For the period from 1942 to 1968 the Helstein Papers overlap and complement the United Packinghouse, Food and Allied Workers Records which are also held by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
The Helstein collection has been organized into BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL, CORRESPONDENCE, SPEECHES, and SUBJECT FILES series. Photographs received with the collection have been separated to the Visual Materials Name File.
The BIOGRAPHICAL MATERIAL consists of biographical clippings gathered for research convenience from throughout the collection and several oral history interviews and transcripts. The interviews reflect Helstein's willingness to share his knowledge of the history and internal politics of the UPWA. The papers include transcripts of a series of interviews by Elizabeth Balanoff, transcripts and tapes of a two-day interview with Merle Davis for the Iowa Labor History Oral History Project, and a preparatory discussion for the UPWA Oral History Project of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin that was conducted by Rick Halpern and Roger Horowitz. (The tapes produced by that project are a separately-catalogued collection [Tape 1106A] held by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.) The series also includes a high school research paper about Helstein that was based a personal interview.
CORRESPONDENCE (1942-1985) deals primarily with Helstein's personal business, speaking engagements, and involvement with civic organizations and individuals. This series has been divided into four subseries based on Helstein's position within the UPWA or AMC&BW. The PWOC and UPWA General Counsel correspondence is a mix of personal correspondence, contacts with local community groups such as the Chicago Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and routine union and National War Labor Board business. The subseries also includes exchanges between Helstein and his law partner, Douglas Hall, concerning cases and the consequences of NWLB rulings.
The UPWA President subseries consists primarily of congratulations, invitations, and other routine correspondence from individuals and organizations outside the UPWA. Many of the speaking engagements involve university seminars or conferences on labor law, economics, and industrial relations. Other letters document Helstein's involvement with journalists, authors, editors and publishers, radio broadcasts, politicians, and numerous Christian and Jewish civic groups. There are several letters of a more personal nature from various UPWA members and from Saul Alinsky (who was a friend who attended the same temple), H. Hubert Wilson, and Fred Blum. This correspondence has been arranged chronologically, with a separate section of files grouped by organization or activity.
The AMC&BW Vice President and Special Counsel correspondence is evenly divided between material documenting Helstein's personal activities, interests, and engagements and AMC&BW notes, memoranda, and documents sent to Helstein by Patrick Gorman in order to keep him abreast of union affairs. The exchange with Gorman continues in the correspondence of the AMC&BW President Emeritus period, though it gradually becomes more personal in nature. The correspondence in the series is arranged chronologically, although a few files are arranged by function, organization, or activity in order to follow Helstein's intent.
SPEECHES AND ARTICLES includes drafts, notes, transcripts, and final versions of speeches, presentations, articles, and Congressional testimony that cover a thirty-six year period in Helstein's career. The files are arranged chronologically, with the bulk of the material dating from the 1960s and early 1970s. Also included are notes and draft lectures for Helstein's “Topics in Labor History” course at Roosevelt University and a sample of the material that Helstein collected as part of his thinking and writing process.
The SUBJECT FILES series consists of material collected by Helstein or by his colleagues and correspondents. With the exception of the 1960s contract negotiations notebook, which includes a number of “Memoranda to Myself,” Helstein appears in these files only incidentally. The files vary in size from the “Golden Rule” union philosophy statement of Jay Hormel to the extensive corporate material collected as a result of Helstein's appointment to the board of directors of the Rath Packing Company.
Particularly useful within the SUBJECT FILES are the materials for the union's response to the accusations made in 1958 by A.T. Stephens, a former Vice-President of the UPWA, that there were Communist and Negro cliques within the union leadership. Though these charges were found to be groundless, the claim that Helstein showed poor judgment and the implication that he was a Communist dupe were sufficient to torpedo his appointment to the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission in 1961.
The papers also include the notebook of background information Helstein used during the contract negotiations of the 1960s. Helstein worked as a consultant for the Akbar Fund of the Committee for Rural Democracy in Zavala County, Texas investigating the Chicano-American party, La Raza Unida, that was founded by Jose Angel Gutierrez. The collection includes several files of background material Helstein used for this study. Also here are copies of documents on the UPWA's “Operation Dixie” project sent to Helstein by Barbara Griffith. These papers cannot be quoted without the permission of the William R. Perkins Library at Duke University.
