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{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.</span> <div class=\"address\"> <span class=\"addressline\">Stephen A. Schwarzman Building</span> <span class=\"addressline\">Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788</span></div>"}
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{"value"=>"The National Civic Federation (NCF) was a New York-based conservative think-tank and reform alliance with strong ties to the Republican Party. It was founded in 1900 by the journalist, editor, and economist Ralph Easley (1867-1939) and others. During the period 1900-1920, the years which saw NCF's influence peak, the organization attempted to counteract socialist electoral successes and emergent labor militancy by joining capital and trade-unionism in a patriotic effort to end industrial strife. The ultimate aim was to bolster public confidence in the free enterprise system by initiating moderate social and industrial welfare programs, such as protective legislation for workers, and advocating restrained government involvement in business affairs."}
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{"value"=>"<p>National Civic Federation Records, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library.</p>"}
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{"value"=>"National Civic Federation", "type"=>"corpname"}
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{"value"=>"<div class=\"bioghist\"> <p> <em>The Origin of NCF in the Clash Over Combinations</em></p> <p>The National Civic Federation (NCF) was an alliance of reformers and political activists characteristic of the turn of the nineteenth century when the economic ideal of free competition collided with the reality of dominant industrial corporations. The new alliance had its roots in the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations hosted in 1899 by the Civic Federation of Chicago which was formed in 1893 by Ralph Easley. [1] Near the close of his first term President McKinley was forced by popular protest to respond to the growing number of combinations formed since 1895, his first year in office. McKinley's chief legal means in the conflict was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The Act capped years of campaigning by trust-busters, but was thought by many lawyers to be too loosely written to be of use. Easley's experiences as a municipal reformer and the success of the 1899 conference on trusts and combinations convinced him that effective long-term change was possible only at the national level. Shortly after the end of the conference, Easley began piecing together the nucleus of NCF.</p> <p>Following McKinley's assassination, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, moved carefully in dealing with the issue of trusts and combinations which he tended to see not as an economic or political question but as a moral question. Like McKinley, Roosevelt was eventually forced to deal with the trust-busters' contention that, owing to their combined wealth, large industrial corporations wielded too much power, and were a danger to free enterprise and democratic opportunity. After Roosevelt's election in 1904, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte began legal actions against Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and Union Pacific, which were among the richest and most powerful combinations. Bonaparte supported NCF, but was not as active in its affairs as Elihu Root, Lyman Gage, Oscar Straus, and George Cortelyou, four other members of NCF serving in Roosevelt's Cabinet.</p> <p>The thorny question for Roosevelt and Bonaparte was how far they should go. For NCF, however, the issue seems to have been more a question of whether industry should be free to follow its tendency to merge vulnerable companies with dominant corporations. Easley, Seth Low, and Jeremiah Jenks, the ideological leaders of NCF during this period, were persuaded that there had been progress in reaping the benefits of combinations, and they argued that incorporation was the principle that would rationalize and eventually end industrial strife. For reformers and activists alike, trusts and combinations formed a core issue around which other critical economic and social issues orbited.</p> <p>In 1907, three years after Roosevelt's election, NCF hosted a four-day national conference in Chicago on trusts and combinations that was a triumph for big business. [2] Speaker after speaker defended large-scale enterprise and attacked the wastefulness and destructiveness of free competition. Jeremiah Jenks hailed the rise of industrial combinations as a welcome instrument of control. On labor's side, Samuel Gompers gave it his support because it made organizing and negotiating less complicated. [3] In the following year NCF, led by Seth Low, attempted to replace the Sherman Anti-Trust Act with a bill that was more in line with the aims of big business. (Andrew Carnegie summarized these aims in his celebrated advice to put all the eggs in one basket and then watch the basket.) At first, Roosevelt endorsed the NCF bill, remarking that industrial combinations were essential. [4] Roosevelt made an about-face, however, and support for the proposed bill collapsed, when Low and Jenks were unable to show convincingly how their bill would be an improvement over the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.</p> <p>Over the years NCF pushed for an amendment of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Seth Low proposed another bill which was voted down in Congress; and in 1931, the Industrial Department promoted an unsuccessful bill drafted by James W. Gerard. [5] Ironically, the National Recovery Act of 1933 made redundant NCF's activism on the trusts and combinations question. According to Easley, the NRA accomplished virtually overnight the elimination from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of the objectionable sections dealing with trusts and combinations, something which NCF had been trying to do for thirty years. When the National Recovery Act expired in 1935 these features were restored to the Sherman Act by legislators Easley described as radicals.</p> <p>The gain, and then loss, of the support of a President of the United States on an issue as historically resonant as the conflict over trusts and combinations can be seen as NCF's grand moment on the national stage. Although NCF did not succeed in amending the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, it did gain from its attempts a large measure of reform credibility, which helped to fund social and industrial welfare projects that were more humanitarian and useful. Two surveys, both undertaken in 1914 by the Industrial Economics Department, contradict the progressive picture of reality that NCF promoted in its anti-socialist campaign. The more wide-ranging survey was of social, economic, industrial, and political improvements since the 1870s; the other survey dealt with the socioeconomic effects in the United States of the war in Europe. More compact in scope than the others, the latter survey eloquently conveys the fear of economic depression and unemployment experienced by employers and employees throughout the United States. The completed questionnaires for the 1925 survey of old age dependency challenge the mythology of Jazz Age liberation and happy times. NCF's surveys, national conferences, studies, and reports addressed, but did not emphasize, the social and economic inequalities and anxieties of the Progressive Era. Some of NCF's collaborative work with other organizations helped to improve working conditions for men, women, and children in the industrial system. But none of these activities reached the same high level of public prominence as the war of words over the question of trusts and combinations.</p></div> <div class=\"bioghist\"> <p> <em>The Making of NCF</em></p> <p>From the evidence in the records, it is clear that the founders of NCF never intended it to be merely a reform association, although it was publicized as one. Easley, NCF's spokesperson, was an experienced activist committed to advancing the political program of the Republican Party, and generally ignored the important distinction between disinterested independent reform and partisan political activism.</p> <p>Easley saw NCF as a patriotic coalition of labor and capital. Behind this patriotic vision was the basic conviction that a prosperous and democratic society was possible. Easley also insisted that industrial strife was not caused by class struggle, but by the failure of employees and employers to recognize the existence of a partnership of labor, capital, and government that was initiated during the Civil War. Easley, together with Gompers and Mitchell (labor's chief representatives in NCF's hierarchy), believed that a partnership of labor and capital could advance a nation grappling with problems triggered by historic developments such as rapid industrialization and massive immigration. The confidence needed to compete with Great Britain, France, and Germany for global markets was feasible only in a unified nation with focused and coordinated political and economic objectives. The emergence of the United States as a world power would not happen as long as there were conflicts between labor and capital over fundamental economic issues such as the distribution of the national wealth created by industry.</p> <p>Starting at the end of 1899, Easley attracted to NCF the financial support and active participation of businessmen and public figures predisposed to a mix of reform and political activism. Among them were, to name only a few, Vincent Astor, William Baldwin, August Belmont, Jr., Charles J. Bonaparte, Andrew Carnegie, Marcus A. Hanna, Jeremiah Jenks, Seth Low, Cyrus H. McCormick, Alton B. Parker, George W. Perkins, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and William H. Taft. Many of these prominent men served as presidents of the Federation, and chaired departments, committees, and national conferences created to study and report on a wide spectrum of significant social, economic, and political issues. Over the years almost all served, in various combinations, on the Executive Council, NCF's ruling body, where they defined the broad lines of policy they hoped would determine the relationship of government to capital and labor.</p> <p>Easley also sought to build a conservative labor base to serve as a bulwark against socialism. The foremost recruit was Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, who hoped that his connection with NCF would gain for the labor movement a better relationship with business. The principle spokesman for labor in NCF, and NCF's advocate in the labor movement, Gompers also served as both president and vice-president, and as a member of the important Industrial Economics Department. Gompers was Easley's close friend and advisor, and made use of Ralph and Gertrude Beeks Easley, and other NCF stalwarts, when he served during World War I as chairman of the Committee on Labor of the [United States] Council of National Defense. Another labor recruit was John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers of America, who chaired the Trade Agreements Department and was a key figure in the campaign to establish industrial peace. In 1911 Mitchell was forced to resign from NCF by the union rank and file who believed that he and Gompers were lending their names to an essentially conservative and anti-union movement.</p> <p>The male-dominated federation attracted women social reformers such as Easley's eventual wife, Gertrude Beeks (see biographical note below), the civic worker Maude Wetmore, the wealthy socialite Lolita Van Rensselaer, and the feminist and historian of Chinese immigration, Mary Roberts Coolidge, who corresponded with NCF's Immigration Department. Martha Moore Avery, a former socialist, director of the Boston School of Political Economy, and articulate leader of a group of Boston anti-socialist consultants and lecturers, was deeply involved in NCF's anti-socialist work. [6] Other conservative women involved in NCF were Jennie Dewey Heath, a staunch anti-suffragist and secretary of the National League for the Civic Education of Women [7], and the philanthropist, Helen Gould Shepard, who contributed large amounts of money to the Easleys' anti-communist campaign in the 1930s. [8]</p></div> <div class=\"bioghist\"> <p> <em>NCF's Loss of Influence after World War I</em></p> <p>The enactment of federal legislation favorable to industries, and the merger of the peacetime reform ideology into the war organization (notably the Council of National Defense [9], War Industries Board, the War Policies Labor Board, and the Housing Corporation) inadvertently undercut NCF's role as a reform body. The war years also saw the beginning of the rapid decline of NCF's relationship with big business, which had been the organization's main source of financial support. NCF's influence with labor all but vanished when Samuel Gompers died in 1924. The Easleys had to endure as well the growth of the Soviet Union as a global power. These were shocks from which NCF did not recover.</p> <p>The early 1930s saw Easley's growing obsession with internal subversion and the demonization of the union movement. In 1930 Easley was involved with plans for making an anti-communist feature film in Hollywood. [10] Easley was an early advocate of the National Recovery Act of 1933 because it revised the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But he soon became a staunch foe of all federal projects which he saw as collectivist in spirit and dominated by communist ideology. [11] Easley condemned the New Deal in a series of harsh weekly letters to President Roosevelt, campaigned against the Mexican government's expropriation of American-owned property, was publicly hostile to the British Labor Party, opposed taxation in the securities field, and in 1937 led a drive against sit-down strikes.</p> <p>The Depression Era was not NCF's time. In the eyes of many other conservatives and ardent anti-communists, Easley, NCF's chief spokesman, had become merely a megalomaniac. By the time of Easley's death in 1939, he and Gertrude Beeks Easley had suffered through years of poverty, [12] and public scandal, personal defeat, and humiliation linked to the so-called Means Affair. [13] NCF had been pushed aside by rising liberalism and had become almost exclusively a weapon in Easley's personal crusade to bring down the Soviet Union. [14] Gertrude Beeks Easley inherited NCF after her husband's death, and, despite the nearly complete loss of financial support, gamely carried the discredited organization into the Cold War Era. In 1949, NCF was evicted from its New York headquarters by the General Electric Realty Corporation for non-payment of rent. In 1950, humiliated and beset by debts that she could not hope to pay, Gertrude Beeks Easley closed down NCF's operations and declared bankruptcy. She died later that year.</p></div> <div class=\"footnotes\"> <div class=\"note\">1 - National Civic Federation Records. Civic Federation of Chicago, boxes 155-168.</div> <div class=\"note\">2 - Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, box 241, folders 5 and 6; box 242, folders 1-6; and box 246, folders 5-10.</div> <div class=\"note\">3 - . Trade Agreements Department, box 255, folder 4, enclosures to form letter dated May 11, 1906, from [Jeremiah Jenks]. Jenks was a political economist, a student of the combinations movement (he was the chairman of the NCF sub-committee that drafted a bill to amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act), chairman of the Immigration Department, and one of NCF's theorists. The specific reform and patriotic objectives of NCF during the Progressive Era are spelled out in the enclosures of the letter, which was sent to businessmen, unions, and others interested in NCF's plans. Included in the enclosures are a prospectus outlining the purpose of the Industrial Economics Department, particularly in its anti-socialist activities. For more details on this subject see also Industrial Economics Department, box 193, folders 1-8; and for information on Jenks and the NCF bill to amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act see the Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, boxes 241-247.</div> <div class=\"note\">4 - The NCF bill of 1908 to amend the Sherman Anti-trust Act was drafted by a sub-committee chaired by Jeremiah Jenks. Members of the sub-committee included Nicholas Murray Butler, Albert Shaw, Elward H. Gary, Isaac N. Seligman, August Belmont, Seth Low, and representing labor, Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, and James O'Connell. Gompers, Low, and Jenks championed the bill in a hearing before the Congressional Sub-Committee on the Judiciary. Also speaking for the NCF bill was Theodore Marburg, publicist and consultant to NCF, who testified before the House Sub-Committee on the Judiciary that, “the principle of this [NCF] bill is regulation not ruin”. See Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, box 246, for the Minutes of the House hearing on the NCF amendments to the Sherman Anti-trust Act. There are also testimonies in behalf of the NCF bill by Low, Jenks, Gompers, Marburg, and others.</div> <div class=\"note\">5 - Industrial Department, box 183. There is additional material on the subject of trusts and combinations during this period in the Commission on Industrial Inquiry, boxes 381-382.</div> <div class=\"note\">6 - Avery's correspondence is in the Industrial Economics Department, Box 186, Folders 1 and 2, and her writings on socialism are in the Subversive Activities Files, Box 438, Folders 1 and 2.</div> <div class=\"note\">7 - See Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, Correspondence re: Woman Suffrage, Box 488, folder 9.</div> <div class=\"note\">8 - See the Personal Papers of Ralph and Gertrude Beeks Easley, box 495, folders 7-11, box 496, and footnote 13, for material relating to the Gaston Means Affair, into which Mrs. Shepard was drawn when she gave Ralph Easley the money to purchase several trunks containing alleged evidence of communist subversion which turned out to be forgeries.</div> <div class=\"note\">9 - NCF's well-oiled administrative machinery was used by the Council of National Defense to prepare labor, capital, and business for the entry of the United States into World War I. Samuel Gompers was the chairman of the Council's Committee on Labor, and Gertrude Beeks Easley, was the committee's secretary. Louis Coolidge was the chairman of the Committee on Welfare Work. Other notable members of NCF who were involved in the war work of the Council were Ralph Easley (apparently only as an advisor), Hayes Robbins, V. Everit Macy, and Otto Eidlitz. See Council of National Defense, boxes 159-162.</div> <div class=\"note\">10 - See Easley's correspondence with Lucien Wheeler, a private detective, in the Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, Box 488, folder 2.</div> <div class=\"note\">11 - Subversive Activities Files. Box 439, Folders 13 and 14, Communist Domination of the Works Progress Administration.</div> <div class=\"note\">12 - Subjects Files. Box 418, Folders 7-11, Leases, 1931-1939 and Rent Arrears Correspondence. Extraordinary correspondence with NCF's landlord, the General Electric Realty Corporation, revealing the Easleys' poverty and attempts to keep NCF alive.</div> <div class=\"note\">13 - Subversive Activities Files. Box 444, Folder 4, Boxes 445-448, Means Affair. Gaston Means was one of sixteen undercover agents and informants involved in Easley's anti-communist campaign in the 1930s. Means sold to Easley for $25,000 documents passed off as evidence of massive communist subversion in the United States. The documents turned out to be forgeries. Subsequently, Easley suspected that it was a plot by the Soviet secret police to discredit him.</div> <div class=\"note\">14 - Subversive Activities Files, boxes 435-457, documenting Easley's approach to combating anarchism, socialism, communism, and liberalism.</div></div>"}
{"class"=>"bioghist", "value"=>"<p> The Origin of NCF in the Clash Over Combinations</p> <p>The National Civic Federation (NCF) was an alliance of reformers and political activists characteristic of the turn of the nineteenth century when the economic ideal of free competition collided with the reality of dominant industrial corporations. The new alliance had its roots in the National Conference on Trusts and Combinations hosted in 1899 by the Civic Federation of Chicago which was formed in 1893 by Ralph Easley. [1] Near the close of his first term President McKinley was forced by popular protest to respond to the growing number of combinations formed since 1895, his first year in office. McKinley's chief legal means in the conflict was the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The Act capped years of campaigning by trust-busters, but was thought by many lawyers to be too loosely written to be of use. Easley's experiences as a municipal reformer and the success of the 1899 conference on trusts and combinations convinced him that effective long-term change was possible only at the national level. Shortly after the end of the conference, Easley began piecing together the nucleus of NCF.</p> <p>Following McKinley's assassination, his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, moved carefully in dealing with the issue of trusts and combinations which he tended to see not as an economic or political question but as a moral question. Like McKinley, Roosevelt was eventually forced to deal with the trust-busters' contention that, owing to their combined wealth, large industrial corporations wielded too much power, and were a danger to free enterprise and democratic opportunity. After Roosevelt's election in 1904, Attorney General Charles Bonaparte began legal actions against Standard Oil, American Tobacco, and Union Pacific, which were among the richest and most powerful combinations. Bonaparte supported NCF, but was not as active in its affairs as Elihu Root, Lyman Gage, Oscar Straus, and George Cortelyou, four other members of NCF serving in Roosevelt's Cabinet.</p> <p>The thorny question for Roosevelt and Bonaparte was how far they should go. For NCF, however, the issue seems to have been more a question of whether industry should be free to follow its tendency to merge vulnerable companies with dominant corporations. Easley, Seth Low, and Jeremiah Jenks, the ideological leaders of NCF during this period, were persuaded that there had been progress in reaping the benefits of combinations, and they argued that incorporation was the principle that would rationalize and eventually end industrial strife. For reformers and activists alike, trusts and combinations formed a core issue around which other critical economic and social issues orbited.</p> <p>In 1907, three years after Roosevelt's election, NCF hosted a four-day national conference in Chicago on trusts and combinations that was a triumph for big business. [2] Speaker after speaker defended large-scale enterprise and attacked the wastefulness and destructiveness of free competition. Jeremiah Jenks hailed the rise of industrial combinations as a welcome instrument of control. On labor's side, Samuel Gompers gave it his support because it made organizing and negotiating less complicated. [3] In the following year NCF, led by Seth Low, attempted to replace the Sherman Anti-Trust Act with a bill that was more in line with the aims of big business. (Andrew Carnegie summarized these aims in his celebrated advice to put all the eggs in one basket and then watch the basket.) At first, Roosevelt endorsed the NCF bill, remarking that industrial combinations were essential. [4] Roosevelt made an about-face, however, and support for the proposed bill collapsed, when Low and Jenks were unable to show convincingly how their bill would be an improvement over the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.</p> <p>Over the years NCF pushed for an amendment of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Seth Low proposed another bill which was voted down in Congress; and in 1931, the Industrial Department promoted an unsuccessful bill drafted by James W. Gerard. [5] Ironically, the National Recovery Act of 1933 made redundant NCF's activism on the trusts and combinations question. According to Easley, the NRA accomplished virtually overnight the elimination from the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of the objectionable sections dealing with trusts and combinations, something which NCF had been trying to do for thirty years. When the National Recovery Act expired in 1935 these features were restored to the Sherman Act by legislators Easley described as radicals.</p> <p>The gain, and then loss, of the support of a President of the United States on an issue as historically resonant as the conflict over trusts and combinations can be seen as NCF's grand moment on the national stage. Although NCF did not succeed in amending the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, it did gain from its attempts a large measure of reform credibility, which helped to fund social and industrial welfare projects that were more humanitarian and useful. Two surveys, both undertaken in 1914 by the Industrial Economics Department, contradict the progressive picture of reality that NCF promoted in its anti-socialist campaign. The more wide-ranging survey was of social, economic, industrial, and political improvements since the 1870s; the other survey dealt with the socioeconomic effects in the United States of the war in Europe. More compact in scope than the others, the latter survey eloquently conveys the fear of economic depression and unemployment experienced by employers and employees throughout the United States. The completed questionnaires for the 1925 survey of old age dependency challenge the mythology of Jazz Age liberation and happy times. NCF's surveys, national conferences, studies, and reports addressed, but did not emphasize, the social and economic inequalities and anxieties of the Progressive Era. Some of NCF's collaborative work with other organizations helped to improve working conditions for men, women, and children in the industrial system. But none of these activities reached the same high level of public prominence as the war of words over the question of trusts and combinations.</p>"}
{"class"=>"bioghist", "value"=>"<p> The Making of NCF</p> <p>From the evidence in the records, it is clear that the founders of NCF never intended it to be merely a reform association, although it was publicized as one. Easley, NCF's spokesperson, was an experienced activist committed to advancing the political program of the Republican Party, and generally ignored the important distinction between disinterested independent reform and partisan political activism.</p> <p>Easley saw NCF as a patriotic coalition of labor and capital. Behind this patriotic vision was the basic conviction that a prosperous and democratic society was possible. Easley also insisted that industrial strife was not caused by class struggle, but by the failure of employees and employers to recognize the existence of a partnership of labor, capital, and government that was initiated during the Civil War. Easley, together with Gompers and Mitchell (labor's chief representatives in NCF's hierarchy), believed that a partnership of labor and capital could advance a nation grappling with problems triggered by historic developments such as rapid industrialization and massive immigration. The confidence needed to compete with Great Britain, France, and Germany for global markets was feasible only in a unified nation with focused and coordinated political and economic objectives. The emergence of the United States as a world power would not happen as long as there were conflicts between labor and capital over fundamental economic issues such as the distribution of the national wealth created by industry.</p> <p>Starting at the end of 1899, Easley attracted to NCF the financial support and active participation of businessmen and public figures predisposed to a mix of reform and political activism. Among them were, to name only a few, Vincent Astor, William Baldwin, August Belmont, Jr., Charles J. Bonaparte, Andrew Carnegie, Marcus A. Hanna, Jeremiah Jenks, Seth Low, Cyrus H. McCormick, Alton B. Parker, George W. Perkins, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and William H. Taft. Many of these prominent men served as presidents of the Federation, and chaired departments, committees, and national conferences created to study and report on a wide spectrum of significant social, economic, and political issues. Over the years almost all served, in various combinations, on the Executive Council, NCF's ruling body, where they defined the broad lines of policy they hoped would determine the relationship of government to capital and labor.</p> <p>Easley also sought to build a conservative labor base to serve as a bulwark against socialism. The foremost recruit was Samuel Gompers, the president of the American Federation of Labor, who hoped that his connection with NCF would gain for the labor movement a better relationship with business. The principle spokesman for labor in NCF, and NCF's advocate in the labor movement, Gompers also served as both president and vice-president, and as a member of the important Industrial Economics Department. Gompers was Easley's close friend and advisor, and made use of Ralph and Gertrude Beeks Easley, and other NCF stalwarts, when he served during World War I as chairman of the Committee on Labor of the [United States] Council of National Defense. Another labor recruit was John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers of America, who chaired the Trade Agreements Department and was a key figure in the campaign to establish industrial peace. In 1911 Mitchell was forced to resign from NCF by the union rank and file who believed that he and Gompers were lending their names to an essentially conservative and anti-union movement.</p> <p>The male-dominated federation attracted women social reformers such as Easley's eventual wife, Gertrude Beeks (see biographical note below), the civic worker Maude Wetmore, the wealthy socialite Lolita Van Rensselaer, and the feminist and historian of Chinese immigration, Mary Roberts Coolidge, who corresponded with NCF's Immigration Department. Martha Moore Avery, a former socialist, director of the Boston School of Political Economy, and articulate leader of a group of Boston anti-socialist consultants and lecturers, was deeply involved in NCF's anti-socialist work. [6] Other conservative women involved in NCF were Jennie Dewey Heath, a staunch anti-suffragist and secretary of the National League for the Civic Education of Women [7], and the philanthropist, Helen Gould Shepard, who contributed large amounts of money to the Easleys' anti-communist campaign in the 1930s. [8]</p>"}
{"class"=>"bioghist", "value"=>"<p> NCF's Loss of Influence after World War I</p> <p>The enactment of federal legislation favorable to industries, and the merger of the peacetime reform ideology into the war organization (notably the Council of National Defense [9], War Industries Board, the War Policies Labor Board, and the Housing Corporation) inadvertently undercut NCF's role as a reform body. The war years also saw the beginning of the rapid decline of NCF's relationship with big business, which had been the organization's main source of financial support. NCF's influence with labor all but vanished when Samuel Gompers died in 1924. The Easleys had to endure as well the growth of the Soviet Union as a global power. These were shocks from which NCF did not recover.</p> <p>The early 1930s saw Easley's growing obsession with internal subversion and the demonization of the union movement. In 1930 Easley was involved with plans for making an anti-communist feature film in Hollywood. [10] Easley was an early advocate of the National Recovery Act of 1933 because it revised the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But he soon became a staunch foe of all federal projects which he saw as collectivist in spirit and dominated by communist ideology. [11] Easley condemned the New Deal in a series of harsh weekly letters to President Roosevelt, campaigned against the Mexican government's expropriation of American-owned property, was publicly hostile to the British Labor Party, opposed taxation in the securities field, and in 1937 led a drive against sit-down strikes.</p> <p>The Depression Era was not NCF's time. In the eyes of many other conservatives and ardent anti-communists, Easley, NCF's chief spokesman, had become merely a megalomaniac. By the time of Easley's death in 1939, he and Gertrude Beeks Easley had suffered through years of poverty, [12] and public scandal, personal defeat, and humiliation linked to the so-called Means Affair. [13] NCF had been pushed aside by rising liberalism and had become almost exclusively a weapon in Easley's personal crusade to bring down the Soviet Union. [14] Gertrude Beeks Easley inherited NCF after her husband's death, and, despite the nearly complete loss of financial support, gamely carried the discredited organization into the Cold War Era. In 1949, NCF was evicted from its New York headquarters by the General Electric Realty Corporation for non-payment of rent. In 1950, humiliated and beset by debts that she could not hope to pay, Gertrude Beeks Easley closed down NCF's operations and declared bankruptcy. She died later that year.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<div class=\"bioghist\"> <p> <em>Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley</em></p> <p>Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley played critical roles in NCF, and the organization is unimaginable without them. Ralph Easley, a former mathematics teacher, newspaper reporter, editor of the political-economics department of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, publisher, postmaster of Hutchinson, Kansas, activist in the anti-woman suffrage movement, and staunch mid-western Republican activist and patriot, was born in Frederick, Illinois in 1856, and educated in public schools in Quincy. In 1875 Easley moved to Hutchinson, Kansas where he taught in the public schools in 1877 and 1878, was postmaster from 1882 to 1887, and proprietor and editor of the Hutchinson Daily News, 1883-1891. He was in charge of the Politico-Economic Department of Chicago Inter-Ocean and was one of the founders in 1893 of the Civic Federation of Chicago. Easley left the Civic Federation of Chicago in 1900, and moved to New York City where he established NCF's central office. In between he promoted national conferences in 1898 on the reform of primary elections, and also on the future foreign policy of the U.S., and in 1899 on trusts and combinations. Reputedly a persuasive writer and talker, Easley also had a talent for organizing, and was not overly obsequious when courting the wealthy and powerful men whose support was crucial to NCF's work. NCF's director and chief spokesperson until his death in 1939, Easley had a hand in everything in which NCF was involved.</p> <p>Formerly a director of the course in welfare work at New York University, Gertrude Beeks Easley was, in her own right, an important social-welfare advocate. Mrs. Easley was born in Greenville, Tennessee in 1867, and educated in the public schools in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Chicago. Before coming to NCF, Mrs. Easley was sent by William H. Taft to Panama to suggest improvements in the condition of employees, organized and directed the welfare scheme for the International Harvester Company, and wrote about Southern cotton mills. [1] From 1898 to1909 Mrs. Easley was the president of the National Association of Women Stenographers and the National Association of Business Women. From 1903 Mrs. Easley was the director of NCF's Welfare Department. Mrs. Easley was the durable director of NCF's Industrial Welfare Department, which was commissioned in 1910 by the Executive Council of NCF to examine the question of old age dependency. Mrs. Easley also organized departments to examine other social-welfare issues such as workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and profit sharing. In 1917 she was appointed Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of National Defense, and was an assistant to Louis Coolidge, the chairman of the Council's Welfare Committee. Mrs. Easley was also involved with her husband in the anti-woman suffrage movement. After her husband's death, Mrs. Easley, despite the nearly complete loss of financial support, led NCF into the Cold War Era before declaring bankruptcy. The full magnitude of Mrs. Easley's role in NCF and conservative reform and political activism is evident in these records. The Easleys were married in 1917. It was his second marriage, and her first. For further details of Mrs. Easley's work for NCF consult the series notes for the Council of National Defense, Industrial Welfare Department, Woman's Department, and the Subversive Activities Files. For additional biographical information on Mr. and Mrs. Easley see Series XV, Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, 1876-1938.</p></div> <div class=\"footnotes\"> <div class=\"note\">1 - Beeks [Easley], Gertrude. In Southern Cotton Mills, SWTE, August 11, 1906. Beeks quotes a cotton mill president as having said, \"industrial employee welfare work is a cold blooded business\".</div></div>"}
{"class"=>"bioghist", "value"=>"<p> Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley</p> <p>Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley played critical roles in NCF, and the organization is unimaginable without them. Ralph Easley, a former mathematics teacher, newspaper reporter, editor of the political-economics department of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, publisher, postmaster of Hutchinson, Kansas, activist in the anti-woman suffrage movement, and staunch mid-western Republican activist and patriot, was born in Frederick, Illinois in 1856, and educated in public schools in Quincy. In 1875 Easley moved to Hutchinson, Kansas where he taught in the public schools in 1877 and 1878, was postmaster from 1882 to 1887, and proprietor and editor of the Hutchinson Daily News, 1883-1891. He was in charge of the Politico-Economic Department of Chicago Inter-Ocean and was one of the founders in 1893 of the Civic Federation of Chicago. Easley left the Civic Federation of Chicago in 1900, and moved to New York City where he established NCF's central office. In between he promoted national conferences in 1898 on the reform of primary elections, and also on the future foreign policy of the U.S., and in 1899 on trusts and combinations. Reputedly a persuasive writer and talker, Easley also had a talent for organizing, and was not overly obsequious when courting the wealthy and powerful men whose support was crucial to NCF's work. NCF's director and chief spokesperson until his death in 1939, Easley had a hand in everything in which NCF was involved.</p> <p>Formerly a director of the course in welfare work at New York University, Gertrude Beeks Easley was, in her own right, an important social-welfare advocate. Mrs. Easley was born in Greenville, Tennessee in 1867, and educated in the public schools in Fort Wayne, Indiana and Chicago. Before coming to NCF, Mrs. Easley was sent by William H. Taft to Panama to suggest improvements in the condition of employees, organized and directed the welfare scheme for the International Harvester Company, and wrote about Southern cotton mills. [1] From 1898 to1909 Mrs. Easley was the president of the National Association of Women Stenographers and the National Association of Business Women. From 1903 Mrs. Easley was the director of NCF's Welfare Department. Mrs. Easley was the durable director of NCF's Industrial Welfare Department, which was commissioned in 1910 by the Executive Council of NCF to examine the question of old age dependency. Mrs. Easley also organized departments to examine other social-welfare issues such as workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, health insurance, and profit sharing. In 1917 she was appointed Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Council of National Defense, and was an assistant to Louis Coolidge, the chairman of the Council's Welfare Committee. Mrs. Easley was also involved with her husband in the anti-woman suffrage movement. After her husband's death, Mrs. Easley, despite the nearly complete loss of financial support, led NCF into the Cold War Era before declaring bankruptcy. The full magnitude of Mrs. Easley's role in NCF and conservative reform and political activism is evident in these records. The Easleys were married in 1917. It was his second marriage, and her first. For further details of Mrs. Easley's work for NCF consult the series notes for the Council of National Defense, Industrial Welfare Department, Woman's Department, and the Subversive Activities Files. For additional biographical information on Mr. and Mrs. Easley see Series XV, Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, 1876-1938.</p>"}
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{"value"=>"<p>The records of NCF span the years 1894-1949 and include the records, 1894-1901, of the Civic Federation of Chicago, which was the model for the National Civic Federation. The bulk of the collection documents the turbulent years 1894-c.1930, and is an indispensable resource for the study of conservative-nationalist ideology and its application to wide-scale reform and political activism in the United States. NCF's core activities were centered on gathering, condensing, analyzing, and interpreting data on social and industrial welfare conditions; making recommendations to employers for improving working conditions; and organizing support for protective legislation. In the process NCF generated massive quantities of correspondence and documentation.</p> <p>Many critical social, economic, and political questions of the twentieth century are reflected in the records of NCF. Among them are the effects on American society of rapid industrial development, capitalist expansion and America's rise as an industrial power; the feasibility of workmen's compensation and old age pensions; the need for a conservative labor leadership to counteract growing labor militancy; the dangers of subversive activities; the growth of socialism abroad and the fear of it at home; problems linked to mass immigration particularly from China and eastern and southern Europe; the problems created by the inequitable distribution of the wealth generated by industrial production; the social welfare problems associated with the increase in the number of women in the work force; the social and economic effects in the United States of World War I and the political upheavals and economic depression that followed in its wake; the alleged activities of communists during the Depression; and the emergence of the Soviet Union, and the events of the 1920s and 1930s leading up to a second world-wide conflict and concluding in the so-called Cold War between former allies, the United States and the Soviet Union.</p> <p>The general correspondence, 1900-1949, is essential for tracking the evolution of NCF's reform ideology and the gradual reduction in the range of its involvement in reform and political activism. The general correspondence contains communications of officers, leaders and members of NCF with actuaries, businessmen, labor officials, clergymen, social workers, economists, politicians, academics, farmers, government bureaus, ex-socialists, government officials, statisticians, and others involved in NCF's complex mix of reform and political activism.</p> <p>Among the most informative departmental materials are the files of the Industrial Economics Department and its 1914 progress survey committees; the exchange of letters between Ralph Easley and the anti-socialist political activist, Martha Moore Avery; the correspondence and papers relating to the survey in 1914 of the effects in the U.S. of the war in Europe; and the correspondence and miscellaneous papers of the Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department dealing with NCF's 1907 conference on trusts and combinations and its proposed amendments to the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Of exceptional interest are the files of the Immigration Department, particularly the records relating to the victimization of Chinese and other immigrants; the complete files of the Industrial Welfare Department, especially the correspondence of Gertrude Beeks Easley, the director of the department, with the lawyer, P. Tecumseh Sherman and the actuary, Edmund S. Cogswell, related to the important old age dependency survey; and the completed field survey questionnaires and other papers related to the subject of old age dependency and pensions.</p> <p>Other records of special interest include the personal correspondence and papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley which contain candid statements relating to the Easleys' political positions on various subjects, and chronicle their deteriorating relationship with former allies in the business world. The collection also contains very interesting interviews (in Subjects Files, Box 420, Folder 7, The Negro) by Charles Mowbry White with W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Frederick Moore, Chandler Owens, and A. Philip Randolph; and correspondence and papers generated by affiliated organizations such as the [U.S.] Council of National Defense, the Civic Federation of Chicago, and the League of National Unity.</p> <p>Ralph and Gertrude Beeks Easley were the linchpins in the work of NCF. Among other significant figures were August Belmont, Jr., William Baldwin, Nicholas Murray Butler, Andrew Carnegie, Edmund S. Cogswell, John R. Commons, Richard T. Ely, Roland P. Falkner, John H. Finley, Samuel Gompers, Jennie Dewey Heath, Jeremiah W. Jenks, Seth Low, V. Everit Macy, Ogden L. Mills, John Mitchell, Martha Moore Avery, Anne Morgan, William J. Pape, Alton B. Parker, George W. Perkins, Hayes Robbins, Edwin R. A. Seligman, Elihu Root, Warren S. Stone, Charles R. Towson, Lolita Van Rensselaer (Mrs. Coffin Van Rensselaer), Maude Wetmore, and Talcott Williams.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The National Civic Federation records are arranged in fifteen series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1230927'>Series I. General Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The general correspondence traces the wide-ranging administrative concerns, changes, and development of NCF. This series reveals an organization designed to act as a conservative sounding-board on political, economic, and social issues, and to study and report on the problems created by phenomena such as industrial competition, industrial combinations, the rise of a militant labor movement, the growing threat of socialism, radical subversion of American institutions, World War I, the Russian Revolution and the Bolshevik coup d'état, the rise of fascism and nazism, economic depression, and other significant social, economic, and political questions. The general correspondence also documents NCF's role as an agent of patriotic conservatism.</p> <p>The majority of outgoing letters were written by Ralph Easley as chairman of the Executive Council and as NCF's chief spokesman and general advisor. There are also letters by key members of NCF including Gertrude Beeks Easley, August Belmont, Jeremiah Jenks, Seth Low, John Mitchell, Samuel Gompers, and others, with conservative and patriotic organizations, welfare reformers, labor leaders, businessmen, industrialists, statisticians, actuaries, politicians and others engaged in reform, political activism, or patriotic activities.</p> <p>The letters of the historian John R. Commons to Easley analyzing the anthracite strike of 1902 are notable, as are the letters of John Mitchell, the leader of the mine workers, and the recommendations of Conrad Reno for the settlement of the textile workers' strike in the mills of Fall River, Massachusetts in 1904. Some other prominent correspondents are Henry Carter Adams, James Atkinson, John Barrett, Marriott Brosius, Clara Bell Brown, Charles G. Dawes, James Dill, Richard T. Ely, Lyman Gage, August E. Gans, Elbert H. Gary, Marcus A. Hanna, Samuel Insull, Seth Low, Frank O. Lowden, Robert La Follette, and U.D. Underwood.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1231832'>Series II. Affiliated Organizations</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1232001'>Series III. Executive Council Meetings</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The Executive Council was the governing body of NCF. Chaired by Ralph Easley, it consisted of the current president of NCF as presiding officer, two vice presidents, and chairmen of departments. The members of the council, such as Vincent Astor, Gertrude Beeks Easley, Marshall Fields, Jeremiah Jenks, Samuel Gompers, Seth Low, George W. Perkins, Maude Wetmore, and Talcott Williams, determined the social, economic, and political issues NCF would study and the patriotic causes it would support. The indefatigable and persuasive Ralph Easley was an active chairman, drawing on his skills as a journalist in writing the bulk of the council's (and, by and large, the Federation's) general correspondence and memoranda, and serving as an informed advisor to department and committee chairmen. Easley was a catalyst, and as a rule the work of the Executive Council has his stamp on it, even when it was presided over by others, including such commanding figures as Seth Low, Andrew Carnegie, Elihu Root, Jeremiah Jenks, Talcott Williams, and Samuel Gompers.</p> <p>The meetings of the Executive Council during the period 1916-1919 were dominated by the war in Europe. Among the subjects discussed were the adjustments that would have to be made to economic and industrial arrangements if the United States entered the war; which of the measures devised by the government pertaining to labor and capital should be retained after the war; what mandatory changes in immigration laws could be expected as a result of the war; and the problems linked to the demobilization of the armed forces and the conversion of industries back to pre-war production. One issue that caused great concern in the council during the war was the rise in the United States of a movement of pacifists, socialists, Irish revolutionaries, and German spies which, in the council's opinion, comprised an international conspiracy committed to putting an end to colonialism and nationalism. The unstable economy of the 1920s and 1930s, and the fear of revolution, focused the Council's attention on the Soviet Union and communist agitation in the United States. This anti-communism set the tone for much of NCF's post-World War I activities right up to the beginning of the Cold War.</p> <p>The chronologically arranged correspondence relates to meetings and consists chiefly of form-letter invitations to members of the Executive Council and its subordinate Executive Committee and guest speakers, and responses. Some of the correspondents are Carrie Chapman Catt, Coleman du Pont, and Samuel Gompers. Also in the records are miscellaneous papers including minutes of meetings (both the stenographer's official version and excerpts), shorthand notes, speeches, remarks, lists of names, and statistics.</p> <p>The records of the meetings of the Executive Council and the Executive Committee have been integrated into one chronological sequence -- the council records for a particular year preceding the committee records for that year. It is sometimes difficult to identify which records were created by the Executive Council and which by the Executive Committee. Whenever unclear, the records were arranged on the basis of the sense of the texts. The duties of the Executive Committee included hosting dinner-conferences focussing on different questions. The members were divided into three sections representing the public, the employers, and labor, and included Nicholas M. Butler, Louis Coolidge, George Cortelyou, Samuel Gompers, Timothy Healy, Franklin MacVeagh, Ogden Mills, Warren S. Stone, and William H. Taft. The correspondence consists almost completely of invitations to attend meetings.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1232092'>Series IV. Departmental Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The records of the fourteen permanent administrative departments and their research special committees span forty years and are rich in content. Appointed by the Executive Council to investigate and report on the prominent social, political, and economic issues of the period 1901-1941, the departments generated records that are indispensable for the study of conservative political activism and reform.</p> <p>The departments studied industrialism as an organizing agent, investigated socialism as a subversive force, examined the problems tied to immigration from China and southern Europe, considered the need to protect American interests in the Pacific, and explored the development in both the theory and the practice of profit-sharing in the United States. The departments also designed surveys on the question of social, political, and economic progress in the United States since the 1870s, and on specific social welfare issues such as old age dependency. The first progress survey, begun in 1912, was carried out by the Industrial Economics Department, and the second in 1923 by the Current Economic and Political Movements Department. In 1914 the Industrial Economics Department surveyed the socio-economic effects in the United States of the war in Europe. In 1925 the problem of old-age dependency was examined by Gertrude Beeks Easley and the Industrial Welfare Department. In the same year the Industrial Relations Department studied the key social and economic differences between the anthracite and bituminous coal industries, the former monopolistic in nature, and the latter critically over-productive.</p> <p>Among the heads of departments were Vincent Astor (Astor Trust Company), William Baldwin (Otis Elevator Company), Gertrude Beeks Easley, Samuel Gompers (American Federation of Labor), the financier and industrial organizer George W. Perkins, the civic worker, Maude Wetmore, and the economist Edwin R. A. Seligman.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1233507'>Series V. Committee Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Correspondence and miscellaneous papers of thirty-two special committees appointed by the Executive Council after World War I to study particular social, economic, and political issues such as the deterioration of social and economic conditions in Europe, reactions to Bolshevism, and the threat posed by strikes. Among the committees are the Advisory Council on Polish Affairs, 1918, 1919; After-the-War Industrial Reconstruction Committee, 1918; Bolshevism Committee, 1919; Committee of 100 on American Civil and Property Rights, 1938; the National Committee on Economic Recovery, 1933; and the Uniform Legislation Committee, 1909. For a complete list of the committees see the Organization Note.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1233696'>Series VI. Conferences and Commissions Files</a></div>\n</li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1233983'>Series VII. Annual Meetings and Dinners</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>During a particularly eventful period, NCF's Executive Council arranged twenty-seven dinner meetings where representatives of capital, labor, and the public were addressed by notable conservatives such as August Belmont, Joseph H. Choate, Jr., Charles Wesley Dunn, Samuel Gompers, and Joseph P. Ryan. The representatives also discussed current political, social, and economic questions such as the welfare of industrial and municipal workers, health insurance, government by injunction, savings bank systems, old age pensions, mandatory resolution of industrial conflicts, and the meaning of the recent increase in intrusions by government in business affairs. NCF also reported on the previous year's reform and political activities, and updated information on current and upcoming projects.</p> <p>The files consist of correspondence, the bulk made up of letters inviting businessmen, labor leaders, lawyers, welfare workers, politicians, and others, to attend and participate in these meetings arranged to study and discuss current issues. There is also correspondence with mayors, governors, and organizations, regarding the appointment of delegates to attend the meetings. The rest of the files are composed of lists of participants, minutes of meetings, press releases, printed ephemera, publicity handouts, reports, resolutions, seating charts, and speeches.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234134'>Series VIII. Miscellaneous Meetings</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The files are arranged chronologically, and include correspondence, chiefly invitations, and miscellaneous papers. The thirty special meetings most often took the form of ad hoc luncheons convened to deal with NCF's more urgent concerns, such as arranging a homecoming welcome in April of 1919 for Samuel Gompers and the AFL labor mission to Europe; Seth Low's bill to amend the Sherman Anti-trust Act; the arbitration of industrial disputes; and the question of how union membership could affect a civil servant's relationship to the government. Some of these meetings also demonstrate NCF's methodical approach to events and issues, proceeding from low-level miscellaneous meeting to departmental study to full-scale corrective project, such as the report on old age dependency published by the Industrial Welfare Department. For a complete list of these meetings, see the Container List for Boxes 410 and 411.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234186'>Series IX. Subjects Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series of files was originated by NCF. Among the most interesting and representative files are those on the National Security League, the Panama Canal, the Nobel Peace Prize Commission, 1907-1910, Zionism, and speeches and writings of Samuel Gompers, 1907-1924. The Lease and Rent Arrears correspondence, 1931-1939, with NCF's landlord, the General Electric Realty Corporation, reflects the Easleys struggle to keep NCF alive. Also included is a file on the Erdman Act (for additional material relating to NCF's efforts to revise the Erdman Act see Industrial Mediation Department, Box 201, and Committee files, Proposed Changes in the Erdman Act, Box 359, folder 5). There is also a file on the <span class=\"title\">Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion</span> containing a copy of the anti-Semitic document, and correspondence and miscellaneous papers recording the efforts of Ralph Easley and Oscar Straus to invalidate the <span class=\"title\">Protocols</span>' credibility. Correspondence of Warren S. Stone of the International Brotherhood of Railroad Engineers concerns the minimum wage. For a complete listing of the subjects see the entries for Boxes 412-434 in the Container List.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234442'>Series X. Subversive Activities Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The files are arranged alphabetically by personal name or subject. The bulk of the series deals with communist subversion in the 1920s and 1930s. The files comprise a wealth of material, from as early as 1907, documenting the Easleys' preoccupation with the real and imagined subversive activities of anarchists, socialists, communists, German agents, and Irish Fenians operating in the United States. Their campaign did not end until Gertrude Beeks Easley's death in 1950. Many of the documents paint a bizarre picture of Ralph Easley - acting out of his element, but in a role he clearly relished - as a single-minded and credulous eccentric playing a serious and risky game of cloak and dagger. Among the more interesting papers in the collection are the interviews Easley had with one of his undercover agents, Gaston Means, and Means' diaries. The so-called \"Means Affair\" ended for Easley in public scandal and disgrace when trunkloads of evidence of communist subversion, for which Easley paid Means $25,000 (donated by the philanthropist Helen Gould Shepard), turned out to be forgeries. Matters got worse when it was discovered that Easley had been paying for his anti-communist crusade with money earmarked by NCF for other purposes.</p> <p>There is also considerable material relating to the activities of AMTORG (American Trading Corporation), a trading group founded by the Soviet Union in 1924, and which managed Soviet commercial affairs in the United States until 1935. According to Easley, the OGPU (the Soviet secret police during the period 1922-1934), used AMTORG's New York office as a center of operations for espionage in the United States. There are also correspondence and papers documenting the role played by the Chase National Bank, the Soviet Union's fiscal agent in the United States (see also \"Clark\" -- a false identity - in box 439, folder 5, for Easley's statement concerning the bank; and extensive correspondence relating to a declaration against the recognition of Soviet Russia). Other files of special interest include: The American League Against War and Fascism; American Literature Against German Propaganda; Anarchists; correspondence, 1907-1909, and anti-socialist writings of Martha Moore Avery (for additional correspondence by Avery see Industrial Economics Department, Box 186); Roger Baldwin; Katherine Breshkovsky; Sen.William E. Borah of Kansas (one of several senators who allegedly were paid to help the Bolshevik government gain legitimacy in the United States); communism and communist; Eugene V. Debs; German anti-Semitism; Hamilton Fish, Jr.; J. Edgar Hoover; Otto Kiep (German Consul in New York); German Sabotage; Recognition of Soviet Russia; Maude Wetmore; Archibald Stevenson; and Matthew Woll. (Note that the following printed material has not been microfilmed as part of the NCF Records: Communist Publications, comprised of <span class=\"title\">Programme of the Communist International</span>. 1st edition, December 1929; and <span class=\"title\">The Communist</span>, May, October-December 1931, and February, May 1932). For a complete listing of names and subjects see the Container List for Boxes 435-458.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234681'>Series XI. N.C.F. <span class=\"title\">Review</span> Files</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The NCF <span class=\"title\">Review</span> disseminated information regarding the organization's efforts to advance progressive social welfare work in industry, to promote industrial peace, and to defend American institutions against socialism and the radicalization of the labor movement. Ralph Easley invited businessmen, labor leaders, public servants statisticians, actuaries, social welfare workers, and others interested in social, political, and economic questions to submit articles on their work to the <span class=\"title\">Review</span>.</p> <p>The files consist of general correspondence, 1903-1908, including requests for complimentary back issues of the <span class=\"title\">Review</span>, and requests for the <span class=\"title\">Review</span> sent in exchange for the periodicals of other organizations. There is also subscriptions correspondence, 1904-1912, and miscellaneous papers relating to industrial arbitration systems in Australia and New Zealand, lists of contributors to the <span class=\"title\">Review</span>, a plan devised by the Industrial Economics Department to circulate articles and pamphlets defending American institutions, and a memorandum of a visit to Ellis Island. There are also articles submitted for publication in the <span class=\"title\">Review</span>. Of particular interest is Upton Sinclair's lengthy apologia, <span class=\"title\">My Cause</span>, of 1903 (see box 461, folder 3, P-W).</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234704'>Series XII. Financial Records</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The bulk of the records consists of receipts for cash, contributions and subscriptions; cash receipts and expenditures; ledgers; voucher registers; expense account vouchers, 1900-1908 (<em render=\"bold\">note that only the summaries of the vouchers have been microfilmed</em>); treasurer's accounts; financial statements and accounts, 1910-1934; and miscellaneous financial transactions including anti-socialist fund receipts; bank deposit slips, checkbooks, Christmas Fund records, and Ralph Easley's accounts with August Belmont.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234831'>Series XIII. Index Card Files (not filmed)</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The bulk of the 3\" x 5\" cards contain the names of businesses and their executive officers. There are also cards that give substantial information on the funding (especially by Andrew Carnegie and the Carnegie Institute) of NCF's general industrial welfare work and its various research projects; and others that deal significantly with alleged communist subversion, particularly the activities of the Soviet spy network operating out of the American Trading Corporation (AMTORG). In addition, there are cards possibly connected to the Easleys' anti-communist campaign. They contain personal names or titles and page numbers that appear to refer to a report, though it is unclear exactly how they were used. <em render=\"bold\">This material has not been microfilmed.</em></p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234832'>Series XIV. Clippings (not filmed)</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The clippings were cut from newspapers and magazines such as the <span class=\"title\">Daily Worker</span>, <span class=\"title\">The New York Times</span>, New York <span class=\"title\">Daily News</span>, and others, and are concerned with the historical issues and events of the Depression Era, including the rise in the United States of communism as a perceived and tangible political and social threat, the radicalization of the unions, hunger strikes, confrontations with the police, and the emergence of the Communist Party U.S.A. The clippings are very fragile. <em render=\"bold\">This material has not been microfilmed.</em></p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/mss/2101#c1234833'>Series XV. Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley</a></div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>The personal papers consist of: Ralph Easley's personal correspondence, 1876-1938 and undated; his correspondence, 1890-1938 and undated, with Gertrude Beeks Easley; correspondence on woman suffrage, 1909-1910; letters of congratulation on his marriage to Gertrude Beeks in 1917; miscellaneous papers relating to his early years, life, and death, including biographical data, clippings, and obituaries; and genealogical papers relating to the Easley, Beeks, and Berry families.</p> <p>Gertrude Beeks Easley's personal correspondence, 1898-1949, and correspondence with Helen Gould Shepard, 1920-1933; 1940 and undated, including exceptionally interesting and informative exchanges relating to the roles the two women played in the Easleys' anti-communist campaign of the 1930s. (For additional material relating to Helen Gould Shepard see: Subversive Activities Files, Gaston Means Affair, Box 444, and boxes 445-448.) The files also include biographical data about Gertrude Beeks Easley, miscellaneous writings, personal miscellany, clippings, and related material.</p> <p>There also are photographs of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley spanning their entire lives, and of their relatives, friends, and colleagues.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- arrangement
-
{"value"=>"<p>The collection is organized in fifteen series: <ul class=\"list\"> <li> Series I. GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE, 1900-1949</li> <li>Series II. AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS, 1894-1939 <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Civic Federation of Chicago, 1894-1901</li> <li>B. Civic Federation of New York</li> <li>C. Council of National Defense, 1917-1919</li> <li>D. League for National Unity, 1917-1939</li></ul></li> <li>Series III. EXECUTIVE COUNCIL MEETINGS, 1903, 1908, 1910-1941</li> <li>Series IV. DEPARTMENTAL FILES, 1901-1941 <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Agricultural Department, 1914-1915</li> <li>B. Current Economic and Political Movements Departments, 1923-1924</li> <li>C. Education Department, 1941</li> <li>D. Employer's Welfare Department, 1912</li> <li>E. Food and Drugs Department, 1911</li> <li>F. Immigration Department, 1905-1909</li> <li>G. Industrial Department, 1901, 1934-1935</li> <li>H. Industrial Economics Department, 1904-1916 <ul class=\"list\"> <li>1. General Correspondence, 1908-1910</li> <li>2. Ralph Easley/Martha Moore Avery Correspondence, 1908-1910</li> <li>3. Departmental Correspondence, 1912-1916 re: Progress Survey</li> <li>4. Survey of the Socio-Economic Effects in the United States of the War in Europe, 1914</li> <li>5. Anti-Socialist Meetings, 1912-1915</li> <li> 6. Miscellaneous Papers Relating to the Development and Work of the Department</li> <li>7. Correspondence and Papers of the Progress Survey Special Committees <ul class=\"list\"> <li>a. Plan and Scope Special Committee</li> <li>b. Agricultural Conditions Special Committee</li> <li>c. Business Ethics Special Committee</li> <li>d. Child Welfare Special Committee</li> <li>e. Church's Influence on Social and Economic Progress Special Committee</li> <li>f. Collective Bargaining and Methods of Mediation and Arbitration</li> <li>g. Distribution of Ownership in Investments Special Committee</li> <li>h. Division of the People's Income Special Committee</li> <li> i. Educational Opportunities Special Committee</li> <li>j. Efficiency of Organized Social Services Special Committee</li> <li>k. Employers' Welfare Special Committee</li> <li>l. Enforcement of Law and Order Special Committee</li> <li>m. Free Speech and Right of Assembly Special Committee</li> <li> n. Government Ownership Special Committee</li> <li>o. Housing Conditions Special Committee</li> <li>p. Immigration Special Committee</li> <li>q. Industrial Loans and Savings Special Committee</li> <li> r. Industrial Profit Sharing Special Committee</li> <li>s. Judicial Procedure Special Committee</li> <li>t. Labor Conditions Special Committee, 1914</li> <li>u. Municipal Government Special Committee</li> <li> v. Penal and Correctional Special Committee</li> <li>w. Political Ethics Special Committee</li> <li> x. Public Health Special Committee</li> <li>y. Surplus Value Special Committee</li> <li>z. War Condition Special Committee</li> <li>aa. Ways and Means Special Committee</li> <li>bb. Workmen's Compensation Special Committee</li></ul></li></ul></li> <li>I. Industrial Mediation Department, 1910-1914</li> <li>J. Industrial Relations Department, 1925-1927</li> <li>K. Industrial Training Department, 1919-1920</li> <li>L. Industrial Welfare Department, 1910-1931</li> <li>M. Political Education Department, 1924-1928</li> <li>N. Press Department, 1932-1933, 1936</li> <li>O. Profit Sharing Department, 1916-1920</li> <li>P. Railroad Department, 1910, 1911</li> <li>Q. Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, 1907, 1908</li> <li> R. Regulation of Interstate and Municipal Utilities Department, 1912, 1913</li> <li>S. Social Insurance Department, 1913-1927</li> <li>T. Study of Revolutionary Movements Department, 1920</li> <li>U. Subversive Movements Department, 1926-1931</li> <li>V. Taxation Department</li> <li>W. Trade Agreements Department, 1906-1911</li> <li> X. Welfare Department</li> <li>Y. Woman's Department</li> <li>Z. Workmen's Compensation Department, 1910-1916</li> <li>AA. Youth Department, 1941-1948</li></ul></li> <li>Series V. COMMITTEE FILES <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Advisory Council on Polish Affairs, 1918, 1919</li> <li>B. After-the-War Industrial Reconstruction Committee</li> <li>C. Army and Navy Joint Committee</li> <li>D. Bolshevism Committee</li> <li>E. Citizenship Training Committee</li> <li>F. Committee of 100 on American Civil and Property Rights, 1938</li> <li>G. Committee of 100 on Foreign Relations</li> <li>H. Committee of 100 to Cooperate with the Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense</li> <li>I. Committee on Cooperation with the American Soldiers and Sailors Protective Association</li> <li>J. Committee on Fundamentals of our Constitution</li> <li> K. Committee on National Defense</li> <li>L. Committee on Nominations</li> <li>M. Committee on Reform in Legal Procedure</li> <li>N. Joint Committee to Study Housing Conditions in Army Posts, 1928</li> <li>O. Mediation Legislation</li> <li>P. National Committee for Religious Recovery</li> <li>Q. National Committee of 1000 on Civil Rights</li> <li>R. National Committee on Economic Recovery, 1933</li> <li>S. National Industrial Committee</li> <li>T. New York City Committee on Active Citizenship</li> <li>U. Organization Committee, 1920</li> <li>V. Peace Treaty And League of Nations Committee, 1919</li> <li>W. Proposed Changes in the Erdman Act, 1912, 1913</li> <li>X. Public Education Committee, 1921</li> <li>Y. Radicalism in the Churches Committee, 1933-1936</li> <li>Z. Russian Affairs Committee</li> <li>AA. Socialism in the Church Committee</li> <li>BB. Socialist Tactics, Committee of Inquiry on</li> <li>CC. Soldiers' Welfare Committee</li> <li>DD. Soviet Propaganda Committee</li> <li>EE. Uniform Legislation Committee, 1909</li></ul></li> <li>Series VI. CONFERENCES & COMMISSIONS FILES <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Conferences <ul class=\"list\"> <li>1. Taxation Conference, 1901</li> <li>2. Chicago Industrial Conference, 1903</li> <li>3. Reform of the Primary and Election Laws, 1906</li> <li>4. Uniform State Legislation Conference, 1910, 1911</li> <li>5. National Civic Federation Conference, 1918</li> <li>6. Public School Education Conference, 1921</li> <li>7. International Situation and the Lessons for this Country Conference, 1922</li> <li>8. New York Industrial Round Table, 1925, 1927</li></ul></li> <li>B. Commissions Files <ul class=\"list\"> <li>1. Industrial Inquiry Commission, 1919, 1928-1931 <ul class=\"list\"> <li> a. General Correspondence, 1919, 1928-1930</li> <li>b. Plan and Scope Committee</li> <li>c. Study of Antitrust Legislation Committee</li> <li>d. Study of Company Unions and \"Yellow\" Dog\"Contracts Committee</li> <li> e. Study of Forms of Employee Organizations Committee</li> <li> f. Study of Injunctions in Industrial Disputes Committee</li> <li> g. Chain Store Investigations Committee</li> <li>h. Miscellaneous Papers</li></ul></li> <li>2. Minimum Wage Commission, 1913-1919</li> <li>3. National Child Labor Commission, 1907-1909</li> <li>4. Public Ownership Commission, 1905-1908</li></ul></li></ul></li> <li>Series VII. ANNUAL MEETINGS & DINNERS FILES</li> <li>Series VIII. MISCELLANEOUS MEETINGS</li> <li>Series IX. SUBJECTS FILES</li> <li>Series X. SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES FILES</li> <li>Series XI. NCF REVIEW FILES</li> <li> Series XII. FINANCIAL FILES <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Account books</li> <li>B. Expense Accounts-vouchers</li> <li>C. Financial statements and accounts</li> <li> D. Miscellaneous records</li></ul></li> <li>Series XIII. INDEX CARD FILES</li> <li>Series XIV. CLIPPINGS</li> <li>Series XV. PERSONAL PAPERS OF RALPH EASLEYAND GERTRUDE BEEKS EASLEY, 1876-1938 <ul class=\"list\"> <li>A. Ralph Easley</li> <li>B. Gertrude Beeks Easley</li></ul></li></ul></p>", "supress_display"=>true}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Gift of Gertrude Beeks Easley, 1939</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Processed by Richard Salvato, 2001; Machine-readable finding aid created by Melanie A. Yolles.</p>"}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>For permission to publish, contact the Curator, Manuscripts and Archives Division.</p>"}
- altformavail
-
{"value"=>"<?Mandatory if applicable> <div class=\"head\">Alternative Formats</div> <p>The collection is available on microfilm.</p>"}
- sponsor
-
{"value"=>"Processing and microfilming made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities."}
- extent_statement
-
207 linear feet (496 boxes; 11 volumes)
- date_bulk_start
-
1900
- date_bulk_end
-
1920