B (general) 1927-37

Sidney Hillman and the ACWA played crucial roles in founding the CIO. Hillman's correspondence with Walter Reuther and George Addes of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Emil Rieve of the Textile Workers' Organizing Committee reflects that effort.

The Roosevelt era brought both increased visibility and power to Hillman and the union. In 1933, Hillman was chosen to serve on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board. The materials from this NRA period describe the Roosevelt administration's attempts to draw up codes of fair competition to determine production quotas and fix wages and hours in order to bring about economic recovery. The NRA records also contain Hillman's correspondence with government officials as well as leaders of labor unions and of private firms. There are also some reports and raw data used by the NRA in developing its codes.

In 1940, as U.S. involvement in World War II became increasingly likely, Roosevelt organized the National Defense Advisory Commission (NDAC) to coordinate economic mobilization for the war. Hillman was named to the Commission; later he was tapped to be associate director of the War Production Board. The NDAC materials in this collection document Hillman's experiences and include correspondence with William Knudsen. There are also some reports and directives prepared by the War Production Board.

Other notable topics include: aid to free labor organizations in Europe during World War II; anti-fascist efforts by U.S.labor organizations; civil rights; the clothing trade in the U.S. and Canada; economic conditions during the depression, particularly in the U.S. garment industry; international labor activities; Jewish workers in Palestine; labor organizing in the U.S. and Canada; relations with other unions; the Spanish Civil War, including labor aid to and participation in the Republican cause; union involvement in politics and government in the U.S.; the role of women and minorities in the labor movement; and worker education.

Notable individuals represented in the collection include: Mary Anderson; John B. Andrews; August Bellanca; Dorothy Bellanca; George Berry; S.M. Blinken; Louis Brandeis; Harry Bridges; John Brophy; Max Danish; Clarence Darrow; Gladys Dickason; David Dubinsky; Lillian Hellman; Charles J. Hendley; Arturo Giovannitti; Henry Green; William Green; J.B.S. Hardman; Bessie Hillman; Horace Kallen; Paul Kellogg; Philip La Follette; Robert La Follette; Fiorello LaGuardia; Herbert H. Lehman; John L. Lewis; Sinclair Lewis; Jay Lovestone; Homer Martin; Lucy Mason; Tom Mooney; Reinhold Niebuhr; Frances Perkins; Charles Poletti; Lee Pressman; Walter Reuther; Emil Rieve; Eleanor Roosevelt; Franklin D. Roosevelt; Rose Schneiderman; Upton Sinclair; Harry Truman; B.C. Vladeck; Robert F. Wagner; Henry Wallace; Walter White; and Matthew Woll.

Additional organizations of significance represented include: local unions and joint boards of the ACWA; the American Civil Liberties Union; American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; American League Against War and Fascism; the AFL; the CIO; the Fur and Leather Workers' Union; Hart, Schaffner, and Marx; Hickey Freeman and Company; the Jewish Daily Forward; the Journeymen Tailors Union; Labor's Non-Partisan League; the NAACP; the NRA; the Socialist Party (U.S.); the Steel Workers' Organizing Committee; the Textile Workers Organizing Committee; the Textile Workers Union of America; the UAW; the U.S. Department of Labor and its Women's Bureau; the Urban League; the Women's Trade Union League; and the Workmen's Circle.

The papers from the early 1930s are extremely fragmentary; consequently, little material documenting the devastating effect of the early Depression years on the ACWA remains. The campaign to organize shirt and pants workers during the mid- to late 1930s is somewhat better documented, and is described by Hillman's correspondence with organizers in Rochester (N.Y.), Cincinnati, and Philadelphia.