Scope and arrangement
The correspondence is arranged chronologically and is accompanied by an alphabetical index. From 1893 to 1900 the correspondence reflects Ordway's secretary ship of the University Settlement Society and of the Social Reform Club and relates mainly to membership, meetings, and arrangements for lectures. From 1899 to 1907 the correspondence reflects Ordway's secretary ship of the Anti-Imperialist League of New York, the Philippine Independence Committee, and the Filipino Progress Association. The correspondence concerns the recruitment of officers, and members, the organization of opposition to the American colonial policy in the Philippine Islands, the suppression of the Filipino independence movement, the policies of the colonial governor, William Howard Taft, the adoption of a plank favoring independence for the Philippines in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties in the presidential election of 1904, and relations with the Anti-Imperialist League (of Boston). Some of the correspondence relates to the suppression of the opium trade in the Far East. There are many letters from the league's agent in Manila, David J. Doherty, which report on political, social and economic conditions in the Philippines. Included also are a few minutes of the Filipino Progress Association which are filed with the correspondence, and other papers/Other. Correspondents include Lyman Abbott, Charles Francis Adams, Jane Addams, Felix Adler, Samuel L. Clemens, Charles William Eliot, James (Cardinal) Gibbons, Richard Watson Gilder, William Dean Howells, William Reed Huntington, David Starr Jordan, Josephine Shaw Lowell, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Henry Parkhurst, George Foster Peabody, Henry Codman Potter, Theodore Roosevelt, Jacob Gould Schurman, Carl Schurz, George Frederick Seward, Moorfield Storey, William Howard Taft, Henry Van Dyke, Booker Taliaferro Washington, Horace White, and Erving Winslow.