Title: Byron Price Papers
Inclusive Dates: 1901-1976

Creator:

• Price, Byron, 1891-1981

Call Number: U.S. Mss 142AF

Quantity: 4.8 c.f. (8 archives boxes and 4 flat boxes)

Repository:

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

Archival Locations:

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

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Papers of Price, a journalist and editor with the Associated Press, 1912-1941; director of the U.S. Office of Censorship, 1941-1945; and assistant secretary-general of the United Nations for administrative and financial service, 1947-1954. The collection consists of correspondence, writings, professional subject files, and biographical material. Seven boxes of writings constitute the most important segment of the collection. Represented are World War II speeches; a lengthy, unpublished memoir; and published and unpublished articles and stories spanning his entire career on topics such as freedom of the press and censorship. In addition, three scrapbooks contain clippings of his bi-weekly column, “Politics at Random,” written while chief of the AP's Washington, D.C., bureau during the 1930's. Also present are several notebooks mainly compiled while director of the Office of Censorship which contain his opinions and reactions to various events and people. Correspondence, 1908-1976 includes some personal exchanges, a separate file relating to his 1944 Pulitzer Prize citation, and general letters. Correspondents of note include Cecil B. de Mille, Dwight D. Eisenhower, James A. Farley, James V. Forrestal, Ernest Gruening, Dag Hammarskjold, Warren F. Harding, Herbert Hoover, J. Edgar Hoover, Cordell Hull, Harold L. Ickes, John F. Kennedy, William D. Leahy, Trygve Lie, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., George C. Marshall, H. L. Mencken, Drew Pearson, David and Nelson A. Rockefeller, Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Adlai E. Stevenson, Henry L. Stimson, Harry S. Truman, Fred M. Vinson, and Wendell L. Willkie.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-us0142af

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Byron Price, journalist and editor with the Associated Press, director of the United States Office of Censorship, and assistant secretary-general for administrative and financial services of the United Nations, was born in Clearspring Township, Lagrange County, Indiana, on March 25, 1891. The son of John and Emaline (Barnes) Price, he attended public schools in Topeka, Indiana, then went to Wabash College (1908-1912) where he wrote for the school newspaper, won the state oratorical contest in his junior year, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Price worked for newspapers in Crawfordsville and Indianapolis, Indiana from 1909 to 1912 and for United Press in Chicago and Omaha in 1912. He joined the Associated Press (AP) in 1912, remaining with them until 1941, with the exception of service as first lieutenant and later captain in the 52nd Pioneer Infantry in the United States Army from 1917 to 1919. He was editor (1922-1927) and chief (1927-1937), of the AP's Washington Bureau, and AP executive news editor in New York (1937-1941).

In December, 1941 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Price director of the Office of Censorship, a position he held until the close of World War II. In November, 1945 he was sent to Germany as President Harry S. Truman's personal representative to survey economic conditions there.

In Hollywood in 1946 Price assumed three positions simultaneously: vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, chairman of the board of the Association of Motion Picture Producers and president of Central Casting Corporation. In 1947 he resigned all three positions to become the assistant secretary-general for administrative and financial services of the United Nations, often serving as acting secretary-general. He retired in 1954, recommending that his position be incorporated into the secretary-general's duties.

After retirement to Chestertown, Maryland Price served as consultant to the United States government, and organizations such as the CBS Foundation. In 1959, he served as director-general of the Press Congress of the World held by the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

During his career he received several honors: a special Pulitzer Citation in 1944, the United States Medal for Merit, and Honorary Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1946, and honorary degrees from Wabash College, Indiana University, Bard College, and Harvard University.

Price married Priscilla Alden on April 3, 1920; they have no children. In April 1976 they moved to Hendersonville, North Carolina.

The Byron Price Papers have been organized into four major categories: Correspondence, Writings, Professional Materials, and Personal Materials. Each of the four series is further arranged in subgroups.

The CORRESPONDENCE series consists of general correspondence and three other subgroups: Pulitzer Citation, Notebook VII, and Invitations. The General Correspondence (1908-1976) includes mainly personal letters, some of which had been part of a scrapbook that was disassembled at the time of processing. A separate scrapbook, containing only correspondence concerning the Pulitzer Citation awarded to Price in 1944, has also been taken apart and the correspondence filed under this heading. During August and September 1945, as the Office of Censorship closed and Price was chosen for a special mission to Germany, he received many letters of congratulations, which he compiled as Notebook VII. This notebook is filed here. The Invitations (1919-1959) are chiefly for formal dinners and receptions that Price attended in his various professional capacities. Among this group is one for the funeral of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. An index of selected correspondents follows the container list at the end of this register.

The WRITINGS series is the most significant part of the collection. The General Writings file (1901-1974) covers published and unpublished materials from Price's earliest writings through his professional career. He usually wrote on such topics as journalism, freedom of the press, free speech, censorship and wartime censorship. The Scrapbooks-“Politics at Random” contain his bi-weekly interpretive column, “Politics at Random” (1931-1936), written while he was chief of the Associated Press' Washington Bureau. The volume of Public Addresses (1942-1945) was collected by his staff at the Office of Censorship.

The Notebooks are especially interesting in that they are elaborate journals prepared by Price. Notebooks I through V, compiled when he was director of the Office of Censorship, record events, conversations, and copies of related correspondence, clippings and official papers as well as his own and others' opinions on government and current events. The pages in these five volumes include the date and place written and are numbered consecutively. An Unnumbered Notebook with its own pagination, contains notes and clippings on events Price was involved in while serving with the United Nations. Two subject files within the notebooks segment of the Writings series: a “Reporter's File,” written while Price was a journalist; and materials on the “Atomic Bomb,” originally labelled “pages out of sequence” and inserted as loose sheets in Notebook I, have been foldered separately, labeled as “Reporter's File” and “Atomic Bomb.” Other loose pages, scattered throughout the collection and unnumbered by Price are filed as Miscellaneous Pages.

Price's “Memoir,” Books 1-4, is a lengthy autobiography covering his life from childhood through his service with the United Nations. Miscellaneous pages of the “Memoir,” found scattered throughout Price's papers are collected at the end of this subseries. A copy of the transcript of an Oral History Interview with Price, made in 1969 by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, is also filed in this series. Price was chief of the Associated Press' Washington Bureau during the Hoover administration.

The PROFESSIONAL MATERIALS are arranged in subgroups representing the various periods in Price's career, with Press Releases from all periods as an initial group. The second subseries, Journalist, includes two booklets about AP press coverage during the presidential campaign in 1928, minutes of a censorship committee meeting of editors in 1951, and materials relating to the 1959 Press Congress of the World of which Price was director-general.

The Office of Censorship subgroup includes legal materials, censorship regulations and Notebook VI, which also contains published codes and regulations. This Notebook has its own table of contents and contains some added, mimeo-graphed instructions for editors and broadcasters. The V-J book filed here also has its own table of contents and contains specifications for the liquidation of the office. The two remaining items in this segment of Price's papers, by Purcell and McDaniel, are unpublished manuscripts on censorship, the latter being a master's thesis.

The material filed under the subheading, Germany, includes statistics Price compiled, and two memorandum books of notes from his mission to Germany. The only materials in the collection relating to Price's work in Hollywood, in 1946-1947, are some press releases and materials dating from that period found in the other three major series. The United Nations file contains material concerning United States citizens employed by the United Nations in 1953 and Price's last committee meeting at the United Nations in December 1953.

The PERSONAL MATERIALS series includes a preliminary Biographical file containing some published biographies; however more biographical information can be found elsewhere in the collection, especially in Price's “Memoir” and in the Clippings file. The second subgroup is Memorabilia that was either scattered throughout the collection or taken from his scrapbooks. It includes press passes, programs, menus and other miscellaneous items. The Awards and Honors and Diplomas and Certificates files are self explanatory. The Inscriptions are copies made from books inscribed to Price that accompanied the collection and were separated to the library. The Captions from Photographs, similarly, are from photographs separated to the iconographic collection at the time of processing. The City Book Auction category contains booklets listing the contents of Price's library, which he apparently chose to sell at the time he retired and left New York.

The Clippings file contains photocopies of articles that were scattered throughout the collection or taken from scrapbooks. The articles are about Price, or events in which he was involved or interested.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Byron Price, Chestertown, Maryland, March 16, 1976. Accession Number: MCHC76-16

Processing Information

Processed by Elisabeth Wittman and Joanne Hohler, December 12, 1976.

	Series: Correspondence
Box   1 Folder   1-5	General, 1908-1976.
Box   1 Folder   6	Pulitzer Citation, 1944.
Box   1 Folder   7-8	Notebook VII, 1945, August-September.
	Invitations,
Box   2 Folder   1-2	1919-1951.
Box   12 Folder   3	1949.
Box   2 Folder   3	1952-1954.
	Series: Writings	⇧
	General,
Box   2 Folder   4	1901-1917.
Box   2 Folder   5-7	1934-1952.
Box   3 Folder   1	1953-1974.
	Scrapbooks-“Politics at Random,”
Box   9 Folder   1	1931, December 1 - 1934, May 18.
Box   10 Folder   1	1934, May 22 - 1936, September 22.
Box   11 Folder   1	1936, September 25 - December 25.
Box   3 Folder   2	Public Addresses, 1942-1945.
	Notebooks,
Box   3 Folder   3-4	I, 1942, January-July.
Box   3 Folder   5	II, 1942, August-November.
Box   3 Folder   6-7	III, 1942, November - 1943, September.
Box   3 Folder   8	IV, 1943, September - 1945, March.
Box   4 Folder   1	V, 1945, August.
Box   4 Folder   2	Unnumbered Notebook, 1948-1950. . Note: No Roman Numeral assigned by Price.
Box   4 Folder   3	“Reporter's File,” 1931-1933.
Box   4 Folder   4	“Atomic Bomb,” 1943-1945.
Box   4 Folder   5	Miscellaneous Pages.
	“Memoir,”
Box   4 Folder   6	Book I.
Box   4 Folder   7-9	Book II.
Box   4 Folder   10-11	Book III (Sections 1-2).
Box   5 Folder   1-4	Book III (Sections 3-6).
Box   5 Folder   5-7	Book IV.
Box   5 Folder   8	Miscellaneous Pages.
Box   5 Folder   9	Oral History Interview for the Herbert Hoover Library, 1969.
	Series: Professional Materials	⇧
Box   5 Folder   10	Press Releases, 1941-1954.
	Journalist,
Box   5 Folder   11	Associated Press 1928 Press Coverage.
Box   5 Folder   12	Second Meeting of the Wartime Censorship Committee of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1951.
Box   5 Folder   13	Press Congress of the World, 1959.
	Office of Censorship,
Box   5 Folder   14	Legal Materials, 1941-1945.
Box   5 Folder   15	Censorship Regulations, 1942-1945.
Box   6 Folder   1-2	Notebook VI, 1942, February - 1945, August.
Box   6 Folder   3	Office of Censorship, V-J Book, 1945, August 3.
Box   6 Folder   4	“Wartime Press Censorship in Canada” by Gillis Purcell, 1946 April (Monograph)
Box   6 Folder   5	“The War on Words: The Office of Censorship in World War II” by Alvin William McDaniel, Jr. 1972 May (Master's Thesis)
	Germany,
Box   6 Folder   6	Mission to Germany, 1945
Box   6 Folder   7	Memorandum Books , 1945 Mission to Germany.
	United Nations,
Box   6 Folder   8	Employment of United States Citizens, 1953, January.
Box   6 Folder   9	Committee Meeting Minutes, 1953, December.
	Series: Personal Materials	⇧
Box   6 Folder   10	Biographical, 1942, 1954-1956, 1962
	Memorabilia,
Box   6 Folder   11	1904-1919
Box   12 Folder   2	1920
Box   7 Folder   1	1920-1935
Box   7 Folder   2-3	1940-1953, 1958
Box   12 Folder   1	Diplomas and Certificates, 1908-1959.
Box   7 Folder   4	Awards and Honors, 1945-1963.
Box   7 Folder   5	Inscriptions, 1938-1974
Box   7 Folder   6	City Book Auction, the Byron Price Library, 1954-1955
Box   8 Folder   1-6	Clippings, 1904-1971
Box   8 Folder   7	Captions from Photographs, 1938-1959

Appendix: Index of Selected Correspondents

Name	Date	Box	Folder	Page (in Notebooks I-V)
Arnold, H. H.	1945, September 25	1	2
Biddle, Francis	1942, February 25	3	5	118
	1942, September 30	1	1
	1945, June 29	1	2
	1947, February 20	1	3
Bissell, Clayton	1945, August 21	1	2
	1945, August 22	1	2
	1945, September 9	1	2
Bryan, B. M.	1946, February 6	1	3
DeMille, Cecil B.	1946, June 24	1	3
Donovan, William J.	1945, August 20	1	2
Eisenhower, Dwight D.	1945, November 5	1	2
	1945, December 18	1	2
Evans, Sir Francis	1941, December 19	1	3
Farley, James A.	1944, May 12	1	6
Fly, James Lawrence	1944, November 14	1	1
Forrestal, James	1945, August 27	1	2
Gruening, Ernest	1941, December 23	3	5	232
	1942, March 28	3	5	II-M
Hammarskjold, Dag	1953, October 19	1	4
	1960, October 17	1	4
Hannegan, Robert W.	1945, September 17	1	2
Harding, Florence	1921, July 26	1	1
Harding, Warren G.	1920, September 6	1	1
	1921, November 4	1	1
Hays, Will H.	1945, June 4	1	2
	1947, February	1	3
Hepburn, Arthur J.	1942, July 23	3	4	101-2
Hoover, Herbert	1941, December 19	1	1
Hoover, J. Edgar	1945, August 18	1	2
	1954, February 2	1	4
	1956, December 4	1	4
Hull, Cordell	1942, November 28	3	6	225
	1942, December 18	3	6	227
	1944, May 14	1	6
Ickes, Harold L.	1942, December 11	3	6	255
	1942, December 18	3	6	257
	1945, September 11	1	2
Inverchapel, Lord	1947, December 10	1	3
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald	1963, April 3	1	4
Leahy, William D.	1943, July 27	3	7	317
Lie, Trygve	1952, June 27	1	4
	1953, July 2	1	4
Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr.	1954, January 28	1	4
Marshall, George C.	1945, April 3	4	1	465
	1945, September 17	1	2
	1947, February 19	1	3
	1948	1	3
	1951, July 31	1	4
Marshall, Thomas R.	1917, June 1	1	1
Meade, F. C.	1945, September 12	1	2
Mencken, H. L.	1944, June 28	1	1
Mitchell (Marsh), Margaret	1946, January 26	1	3
Moses, Robert	1954, January 14	1	4
Moss, John E.	1957, February 28	1	4
Parodi, Alexandre	1948, August 20	1	3
Pearson, Drew	1942, March 3	3	3	37
Rockefeller, David	1954, January 21	1	4
Rockefeller, Nelson	1945, August 31	1	2
	1947, February 19	1	3
	1947, February 21	1	3
Roosevelt, Eleanor	1949, March 31	1	4
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano	1941, December 20	1	1
	1942, January 27	1	1
	1944, November 15	3	8
Salinger, Pierre	1964, August 25	1	4
Stettinius, Edward R., Jr.	1947, February 22	1	3
Smith, Harold D.	1945, September 10	1	2
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur	1946, June 10	1	3
Stevenson, Adlai E.	1952 or '56, December 21	1	4
Stimson, Henry L.	1941, March 8	1	1
	1945, November 7	1	2
Surles, A.D.	1942, January 20	3	4	77
Thebaud, Hewlett	1945, August 22	1	2
Truman, Harry S.	1944, April 21	1	1
	1945, April 13	1	2
	1945, July 3	4	1
	1945, August 30	1	2
	1945, December 18	1	2
	1949, December 13	1	4
Vinson, Fred M.	1945, August 17	5	13
	1945, September 10	1	2
Walker, Frank C.	1941, December 12	3	5	164
	1945, June 28	1	2
	1945, June 30	1	2
	1947, February 25	1	3
	1954, January 20	1	4
Watson, Thomas J.	1947, February 21	1	3
	1954, February 25	1	4
Willkie, Wendell	1942, December 29	3	6	228
	1942, December 31	3	6	229