Box 4 contains the initial group of these files received in the Archives. It consists of correspondence preparatory to conventions, resolutions passed by conventions, Executive Council reports of actions pursuant to convention decisions, and related correspondence. There is an overlapping of dates in the correspondence relating to each annual convention because of the continuity of the subject matter considered from year to year. The 1947 convention file, for example, may contain correspondence dated 1946 and 1948. The file includes a 60-page typewritten report on the relations between the A.F.L. and the C.I.O. which was given to the 1937 convention. Charlton Ogburn, counselor for the A.F.L., wrote a letter, included here, outlining the legal basis for suspending C.I.O. unions and the possibility of obtaining a permanent injunction against them. Attorney Joseph A. Padway, in an October 1937 letter, cites authority whereby the A.F.L. may refuse to seat convention delegates.

This file shows that negotiations between the two great unions were resumed with a 1942 “No-raid” agreement, and in 1943 with a proposal by Philip Murray to arbitrate jurisdictional disputes. By 1945, letters to Green show Murray was organizing the building trades. In 1947, after the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, letters in the file proposed a joint effort to meet attacks by industrialists and lawmakers, and co-operation in post-war reconversion of industry, housing, and unemployment.

About three years after acquisition of the first group of A.F.L. papers, the Archives received additional material for the Convention File, covering the period 1947 to 1952, now in Box 5-23. The newer material covers much the same subjects as were treated in conventions prior to 1947. In addition, nearly one half the 1947 to 1952 file is concerned with such matters as the International Labor Organization, International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, formation of an international labor organization not dom1nated by communists, European Recovery Program, United Nations, and other related matters.