes center stage in the Truman files on international relations and the stalling of Truman's Fair Deal program is documented in the files that pertain to domestic concerns. The Eisenhower files focus to a large degree on national defense and economic issues, two of the areas that Eisenhower had the most personal interest in.

Records of the FBI and the Subversive Activities Control Board from 1945-1972. Highlights of this module include J. Edgar Hoover's office files; documentation on the FBI's so-called "black bag jobs," as they were called before being renamed "surreptitious entries"; and the "Do Not File" File.

Presents the investigations made during the massive immigration wave at the turn of the 20th century. The files cover Asian immigration, especially Japanese and Chinese migration, to California, Hawaii, and other states; Mexican immigration to the U.S. from 1906-1930; and European immigration. There are also extensive files on the INS's regulation of prostitution and white slavery and on suppression of radical aliens.

Focuses on the diplomatic, legal and political maneuvering during and after World War II regarding German art looting in Europe, recovery of cultural objects dispersed during World War II, efforts by the U.S. and other Allied Powers to prevent the secreting of Axis assets, claims from victims for financial or property restitution from the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), other claims cases, and meeting minutes and background materials regarding the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold. On the topic of looted art, the documents primarily relate to negotiations and litigation for return of items to legitimate owners. Many missing art treasures surfaced in the U.S., usually when individuals attempted to sell items. Notable cases included paintings by Albrecht Durer, rare postage stamps, gold medals, and historic coins.

Roosevelt's Office Files constitute the heart and soul of the administrative record of the Roosevelt White House. They highlight the domestic and foreign concerns of the President and his administration. Roosevelt's policies, responses to crises, and plans for the future were all based on both classified and nonclassified information that he received and digested from all levels of government and the public. The office files represent the materials deemed especially important by the President on the basis of content and source. Major topics covered in the files are the Great Depression, the New Deal, America's involvement in World War II, the internal workings of the Roosevelt administration, and Roosevelt's personal leadership style. Several additional collections round out this module. These collections are: FBI Reports of the Franklin D. Roosevelt White House; Civilian Conservation Corps Press Releases; Records of the Committee on Economic Security; Department of Treasury records; and a special set of documentary records on the Roosevelt Presidency covering 50 important episodes and themes of the Roosevelt presidency.

Correspondence, experiment results, food analyses, and records about food safety and consumer protection. Documents regarding government regulation of food, distribution and marketing of food products, and consumer safety issues stem from the Bureau of Chemistry in the Department of Agriculture.

Correspondence and documents revealing how the government sought to prevent and control the production of products containing alcohol, from moonshine stills to industrial alcohol used in manufacturing medicinal products.

Shows how government agents also sought to regulate the lawful production of industrial alcohol for legitimate business uses, including medicinal and religious purposes. This collection contains many documents that shed light on the denaturing of ethyl alcohol, using additives that rendered it unfit for human consumption but useful in industrial production. It was this lawful production of alcohol that led government agents to investigate alcohol "diversion," that is, ways in which industrial alcohol might be turned into illicit channels

Founded in 1912 as part of the federal government's new commitment to promoting individual and family welfare, the Children's Bureau played an active role in the design and administration of many important social welfare measures including the 1921 Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act to reduce infant mortality and the campaign to reduce child labor in the 1930s. The Bureau's voluminous records, including correspondence, research reports, brochures, court hearings and speeches, represent a large and important collection of primary material for the study of the family and the health and well-being of children in the twentieth century. Not only do the documents enable researchers to trace the various stages of Federal involvement in the welfare of children and the development of family law, they also throw a fascinating light on the way welfare policies affected ordinary women.

Major subjects documented in this collection include arrests and bail; entrapment; evidence; search and seizure; third-degree practices (torture and other extreme measures during interrogation); wiretapping; foreign law enforcement; immigration, aliens, and deportation; labor; and lawlessness by police and other officials, including bondsmen, U.S. commissioners, coroners, detectives, Department of Justice and Customs agents, federal and state district attorneys, judges, and magistrates. There are also files on state bar associations; Prohibition and Prohibition killings; unfair prosecutions; personal rights; class prejudice against aliens, black Americans, and radicals; freedom of motion; freedom of the press; remedies (for official lawlessness); violence and intimidation; and prosecution reports.

he materials cover an extensive range of subjects, reflective of the wide-ranging mission of the commission itself. The major focus is on the impact of Prohibition on the American system of criminal justice in the 1920s. The commission explored the operation of the entire American criminal justice system, however, including criminal procedures of the police, prosecutors, and courts; police training; prisons and penal programs; issues of federalism and interjurisdictional cooperation; the compilation and maintenance of crime statistics; and strategies for dealing with controlled substances.

Thousands of pages of legal and congressional records dealing with the Teapot Dome oil reserve scandal of Warren G. Harding's administration. Covered in the collection are court proceedings against the three main defendants--Secretary of Interior Albert B. Fall, Harry F. Sinclair of Mammoth Oil Company, and Edward L. Doheny of Pan American Petroleum--and appeals to the Supreme Court by Mammoth, Pan American Petroleum, and Sinclair. The collection closes with thousands of pages of Senate documents dealing with naval oil reserve leases, including extensive hearings that revealed the essentials of the scandal.

Consists of a wide range of collections documenting the American workers and labor unions in the 20th century, with a special emphasis on the interaction between workers and the U.S. federal government. Going chronologically, the collection opens with Strike Files of the U.S. Department of Justice, records of the Woodrow Wilson Administration and American Workers and records on U.S. government surveillance of radical workers. Strike Files of the U.S. Department of Justice provides a remarkably complete record of the Department of Justice's evolving policies of intervention in labor disputes and documentation on the major strikes during the period from 1894-1920. The Wilson Administration files consist of Papers of the National War Labor Board (NWLB), Papers of the President's Mediation Commission, and records of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations. The NWLB records provide a remarkable window into the daily operations of private industry during a time of radical social change. The Papers of the President's Mediation Commission cover labor struggles by Arizona and Montana copper miners, the infamous deportation of Industrial Workers of the World-affiliated miners in Arizona in July 1917, and the tumultuous situation among workers in the Chicago meat-packing industry. The government surveillance files consist of U.S. Military Intelligence Reports on radicals from 1917-1941 and Department of Justice investigations of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the Communist Party, and the use of military force by the federal government in domestic disturbances between 1900 and 1938. The U.S. Military Intelligence Reports contain significant files on IWW strikes and organizing efforts during and immediately after World War I. There are also files on anarchist, socialist, social democratic, and libertarian groups. The other collections in this module covering unemployment relief in the 1930s, farm tenancy, labor strife during World War II, and records on migratory labor in the 1950s and 1960s.