Title: Leon R. Clausen Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1905-1965

Creator:

• Clausen, Leon R., 1877-1965

Call Number: Mss 1021; PH 6518

Quantity: 3.4 c.f. (3 record center cartons, 2 archives boxes, 1 oversize folder) and 7 photographs

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Abstract:

Papers of Leon R. Clausen, president (1924-1948) and chairman of the board (1948-1958) of the J.I. Case Company, a manufacturer of tractors and farm equipment located in Racine, Wisconsin. The papers consist of memoirs, speeches and writings, personal and business correspondence, and subject files. They primarily document Clausen's conservative, anti-Communist political views and his pre-Case business career. A majority of the correspondence is personal, documenting Clausen's property, philanthropies, and political exchanges with a multitude of nationally active conservatives. Family correspondence primarily concerns foreign relatives, but there are exchanges with his brother Fred L. Clausen, an executive at the Van Brunt Manufacturing Co. of Horicon, Wisconsin. Business records in the collection primarily document Clausen's pre-Case employment as signal engineer with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway (1901-1912) and as executive of the Dain Manufacturing Co. (1912-1924), a subsidiary of John Deere. The Case company records include Clausen's draft history of the company's early labor struggles and confidential internal labor documents (1933-1935) used to support preparation of the manuscript and copies of company memoranda, clippings, and advertising concerning the 1946 strike by the United Automobile Workers Local 180. Classified subject files document Clausen's interest in economics, labor, and politics. The photographs in the collection document highlights in his career.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss01021

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Wisconsin businessman Leon Raymond Clausen was born in Fox Lake, Wisconsin on October 18, 1877. After graduation from the local public schools he attended the University of Wisconsin, graduating with a degree in electrical engineering in 1897. Between his graduation and 1901 he was employed in various positions in Wisconsin, Oregon, and Illinois. From 1901 to 1912 he was a foreman of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway's signaling department, later becoming inspector and manager, and, eventually, superintendent. During this phase of his career Clausen was vice president and president of the Railroad Signal Association of America. In 1912 Clausen resigned to take a position in the farm implement manufacturing industry with Deere & Co. in Moline, Illinois. Shortly thereafter he was transferred to a managerial position in Ottumwa, Iowa, at the company's subsidiary, the Dain Manufacturing Company (purchased by Deere in 1911), a manufacturer of equipment for hay farming. By the end of his employment with Dain/Deere in 1924, Clausen had been acting vice president, director, and vice president in charge of the company's manufacturing operations.

In 1924 the J.I. Case Company of Racine, Wisconsin hired Clausen as president. During his administration Clausen revitalized Case, dropping its automobile line and increasing its focus on the development of farm equipment. During his presidency, the company was often at odds with the company's employees who were represented by the United Automobile Workers. From 1934 to 1960 Case experienced five major strikes. The longest strike occurred from December 1945 to March 1947.

In 1948 Clausen resigned as president, but continued to serve as chairman of the Case board of directors. In 1958 Clausen officially retired at the age of 81. Agnes Snow Clausen, whom Clausen had married in 1909, died in 1963, and two years later, on August 14, 1965, Clausen himself died after suffering a severe stroke.

Clausen was well known for his conservative views on a variety of economic, political, and social subjects. Clausen believed in self-reliance and disliked government interference in the private sector. He perceived labor unions as governmental infringement in business and this belief was largely responsible for his decision to leave the railroad business in 1912. During the New Deal workers gained the right to organize, and Clausen's personal dislike of unions was partially responsible for the tumultuous labor history at Case that began in the 1930s.

In addition to his professional activities, Clausen was active in his community and in various national and regional organizations. As a noted philanthropist, he regularly gave speeches and financial donations to charities and organizations such as the Racine Young Republicans, St. Luke's Hospital, the Salvation Army, and the University of Wisconsin Alumni Association. In addition, he regularly donated to national organizations of which he was a member, particularly Republican and conservative political groups. Clausen also donated several of his properties to Wisconsin communities for park projects.

The Clausen Papers date from 1905 to 1965, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1924 to 1963. The collection primarily documents his personal and political interests and activities, with a smaller portion concerning his business career. Of the latter, the majority of the documentation relates to his career with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad and with Dain Manufacturing Company. Documentation of his Case presidency is limited, although this aspect of his career is amply treated through his historical and autobiographical writings.

The collection is arranged as AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, CORRESPONDENCE, and SUBJECT FILES. Prior to its arrival at the WHS, the collection was rearranged, perhaps by one of Clausen's surviving relatives, and some documentation in the collection suggests Clausen himself may have begun arranging his papers. Some remnants of the original filing scheme is still present, however, primarily within the subject files, which were originally numerically classified.

The AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS consist of an undated autobiography, as well as chapters of a second similar work written during 1962-1963 in response to requests from his daughters. Most of the chapters are autobiographical, although several digress to various general political, social, and economic issues. In addition, a 1922 letter written by his father, Hans Clausen, concerns his world travels as a young man. The photographs in the collection document several highlights in Clausen's career, approximately 1940 to 1949. Among the photographs is a portrait of the 1897 University of Wisconsin band, in which Clausen and his brother Frederick are included; images of Clausen's 72nd birthday celebration and 25th anniversary as J.I. Case president; as well as two photographs of Clausen dating from the early 1940s.

The SPEECHES AND WRITINGS date from approximately 1921 to 1963, and principally consist of handwritten notes and outlines for speeches given by Clausen to local youth and agricultural organizations in Racine, Chicago, and Kansas. Clausen apparently seldom spoke from a prepared text and the speeches for which there is a full text in the collection were probably created from a stenographer's notes on what he said rather than a work fully prepared in advance. The speech in most polished form in the collection is an address presented to the 1921 convention of the National Implement and Vehicle Association on improving business practices. The file entitled “other writings” includes a number of reflective memoranda on general topics prepared by Clausen that were probably intended for Case managers. Similar memoranda elsewhere in the collection may also have been written by Clausen, although they are not so identified.

The CORRESPONDENCE consists of general and business subcategories. The general correspondence, the bulk of which is identified by the designation “personal” written on the item, concerns Clausen relatives, property and financial holdings, and politicians and leaders in conservative organizations. This section is further subdivided into chronological and alphabetical correspondence.

Family correspondence within the general section consists of letters to and from his brother F. L. Clausen, an executive with the Van Brunt Manufacturing Co. in Horicon, Wisconsin, and exchanges with several foreign relatives. It was undoubtedly Fred who provided the connection to Wisconsin businessman Willard A. Van Brunt, whose brief correspondence is filed elsewhere in the series. Files on properties owned by Clausen and his summer home in Green Lake contain information on his philanthropic endeavors as well as information on life in that resort community. After Clausen retired as president of Case, his letters were often lengthy essays on contemporary issues. The majority of these letters were addressed to Joseph R. McCarthy, Lawrence H. Smith, Alexander Wiley, and the Wisconsin congressional delegation in general, but he also occasionally wrote to other political figures such as Harry Byrd and Barry Goldwater. The oversize folder contains “The Wisconsin Citizen,” a rare 1946 campaign newspaper issued by Joseph R. McCarthy, whose election Clausen supported. Taken together, these letters provide ample documentation of Clausen's conservative political and economic views. Clausen's contacts included some of the leading political and economic conservatives of his era such as Merwin K. Hart of the National Economics Council, Virgil Jordan of the National Industrial Conference Board, Joseph P. Kamp of the Constitutional Education League, Walter E. Spahr of the Economists National Committee on Monetary Policy, and James L. Wick of Human Events. Verne Kaub of Madison, who founded the American Council of Christian Laymen, was also a frequent correspondent. Exchanges with Harry Jung, head of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation of Chicago include investigative reports about individuals found suspect by that organization during the 1930s and 1940s. Jung's influence also appears in Clausen's correspondence with Episcopal Bishop Harwood Sturtevant of Fond du Lac.

The business correspondence primarily concerns Clausen's career before 1924, the year in which he was hired as president of Case. Of note from his career with the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway are files on signal practices and engineering and on his association with the Railroad Signal Association of America. Subject matter covered includes the railway industry's change from manual to automatic signaling. Other areas documented include Clausen's interest in railroad accidents, reports on station service and improvements, and engineering and electrical changes. Files on the Dain Manufacturing Company of Ottumwa, Iowa, where Clausen worked from 1912 to 1924, include managerial correspondence, memoranda, and statistics on operations and costs. Some of these records consist of files received as loose documents, while others were received as a group that had been collected by Clausen in 1929 for use by another Case executive. This period of Clausen's career is also represented by a 1920 Deere labor policy handbook.

Administrative correspondence from Clausen's tenure as president of Case is limited. Of note are files on the circumstances surrounding his hiring in 1924 and reports on sales prospects from a world trip made in 1933. No organic files deal with the company's labor relations, although this section contains important labor documentation that he collected later. Labor relations during the 1930s are documented by a handwritten labor history Clausen wrote, probably during the late 1950s or early 1960s. Of particular value here are copies of many confidential, internal corporate documents, dating from 1933 to 1935, that were compiled by Clausen as exhibits to support his narrative. Unfortunately, the thermofax copies of the original documents he made for this work were greatly deteriorated by the time of their arrival at the Historical Society. Their content has been preserved to the greatest degree possible with digital prints. About the 1946 strike of United Automobile Workers Local 180 there are mimeographed company memoranda, mainly 1945-1946; newspaper clippings; and copies of display ads the company placed in local newspapers. Other mimeographed memos filed here were mainly prepared for Case executives after Clausen retired as president. Clausen's memoirs partially compensate for the brevity of this section.

The SUBJECT FILES consist of remnants of a numerically classified file of secondary information; similar material bearing no evidence of inclusion in the numerical subject files was added in the Archives. Subjects covered within this series concern economics, labor, and politics. These files have been extensively weeded to remove easily available newspaper clippings and printed material, although all items clearly identified as having been circulated by Clausen to Case executives have been retained. Most of these files are of a general nature such as economics (#40) and labor (#99). Several specific files added to the SUBJECT FILES such as the Bricker Amendment and research on Winston Churchill are of considerable interest. The economics file includes memoranda of a loose organization of Mid-western businessmen, identified by Clausen as the “Chicago Group,” about their interests in combatting the effects of the Depression in 1932 and 1933, as well as several papers and an unpublished book, “The Honest Dollar” apparently written by William A. Wirt for the Chicagoans.

Acquisition Information

Presented by John F. Karston, Waupun, Wisconsin, November 28, 2006. Accession Number: M2007-001

Processing Information

Processed by Allison Page (Intern) and Carolyn Mattern, 2007.

Mss 1021	Series: Biographical Material
Box   1 Folder   1	Memoir of Hans Clausen, 1922
Box   1 Folder   2	Memoir of Leon R. Clausen, 1961
Box   1 Folder   3-4	Memoir chapters, 1963-1964
PH 6518	Photographs
Mss 1021	Series: Speeches and Writings	⇧
Box   1 Folder   5-6	Speech outlines
Box   1 Folder   7	Speeches, 1921, 1940-1942
Box   1 Folder   8	Other writings, 1940-1958
	Series: Correspondence	⇧
	Subseries: General correspondence
Box   1 Folder   9	Africa, 1943-1955
Box   1 Folder   10	Bindslev, Frode, 1945-1953
Box   1 Folder   11	Capital Times/Daily Cardinal, 1933
Box   1 Folder   12	Clausen, F. H. (Van Brunt Manufacturing Co.), 1916-1933
Box   1 Folder   13	Clausen family relatives, 1953-1957
Box   1 Folder   14-15	Congratulatory letters, 1924, 1937, 1949
Box   1 Folder   16	Danish trainees, 1955-1956
Box   1 Folder   17	Dickerman, Judson C., 1937-1941
Box   1 Folder   18	Dirckinck-Holmfeld, Birgit, 1950-1959
Box   1 Folder   19	Economists National Committee on Monetary Policy, 1939-1945
Box   1 Folder   20	Foundation for Economic Education, 1963
Box   1 Folder   21	Gold Standard League, 1953-1957
Box   1 Folder   22	Goldwater, Barry, 1954-1964
Box   1 Folder   23	Governor's Citizens Committee on Public Welfare, 1937
Box   1 Folder   24	Green Lake property, 1946-1954
Box   1 Folder   25	Hansel, Raleigh, 1937
Box   1 Folder   26	Holmen, Frank E., 1952-1953
Box   1 Folder   27	Human Events, 1956-1964
Box   1 Folder   28	Jones, Richard Lloyd, 1952-1953
Box   1 Folder   29	Jordan, Virgil, 1938-1962
Box   1 Folder   30	Jung, Harry (American Vigilant Intelligence Federation), 1933-1945
Box   1 Folder   31	Kamp, Joseph P. (Constitutional Education League), 1946
Box   1 Folder   32	Kaub, Verne (American Council of Christian Laymen), 1939-1956
Box   1 Folder   33-34	Krueger-Toll bankruptcy settlement, 1928-1938
Box   1 Folder   35	Lagencrantz, Gustaf, 1951-1954
Box   1 Folder   36	Lawrence, David, 1957-1964
Box   1 Folder   37	Livingstone, Ted (Japanese missionaries), 1952-1953
Box   1 Folder   38-39	McCarthy, Joseph R., 1946-1957
Oversize Folder	“The Wisconsin Citizen,” 1946 campaign ad
Box   1 Folder   40	McCormick, Fowler, 1949
Box   1 Folder   41	Manufacturers' Association of Racine, 1937-1949
Box   1 Folder   42	National Economic Council (Merwin K. Hart), 1947-1962
Box   1 Folder   43	National Founders' Association, 1933-1947
	National Industrial Conference Board
Box   1 Folder   44	General, 1951-1965
Box   1 Folder   45	Nuclear power, 1954-1958
Box   1 Folder   46	Nymeyer, Frederick, 1944-1956
Box   1 Folder   47	Republican Party, 1948-1957
Box   1 Folder   48	Selvage & Lee, 1949-1954
Box   2 Folder   1	Smith, Lawrence, 1943-1957
Box   2 Folder   2	Snow Estate and Mound Farm gift, 1957-1959
Box   2 Folder   3	Sturtevant, Harwood, 1948-1964
Box   2 Folder   4	Travel purchases, 1954
Box   2 Folder   5	Trentlaw Farm, 1950-1957
Box   2 Folder   6	United World Federalists
Box   2 Folder   7	University of Wisconsin, 1949-1961
Box   2 Folder   8	Van Brunt, W. A., 1920-1922
Box   2 Folder   9	Wiley, Alexander, 1941-1959
Box   2 Folder   10-11	Wisconsin congressional delegation, 1947-1964
Box   2 Folder   12	Wisconsin politics, 1932-1938
Box   2 Folder   13-25	Subseries: Chronological correspondence, 1932-1965	⇧
	Subseries: Business correspondence and subject files	⇧
	J.I. Case Company
Box   2 Folder   26	General, 1931-1947
Box   2 Folder   27	Clausen employment, 1924-1932
Box   2 Folder   28	Foreign travel, 1933
	Labor history by LRC, 1933-1934
	Exhibits
Box   2 Folder   29	Miscellaneous documents
	Lettered exhibits from corporate files
Box   2 Folder   30	Thermofax copies
Box   5 Folder   1-2	Digital prints
Oversize Folder	Oversized, lettered exhibits
Box   2 Folder   31	Draft, circa 1960
Box   2 Folder   32	Managers' memos (from LRC), 1947-1954
	Strike record, 1937-(1945-1946)
Box   2 Folder   33	Standard size documents
Oversize Folder	Oversize newspaper display ads
	Dain Manufacturing Company
Box   2 Folder   34	Correspondence and memoranda, 1915-1923
Box   2 Folder   35	Factory operations correspondence and memoranda (assembled 1929), 1912-1917
Box   3 Folder   1	Factory operations correspondence and memoranda, continued
Box   3 Folder   2	Operational memoranda, 1923-1924
Box   3 Folder   3	Operational costs, 1917-1924
Box   3 Folder   4	John Deere, Labor policy and history, 1920-1925
Box   3 Folder   5-6	Operational cost comparison, Deere and Case, 1920-1930
	Railroad career (Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co.)
Box   3 Folder   7	General correspondence, 1906-1959
Box   3 Folder   8-9	Signal practices correspondence and writing, 1905-1917
	Series: Subject Files	⇧
Box   3 Folder   10	Bricker Amendment, 1952-1956
Box   3 Folder   11	Churchill, Winston, 1941-1963
Box   3 Folder   12	CIO (#84.5), 1944-1949
Box   3 Folder   13	Communism (#134), 1933-1960
	Economics (#40)
Box   3 Folder   14	General, 1933-1958
	Chicago group, 1932-1933
Box   3 Folder   15	Correspondence
Box   3 Folder   16	“An Honest Dollar,” by William A. Wirt, 1933
Box   4 Folder   1	Essays, 1932-1933
Box   3 Folder   17	Eisenhower, Dwight, 1955-1958
	Labor (#99)
Box   3 Folder   18	General, 1933-1935
Box   3 Folder   19	Chicago Motor Coach Co. (#99), 1933
Box   3 Folder   20	Mimeographed pages
	Politics
Box   3 Folder   21	General (#40)
Box   3 Folder   22	General (#122)
Box   3 Folder   23	Dunn Survey (#122), 1945-1949
Box   3 Folder   24	Unnumbered items
Box   3 Folder   25	Roosevelt, Franklin D. (#134), 1940
Box   3 Folder   26	Russia (#133), 1930-1948
Box   3 Folder   27	Steel strikes, 1935-1959
Box   3 Folder   28-29	Social (#143), 1933-1938