Scope and Content Note

The David J. Saposs Papers span the years 1907 to 1968 and amply document his long career as an observer and participant in the U.S. and world labor movement. His papers have been organized into six series: Biographical Materials, General Correspondence, Writings and Speeches, Research File of Non-Printed Material, Research File of Printed Material, and a Teaching File. Each series is described separately below.

The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIALS, 1911-1968, include information about Saposs' days as a student at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University, recommendations, employment forms, resumes, and publicity sheets. The arrangement is chronological.

Although the GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE only consumes 25 linear inches, it contains the heart of the Saposs papers. There is considerable information on the research, writing, and publication of his many articles, pamphlets, and books; and on his teaching career, especially his advice to graduate students and his work at the Brookwood Labor College from 1922 to 1933. The correspondence from 1935 to 1954, when Saposs was employed by various agencies of the federal government, details the nature of his work and its impact on other federal agencies and the U.S. labor movement. The main themes from 1938 to 1943 are his work as Chief Economist of the NLRB, HUAC's charges that Saposs was a communist, his forced resignation, and attempts to clear his name. Throughout this series there is also correspondence with Jack Barbash, John R. Commons, Nathan P. Feinsinger, Philip and Robert M. La Follette, Jr., Selig P. Perlman, and Edwin E. Witte, showing the Wisconsin Idea in action. The arrangement is chronological. Many deteriorating carbons of his outgoing correspondence were replaced by Xerox copies.

The major correspondents are as follows:

• Barbash, Jack
• Biemiller, Andrew
• Bliven, Bruce
• Broach, H.H.
• Brissenden, Paul F.
• Budenz, Louis F.
• Cohn, Fannia M.
• Commons, John R.
• David, Henry
• DeLeon, Solon
• Dies, Martin
• Douglas, Paul H.
• Dubinsky, David
• Dunn, R.B.T.
• Ely, Richard T.
• Feinsinger, Nathan P.
• Fitch, John A.
• Flynn, E.G.
• Foster, William Z.
• Frank, Walter
• Gibbons, Harold J.
• Goldburg, Arthur J.
• Green, William
• Hardiman, J.B.S.
• La Follette, Philip
• La Follette, Robert M., Jr.
• Laidler, Harry M.
• Larsen, Frank
• Lefkowitz, Abraham
• Leiserson, William
• Lee, Algernon
• Madden, Warren J.
• Muste, A.J.
• Osburn, William F.
• Olds, Leland
• Otto, Max C.
• Pitzele, Merlyn
• Perlman, Selig P.
• Porter, Paul
• Raushenbush, Paul
• Roberts, Harold S.
• Rockefeller, Nelson A.
• Salutsky, J.B.
• Schlossberg, Joseph
• Shishkin, Boris
• Slichter, Sumner H.
• Soule, George
• Taussig, F.W.
• Thomas, Norman
• Trachtenberg, Alexander
• Van Fleet, Josephine
• Voorhis, Jerry
• Wagner, Robert F.
• Ware, Norman
• Weisz, Morris
• Witte, Edwin E.
• Wolman, Leo

The WRITINGS AND SPEECHES series includes research materials, notes, and drafts of Saposs' articles, pamphlets, books, and speeches, although not all the stages of development for a given item can be found in these papers. This is the most extensive series in the collection and fills ten linear feet. The published and unpublished articles are arranged together chronologically, either by date of publication or by date of the earliest draft. The books follow a similar arrangement; material on The Labor Movement in Post-War France (1931) and the three volume Case Studies in Labor Ideology (1964, 1968) is particularly complete. Saposs' career as a lecturer and public speaker is only sketchily documented by material on five speeches given between 1918 and 1962; they are also arranged chronologically.

In this series are the RESEARCH FILES OF NON-PRINTED MATERIAL that Saposs maintained for his research. Much information exists on his 1919-1920 study of Americanization among the immigrant population; his 1926-1928 study of the labor movement in France after the First World War; and numerous workers' education groups that Saposs was affiliated with or interested in. There are also files concerning the Inter-Church World Movement Commission's study of the 1919 steel strike, including interviews with striking workers, later testimony of William Z. Foster about the strike, and information about John L. Lewis' efforts on behalf of Samuel Gompers to organize the steelworkers as early as 1913. These files have been arranged alphabetically by subject.

Only an unsorted, undated sampling of Saposs' RESEARCH FILES OF PRINTED MATERIAL has been retained. This sampling was drawn from twenty-three linear feet of broadsides, pamphlets, newspapers, government publications, magazines, and reprints. Those separated from this collection were either sent to the Library of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin for inclusion in their collections, or were discarded. The major themes of this file were U.S. and international labor, politics, socialism, and communism, mainly from 1916 to 1943 and from 1953 to 1968. Saposs and his clipping service went through The New York Times and The Washington Post primarily, but also through The Daily Worker, The New Leader, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Sun, The New York Herald Tribune, and The Washington Daily News. There was also much material in the 1930's from the Paris newspapers Le Peuple and La Vie Ouvriere and from the U.S. magazines The New Republic and The Nation.

Materials used by Saposs during his TEACHING career are arranged alphabetically by the name of the institution sponsoring the class or lecture. Ten linear inches concerns the Brookwood Labor College, particularly its faculty, organizational problems, and courses taught by Saposs and other instructors. There are also curriculi, lecture notes and drafts, and exams from other institutions, including The American University, the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, the League for Industrial Democracy lecture series, and the Universities of Hawaii and Wisconsin.