In cooperation with the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin library, Professor Richard T. Ely established the American Bureau of Industrial Research in 1904. During the next few years Ely and his collaborators, John R. Commons, John B. Andrews, and Helen L. Sumner, collected vast amounts of printed manuscript material on the history of the labor movement in the United States. The most significant collector in labor history to that date, the bureau then presented its material to the Society and the University library for preservation and scholarly research.
In 1908 the bureau acquired the library of Herman Schlueter, editor of the socialist New York Volkszeitung and several books on the labor movement. His library contained unusually complete documentation of the socialist movement in Germany and the German labor movement in the United States, including papers relating to the history of the International Workingmen's Association. Apparently Schlueter acquired these papers from an unknown source for his book, Die Internationale in Amerika: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten (1907). The bureau subsequently supplemented the IWA papers in the Schlueter library with transcriptions of documents which were either deteriorating or owned by other institutions.
