National Civic Federation

1 - National Civic Federation Records. Civic Federation of Chicago, boxes 155-168. 2 - Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, box 241, folders 5 and 6; box 242, folders 1-6; and box 246, folders 5-10. 3 - . Trade Agreements Department, box 255, folder 4, enclosures to form letter dated May 11, 1906, from [Jeremiah Jenks]. Jenks was a political economist, a student of the combinations movement (he was the chairman of the NCF sub-committee that drafted a bill to amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act), chairman of the Immigration Department, and one of NCF's theorists. The specific reform and patriotic objectives of NCF during the Progressive Era are spelled out in the enclosures of the letter, which was sent to businessmen, unions, and others interested in NCF's plans. Included in the enclosures are a prospectus outlining the purpose of the Industrial Economics Department, particularly in its anti-socialist activities. For more details on this subject see also Industrial Economics Department, box 193, folders 1-8; and for information on Jenks and the NCF bill to amend the Sherman Anti-Trust Act see the Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, boxes 241-247. 4 - The NCF bill of 1908 to amend the Sherman Anti-trust Act was drafted by a sub-committee chaired by Jeremiah Jenks. Members of the sub-committee included Nicholas Murray Butler, Albert Shaw, Elward H. Gary, Isaac N. Seligman, August Belmont, Seth Low, and representing labor, Samuel Gompers, John Mitchell, and James O'Connell. Gompers, Low, and Jenks championed the bill in a hearing before the Congressional Sub-Committee on the Judiciary. Also speaking for the NCF bill was Theodore Marburg, publicist and consultant to NCF, who testified before the House Sub-Committee on the Judiciary that, “the principle of this [NCF] bill is regulation not ruin”. See Regulation of Industrial Corporations Department, box 246, for the Minutes of the House hearing on the NCF amendments to the Sherman Anti-trust Act. There are also testimonies in behalf of the NCF bill by Low, Jenks, Gompers, Marburg, and others. 5 - Industrial Department, box 183. There is additional material on the subject of trusts and combinations during this period in the Commission on Industrial Inquiry, boxes 381-382. 6 - Avery's correspondence is in the Industrial Economics Department, Box 186, Folders 1 and 2, and her writings on socialism are in the Subversive Activities Files, Box 438, Folders 1 and 2. 7 - See Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, Correspondence re: Woman Suffrage, Box 488, folder 9. 8 - See the Personal Papers of Ralph and Gertrude Beeks Easley, box 495, folders 7-11, box 496, and footnote 13, for material relating to the Gaston Means Affair, into which Mrs. Shepard was drawn when she gave Ralph Easley the money to purchase several trunks containing alleged evidence of communist subversion which turned out to be forgeries. 9 - NCF's well-oiled administrative machinery was used by the Council of National Defense to prepare labor, capital, and business for the entry of the United States into World War I. Samuel Gompers was the chairman of the Council's Committee on Labor, and Gertrude Beeks Easley, was the committee's secretary. Louis Coolidge was the chairman of the Committee on Welfare Work. Other notable members of NCF who were involved in the war work of the Council were Ralph Easley (apparently only as an advisor), Hayes Robbins, V. Everit Macy, and Otto Eidlitz. See Council of National Defense, boxes 159-162. 10 - See Easley's correspondence with Lucien Wheeler, a private detective, in the Personal Papers of Ralph Easley and Gertrude Beeks Easley, Box 488, folder 2. 11 - Subversive Activities Files. Box 439, Folders 13 and 14, Communist Domination of the Works Progress Administration. 12 - Subjects Files. Box 418, Folders 7-11, Leases, 1931-1939 and Rent Arrears Correspondence. Extraordinary correspondence with NCF's landlord, the General Electric Realty Corporation, revealing the Easleys' poverty and attempts to keep NCF alive. 13 - Subversive Activities Files. Box 444, Folder 4, Boxes 445-448, Means Affair. Gaston Means was one of sixteen undercover agents and informants involved in Easley's anti-communist campaign in the 1930s. Means sold to Easley for $25,000 documents passed off as evidence of massive communist subversion in the United States. The documents turned out to be forgeries. Subsequently, Easley suspected that it was a plot by the Soviet secret police to discredit him. 14 - Subversive Activities Files, boxes 435-457, documenting Easley's approach to combating anarchism, socialism, communism, and liberalism.

The Origin of NCF in the Clash Over Combinations

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