Scope and Content Note

CORRESPONDENCE in the Stephen Bolles Papers covers the years 1920 through 1941. There are two large blocks of letters within this period. The first occurred in 1938, after Bolles was elected to Congress, and these letters are primarily congratulatory. The second occurred in 1940 while Congress was considering the Burke-Wadsworth Conscription Bill. Because of Bolles' reputation as an isolationist, many people wrote to ask his aid in defeating the bill. Other letters are of many types, ranging from letters to the editor to a group collected by Bolles as evidence in his fight against the TVA. Among the letters from prominent correspondents filed here were items from Walter S. Goodland, Albert G. Schmedeman, William Allen White, and Alexander Wiley. Letters from other important people are also included in the scrapbooks. These prominent correspondents include:

Volume 1	William E. Borah, May 25, 1925
Volume 2	Herbert C. Hoover, October 25, 1925 and December 12, 1927
	Glenn Frank, July 29, 1927
	Walter J. Kohler, Sr., September 10, 1928
	John J. Pershing, September 28, 1928
	Robert M. La Follette, Jr., 1929
Volume 3	William E. Borah, November 30, 1926
Volume 4	Calvin Coolidge, July 7, 1928
	Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 29, 1931
	William Allen White, March 12, 1935
	David Lawrence, April 13, 1936

Also included in the papers are ARTICLES AND ADDRESSES. The vast majority of items in this category are speeches. Bolles was a flowery after-dinner speaker, much in demand, who spoke often and on a wide variety of subjects. There are also copies of some of his congressional speeches, most of which concern the possibility of U. S. entry into World War II. The scrapbooks contain frequent press notices about these and other speeches and addresses.

Because of their deteriorated condition, the SCRAPBOOKS have been microfilmed. Although the time coverage of the volumes overlaps, the material within each volume appears in chronological order. Because of the fragmentary nature of the correspondence in the collection, the scrapbooks are of considerable interest, as they provide the most comprehensive documentation on Bolles' career as a congressman and as a journalist. Also available on film are a number of clippings arranged in chronological order by year which were found loose in the collection. These may duplicate clippings in the scrapbooks. After filming, the original clippings and scrapbooks were destroyed.

Miscellaneous material in the collection includes records of Bolles congressional voting.