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Labor history resources ofthe university of IllinoisPatricia Wilson Onsi aa Librarian II, Fresno County Free Library ,Published online: 03 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Patricia Wilson Onsi (1966) Labor historyresources of the university of Illinois, Labor History, 7:2, 209-215, DOI:10.1080/00236566608583991

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PROBLEMS AND SOURCES

LABOR HISTORY RESOURCES OF THEUNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

By PATRICIA WILSON ONSI

Significant source material of value in the study of labor history islocated in three separate and distinct collections within the Universityof Illinois library system: the Institute of Labor and Industrial Rela-tions (ILIR) Library, the Illinois Historical Survey, and the Universityof Illinois Library.

The three collections are intrinsically different in nature becauseof the different needs and uses they serve. To begin with, the ILIRLibrary must provide both current and comprehensive materials on laborrelations for the reference and research needs of students and staff ofthe Institute. In response to the demand, the collection is particularlystrong in its holding of curent labor periodicals, serials, monographs,and pamphlets.

The Illinois Historical Survey collection, which emphasizes regional,state, and local history, concentrates on manuscripts and original docu-ments of interest to students of all areas of history. Labor history ma-terial in the University of Illinois Library is found in special subjectcollections, in business and labor archives, as well as in the early laborpamphlets, books, and runs of magazines which comprise a standardpart of its more than four million volume holdings.

The libraries of the University of Illinois, as an entity, can accom-modate scholars and students who want to view labor in a geographicalas well as a temporal perspective. Labor history can be analyzed herefrom its English, American, or Illinois origins and through its develop-ment, in general and in special aspects, from 1850 to the present.Labor's current position as an element in American society, an inter-disciplinary relationship encompassing the fields of sociology, psychol-ogy, and economics, is a third possible approach.

PATRICIA WILSON ONSI is Librarian II, Fresno County Free Library.

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210 LABOR HISTORY

Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Library

The ILIR Library, a departmental unit in the University of IllinoisLibrary, is by nature a specialized collection designed to meet the re-search needs of its students and staff. In addition to information onlabor and industrial relations, the Institute collection emphasizes ma-terials relating to foreign labor movements, co-operative extension pro-grams, industrial psychology and sociology, collective bargaining, laborlaw and legislation, trade union and management organization, labormarkets and labor mobility, and mediation and arbitration.

Books

The Institute collection of approximately 4,000 standard books andreference works is selected from the total collection in the Universityof Illinois Library. At the dedication of the new Institute building inNovember 1962, the first special collection was established in memoryof Patrick F. Sullivan, late president of the Illinois State Conference ofBuilding and Construction Trades. The $5,000 gift will be used toenrich present ILIR holdings in the area of building-trades unionism.

Periodicals and Serials

The Library currently receives approximately 250 non-document serialtitles and about 50 document serial titles, covering the standard statis-tical, bibliographical, academic, trade union, and business publications.Two-year files are held for most periodicals and serials, although aselected few are held up to 10 years. Twenty local Illinois labor publi-cations are also received currently in the ILIR Library. All back copiesare deposited in the University Library in its newspaper departmentalunit.

Pamphlets

Pamphlets and other non-book materials include about 16,000 un-cataloged items arranged by subject in vertical file cabinets. In addi-tion, a current file of pamphlet material is maintained under the follow-ing classifications: Union files, comprising about thirty-two runningfeet, including union constitutions, collective bargaining agreements,and other union publications for some 250 active and inactive inter-

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LABOR HISTORY RESOURCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 211

national unions; Company files, eight running feet, including annualreports, history and progress reports, and policy statements of approx-imately 170 companies; Association files, eight running feet of publi-cations from local, national, or international associations concernedwith union activities, arranged by name; University files, six runningfeet of publications of programs of labor-management institutes inuniversities and colleges; History files, eight running feet, documentingthe organization, research, and publications of the ILIR from its originin 1947; Film files, two running feet of labor film bibliographies ar-ranged by issuing body; Bibliography files, two running feet of bibliog-raphies on subjects of concern to labor, national and international inscope, arranged by main word in title.

Manuscripts

Arbitration documents covering the period 1951-58 are concernedextensively with Bethlehem Steel, Chrysler Corporation, and Interna-tional Harvester. Considerable representation is also given to the tran-scripts of proceedings of various Emergency Boards; for example, theBoard appointed by the President in 1958 to investigate and report ona dispute between the Air Line Pilots Association and Eastern Air Lines.Other arbitration reports, comprising twenty running feet, are generallyconcerned with Illinois area industries, including those of Caterpillar,Illinois Bell, Allis-Chalmers, and Schlitz.

Special Tools

Special tools to aid in the use of the ILIR Library include a card-file author list of approximately 7,000 significant uncataloged pam-phlets, reprints, bibliographies, and similar materials in the verticalfile collection. The vertical file is arranged according to the subjectheadings of the Princeton University Standard List of Subject Headingsin Industrial Relations, with expansions where considered necessary bythe librarian.

Illinois Historical Survey

The Survey collection of newspapers, manuscripts, and maps dealswith Mississippi Valley history, with particular emphasis on Illinois

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212 LABOR HISTORY

regional history. Papers of union leaders and source material collectedby American historians interested in labor and the American Utopiancommunity movement are among those items of particular interest.

Thomas J. Morgan Papers (1880-1910)

Thomas J. Morgan, labor leader, socialist, and lawyer, was presidentof the Machinist's Union in Chicago in 1874. He helped organizethe Chicago Trades and Labor Assembly in 1877, and in 1888 heorganized the Woman's Alliance for the protection of female workers.He prepared recommendations for workshop, factory, and tenementhouse inspection laws which are a part of the city laws today. Alongwith Samuel Gompers and Henry George, he was selected as an oratorby Chicago labor organizers for the great 1893 eight-hour-day demon-stration. Morgan was a labor official, prominent speaker on behalf ofthe union cause, labor lawyer, and promoter of political action forlabor interests, as well as a labor socialist nominee for office on variousoccasions. Holdings are: clippings, letters, minutes, speeches, records—sixty-four folders, inventory of contents of each folder; nineteen boundnewspaper volumes; scrapbooks of clippings.

Cole Newspaper Excerpts

Newspaper excerpts prepared under the direction of Arthur C. Colefor use in writing The Centennial History of Illinois comprise thirty-one archive boxes, or about forty-seven running feet. The 50,000 ex-cerpts were taken from newspapers borrowed from all over the stateas well as from those in the University of Illinois Library, and are typedon index cards. They are arranged chronologically, classified, and covera wide range of subjects. There is a printed inventory of the contentsof each box. Representative classifications relating to labor history in-clude "Workingmen's Industrial Party," "Knights of Labor," and "Em-ployment and Working Conditions."

Utopian Communities

Source material on Utopian communities was collected in originalform and on microfilm by Arthur E. Bestor, Jr. during his research forBackwoods Utopias. Included are the most significant parts of the col-

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LABOR HISTORY RESOURCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 213

lection preserved in the Working Men's Institute at New Harmony,Indiana: manuscripts, account books, and minutes from and concerningthe New Harmony Community, the American activities of Robert Owenin the years 1824-29, and the educational and scientific work sponsoredin the Middle West by William Maclure, beginning in 1826.

The material is arranged and classified in the Illinois HistoricalSurvey Publication Number 2, Records of the New Harmony Com-munity; a descriptive catalog of the manuscript volumes preserved inthe Working Men's Institute, New Harmony, Indiana, and elsewhere,reproduced photographically for the Illinois Historical Survey by ArthurEugene Bestor, Jr., 2nd edition (revised), May 1951. Other materialsin this comprehensive collection of source materials on the history ofcommunitarian socialism in America include the original papers ofAlbert Brisbane, a microfilm of the complete collection of Robert Owen'spapers in Manchester, England, and photographic reproductions of recrords, books, correspondence, periodicals, and pamphlets relating to alarge number of American communitarian experiments. Other publica-tions describing this collection will be an index to the correspondencerelating to New Harmony and Owenism, and a brief general guide tothe manuscript collections at New Harmony.

The collection of the Illinois Historical Survey is described in detailin two of its publications: Guide to Manuscript Materials of AmericanOrigin in the Illinois Historical Survey (revised edition), by MargueriteJenison Pease (Pub. # 6 , 1956); Checklist of Newspaper in the Illi-nois Historical Survey, by M. J. Pease (Pub. #4,1953) .

University of Illinois LibraryThe Library's basic book and periodical collection is located in the

main library building. Approximately 400 separate titles of Americanlabor journals and newspapers are received currently. There are alsofiles of some twenty-five radical, socialist, and communist papers which,in many instances, were and still are closely related to the labor move-ment. Original copies and microfilmed newspapers are held in theNewspaper Library. The Library holds approximately 80 per cent ofthe books entered in the Institute's Labor History in the United States(Bibliographic Contributions No. 6, 1961), as well as approximately90 per cent of the periodicals searched in the Institute's recently com-piled American Labor in Journals of History (Bibliographic Contribu-tions No. 7,1962).

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214 LABOR HISTORY

Special collections relating to labor history include the following:

Ew'tng C. Baskette Collection of Freedom of Expression

Ewing C. Baskette, an attorney and law librarian, practiced law inNashville, Tennessee, for eight years. During this time he was interestedprimarily in civil liberties cases and served as a volunteer defense coun-sel in the Scottsboro (Alabama) case. His collection is especially richon the subjects of anarchy, freedom of the press, labor union activities,and famous trials. In his division of "material on prosecution becauseof political opinion or labor activities (frame-ups)," he collected pam-phlets, articles, and other materials on the controversial early unionactivity and trials of Eugene V. Debs, "Big Bill" Haywood, Sacco andVanzetti, and Tom Mooney. Of particular note are issues from twovolumes, 1833 and 1848, of the Peaceful Revolutionist, published inUtopia, Ohio. Holdings represent more than 10,000 items: printedbooks, pamphlets, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts dating fromthe sixteenth century to the present.

Business Archives (1839-1949)

Records of Illinois businesses, including social security records, cor-respondence, claimbooks, journals (day books), receipts, and invoicesare representative items. Contained here are approximately 1,000 sep-arate series of items, with 200 from the Champaign-Urbana area and100 from states other than Illinois.

Business records are defined to include the records of farmers, publicschools, public libraries, small businesses and companies, and chambersof commerce. Complete grocery records have been kept for 130 years.The business records are not entered in the main Library catalog, buta separate catalog arranged geographically by area, city, and industryis kept in the Newspaper Library.

Jacob Hollander Collection

The Hollander collection represents over 4,000 rare books whichcomprise the personal library of a long-time member of the faculty ofJohns Hopkins University. It is especially strong in scarce economictracts which illustrate economic doctrines, monetary and banking issues,poor laws, trade and protection, and labor reform measures, from the

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LABOR HISTORY RESOURCES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 215

sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. It contains many first editions ofthe early English writers on mercantilism—Mun, Child, North, Petty,Stuart; many letters between Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Trower, andothers; and the Ricardian tracts. The collection is of use in studyingthe development of economic thinking toward labor through changingtimes. The Hollander collection is arranged in the order appearingin its printed catalog, The Economic Library of Jacob H. Hollander,compiled by Elsie A. G. Marsh (Baltimore, private printing, J. H.Furst Co., 1937). Material is available only to graduates and facultyat designated times in the Rare Book Room.

John H. Walker Papers (1898-1948)

John H. Walker was President of the Illinois State Federation otLabor in 1918. As editor of the Illinois State Federation of LaborWeekly Newsletter, he retained bound copies from 1915-25. Walkerwas secretary-treasurer of the United Mine Workers of America, re-organized, from 1930-31, and included in his papers are the recordsand receiptbooks of the secretary's office, 1930-31, proceedings of theUMWA Convention of District 12, proceedings of the National Con-vention, district Executive Board minutes from 1931-33, and correspond-ence from 1913-1948. Holdings are: pamphlets, contracts, constitu-tions, clippings, newspapers, copies of speeches, minutes of meetings,proceedings of conventions, letters; about twenty-four running feet ofvertical file space and fifteen feet of cabinet shelves.

The University of Illinois Library resources in the field of laborhistory are described in the 1949 publication, University of IllinoisLibrary Resources in Labor and Industrial Relations, by Ralph E. McCoyand Elizabeth O. Hogg, available from the Institute of Labor and In-dustrial Relations; and the University of Illinois Library 1949 publica-tion, American Trade Union Journals in the University of IllinoisLibrary. Materials from special collections are not ordinarily availablefor loan, but they may be used by research workers, in some instancesby special arrangements with the Library, from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.Microfilm and other reproducing services are available on request. Re-quests for more complete information concerning Illinois Library re-sources and special collections in labor history may be directed to theLibrarian, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, 504 East Armory,Champaign, Illinois.

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