Manuscript Division
Catalog Record
Finding Aid [PDF, 192 KB]
These letterbooks of outgoing correspondence span the years 1883-1925 and are an indispensable source for studying the development of the American labor movement. Principally written by Samuel Gompers and to a lesser degree William Green, John McBride, and James Duncan, the letters deal with every aspect of the trade union movement. Microfilm edition available.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 87.0 KB]
Detailed typescript diary kept in the summer of 1933 by a Quaker community-organizing team in a coal mining town in Kentucky. The diary conveys a significant amount of information on the psychological attitudes of mining families and the impact of early New Deal legislation.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
A collection of American labor unions' officers' reports and American labor unions' constitutions, proceedings, officers' reports and supplementary documents. Elected union officers' reports for twenty-four active and twenty-three inactive labor unions, issued 1897 to 1980, with some updates through 1988. The officers' reports are generally compiled and distributed before a union's convention, to inform the members and delegates of the "state of the union": contract negotiations and settlements; employment, wages and working conditions; benefits; administration, jurisdiction and finance; organizing and legislative activities; strikes and mergers; relations with other unions, and so on.
(MicRR guide no.: Z7164.L1 M62a MicRR Ref)

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
Reports from labor union officers of various industries covering issues of contract negotiations and settlements; employment, wages and working conditions; benefits; administration, jurisdiction and finance; strikes and mergers; relations with other unions. More than 250 unions' papers are represented from 1836-1974, with annual updates from 1975(?) through 1982. The collection was compiled by Bernard G. Naas, from collections of academic, public, trade union, and government libraries. The constitutions and proceedings of the AFL, and of important unions in nearly all industries provide a comprehensive record of the formal structure, public positions, and recorded debates of American trade unions.
(MicRR guide no.: Z7164.L1 M62a MicRR Ref)

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 198 KB]
The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was the first labor organization led by blacks to receive a charter in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). It merged in 1978 with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks (BRAC), now known as the Transportation Communications International Union. The collection includes correspondences of the Brotherhood's officials as well as subject files, financial records, and miscellaneous records.

Manuscript Division
LibGuide for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Records in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 6.4 MB]
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records
Includes material relating to the organization's concerns with segregation and discrimination in business and labor disputes. Access restricted. See the database ProQuest History Vault.

Prints and Photographs Division
Primarily photographs of national and local NAACP administrative staff and programs, with images of civil rights promotion efforts through litigation and public protest.

Manuscript Division
Typescript extracts of convention proceedings, 1890-1901, of the union and its predecessors.

Manuscript Division
Catalog Record
Finding Aid [PDF, 140 KB]
Correspondence, official records, reports, speeches, pamphlets, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks containing form letters, press releases, and newspaper clippings relating to the committee. Includes reports on child labor conditions in various industries and minute books and proceedings of annual meetings and national conferences.

Prints and Photographs Division
Includes approximately 5000 photographic prints and 225 glass negatives. Accompanying records, correspondence, speeches, reports, press releases, and clippings are available through the Manuscript Division.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 435 KB]
The National Consumers League was founded in 1899 to monitor the conditions under which goods were manufactured and distributed. Correspondence, memorandum, minutes, reports, speeches, project and program files, legal files, and other records/printed material relating to the league's efforts toward reform in public health, consumer protection, public welfare, and fair labor standards.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 1,625 KB]
Civil rights organization. Correspondence, minutes of meetings, speeches, reports, surveys, statistical data, financial and legal records, scrapbooks, printed material, and other records relating to the programs and policies of the league and its affiliates.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 149 KB]
The Women's Trade Union League was a U.S. organization formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The collection is composed of correspondences, reports, speeches, notes, and printed matter, including minutes of meetings, proceedings of national conventions and international congresses of working women, biographical material on the league's officers, and correspondence between local and national leagues.

Manuscript Division
There is a guide Papers of the Women's Trade Union League and its principal leaders : guide to the microfilm edition in the Microform & Electronic Resources Center.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 104 KB]
Contains speeches, printed matter, and correspondence from the labor-backed 1924 presidential campaign of Senator Robert M. La Follette.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 310 KB]
The Research Guide can provide a bit more guidance and information to help you understand what is in the collection.
The agency directed by the Pinkerton family to protect interests of clients in business and industry. The records include business and family correspondence, biographical and genealogical records, administrative records such as procedural guidelines and training manuals, and criminal case files which include correspondence, reports, photographs, legal documents, and printed matter. Some of the letterpress copybooks held by the Library are part of the Gale Primary Sources database.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
The Japan-United States Economic Relations Group was made up of eight private citizens whose task it was to make recommendations to Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira and President Jimmy Carter on factors affecting the economic relationship between their two countries. The documents reproduced in this publication are records of the Carter Administration, 1977-1981, in the custody of the Jimmy Carter Library.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 3.1 MB] External
The National Negro Business League was founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900 the primary purpose as he saw it, was to improve the economic condition of African Americans. Members came from around the country and included small business owners, professionals, craftsmen, and farmers. pt. 1. Annual conference proceedings and organizational records, 1900-1919 -- pt. 2. Correspondence and business records, 1900-1923. Available in Gale Cengage’s Archives Unbound.

Prints & Photographs Division
Chronological pictorial representation of local, national, and international news topics, with particular emphasis on Washington, D.C., and the United States.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 1,063 KB]
Correspondence, memoranda, speeches, essays, scripts, plays, life histories, folklore material, field reports, notes, transcripts of documents, inventories, lists, statements, instructions, surveys and appraisals, graphs, drawings, maps, indexes, and administrative records of the Federal Writer's Project and the Historical Records Survey of the U.S. Work Projects Administration. Also includes a research library of reports and publications documenting social welfare programs of the Depression era.

Performing Arts Reading Room
Finding Aid [PDF, 2.5 MB]
The company enjoyed a reputation for publishing works of many distinguished American composers. And, with branches in New York from 1894 to 1937 and in Leipzig from 1889 to 1910, it would become one of the largest music publishing and importing firms in the United States. The collection contains music, correspondence, business and financial records, and related documents. These materials provide a detailed look at the management, daily operations, and history of the Schmidt firm.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 216 KB]
Lettercopy and letterpress books (1802-1880), daybooks (1800-1867), cashbooks (1829-1876), ledgers (1796-1878), and other business records of the firm founded by Alexander Brown in Baltimore, Md., circa 1800 which grew from a mercantile business into an international banking house.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 98.6 KB]
The American Rocket Company was also known as Space Rocket Company. Collection includes: business plans, correspondence, financial records, legal records, legislative material, meeting minutes and notes, printed matter, reports, and technical papers relating to the commercial use of space by a private company.

Manuscript Division
The Bostwick Company records consist of the business records of William Bostwick (1796-1863), merchant of Augusta, Georgia, and New Haven, Connecticut, including records of firms with which he was associated and their antecedents. The firms represented are: Edward Campfield & Co., John Burton, Burton & Bostwick, Banks & Baird, and Bostwick & Baird, the last-named becoming the firm of William Bostwick in 1832. These firms were located in Augusta, Georgia, and were primarily engaged in the cotton business. Records include an account book, cash books, cotton books, day books, inventories, ledgers, and other similar company record books.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
Later merged with Duns to form Dun & Bradstreet. Incomplete holdings for v.42-v.263 (1878:Apr.-1933:Mar.). See also Reference Book for related content.

This is an archived collection of websites of major companies that have appeared on the Fortune 500 list. Some information is limited to on-site access only.

Manuscript Division
Correspondence and accounts of Lorenzo Margati and his son, José, merchants. The papers of the father relate to trade in the Philippines and contain information on crops, prices, labor, and the rates of hiring and repairing vessels. José Margati's records are concerned largely with the textile mills of the Boston firm of George C. Richardson & Co.

Business Reference
Microfiche collection of filings submitted to the SEC from selected companies. Includes annual, quarterly, and related other important filings when necessary (8K, Annual Reports, proxies). Dates covered are 1978-1994.
There are digitized indexes for the collection.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 159 KB]
Cooper, Hewitt & Company were owned and ran New Jersey Steel and Iron Works and The Trenton Iron Works (both in Trenton, NJ). They produced and sold rolled iron beams, railroad iron, railroad axles, locomotive tires, refined bar iron, steel-headed rails, charcoal pig iron, brazier's and wire rods, and other iron items.

Catalog Record
See our recorded webinar for information about the set and tips for using this title. The Library's collection is weak in the 1890s's but we do have in incomplete run of the Bradstreet's book of commercial ratings of bankers, merchants, manufacturers, etc. for 1878:April - 1933:March on microfilm.
This is a digitized collection of this titles through 1924 (newer editions will be added later).
The organization of the title and the information included have changed throughout its publication history, but generally speaking, the business entries are organized alphabetically by state or territory, and then city/county, with sections on Canada, alphabetically by province, located at the end of the volumes.
Each edition is usually 2 parts (there are a few with 3) and they key (when there is one) is usually in part 1 in the first few pages (1914-1918 may not have keys).
TIPS
Change the view to either Gallery or Grid (top and right of the results).
To move though the volume faster, change the number of results known to the maximum number (bottom of the results on the right).
Look for the maps of the state. The maps are the first part of the entry and provide an easier way to find the state.
To move though a states entry, look at the text below the image; it may provide just enough text to let you know where in the state you are.
Once you are in an image if you need to move more than one page ahead use the Image pulldown at the top left of the image to move to particular pages.

Manuscript Division
Business correspondence, accounts, documents relating to trade with other shipping houses in Europe, America, and the West Indies; names of French refugee passengers (1792-1800) from the West Indies; the shipment of firearms and other goods to Ft. Pitt, PA (1785), and the slave trade.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 184 KB]
General merchants and tobacco traders. Business and personal correspondence, journals, ledgers, daybooks, cashbooks, tobacco books, and other mercantile records of the firms of Ellis & Allan, Thomas & Charles Ellis, Ellis & Sons, and Thomas and Charles Ellis & Company of Richmond, Va. Includes records of the counterpart firm in London, Allan & Ellis, as well as those of several subsidiary companies organized in Lynchburg and in Amherst County, Va., to buy and sell tobacco.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
The Emigrant Savings Bank was established in New York City in 1850 by the Irish Emigrant Society, an organization founded for the protection of immigrants from Ireland. This collection consists of selected records of the bank, particularly records pertaining to the Irish Emigrant Society, and data about the bank's depositors and borrowers. Society and bank records document the social history of Irish immigrants on either side of the Atlantic. Bank records contain information about deposit accounts, real estate, buildings and investments.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
Extel (the Exchange Telegraph company) was founded in 1872. Its first job was to lay down the first telegraphic cable on the Atlantic seabed to electronically connect London and New York. MicRR guide no.: 492.
Part A includes: Operating Agreements, Board and AMG minutes etc.
Part B includes: Statements of Accounts, Law service statements etc.
Part C includes: Reports of court cases, wage negotiations etc.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 86.9 KB]
Washington, D.C., department store. Correspondence, press releases, newspaper clippings, and photographs documenting the store's officers, personnel, organization, expansion, and advertising.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
Antony Gibbs & Sons Ltd was a prominent London merchant and banking firm owned by the Gibbs family of Devonshire and Aldenham. This archive contains family papers of the Gibbs family. It also contains records of the evolution of the family business together with the business records of associated companies, and provides valuable information about the business community in various European countries as well as Latin America, New Zealand and South Africa.

Business Reference Section
Inventory list
Annual reports of 3500 non-U.S. corporations from 40 countries throughout the world, compiled by the Center for International Financial Analysis Inc. To access these filings go to the Science & Business Reading Room.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 202 KB]
Mercantile firm. Ledgers, journals, daybooks, inventories, cashbooks, and letterbooks of the various mercantile firms in Maryland and Virginia representing or succeeding the Glasgow, Scotland, firm of John Glassford and Company in the Chesapeake tobacco trade.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 307 KB]
Records of the publishing firm Doubleday and Company, Inc., selected for preservation by Ken McCormick, editor and administrative officer, include correspondence, memoranda, notes, drafts and manuscripts of writings, galley proofs, contracts, publicity material, book jackets, notes, financial papers, photographs, clippings, and other records comprising chiefly editorial and author files. McCormick's cover notes describe each author and editorial file.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
The railway system was formed in 1869 by the merger of four railroads, the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad Company; the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad Company; the Cleveland, Painesville, and Ashtabula Rail Road Company; and the Buffalo & Erie Rail Road. In 1914 it was merged into the New York Central system. The line was controlled by the Vanderbilt family and eventually connected to the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad to create a totally controlled railroad linking New York City with Chicago. This collection consists entirely of financial records of the Lake Shore System. The records include daybooks, ledgers, journals, stock ledgers and listings of stock transfers. These materials contain information on the types of supplies used by the railroads, salaries paid to various personnel, and names of individuals and companies that invested in the railroad industry.

Prints & Photographs Division
Catalog record
The business records related to J. and R. Lamb Studios are unprocessed, or not yet prepared and organized for regular service but there is an online presentation of nearly 2,500 preparatory and study sketches for stained glass windows, murals, mosaics, furnishings, metalwork, and interior architecture from the Lamb Studios Archive affords unique insights into changing aesthetics and artistic practices in the United States. The sketches, created from the 1860s to the 1990s, primarily for churches, synagogues, and other sacred spaces.

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
Collection Guide [PDF, 429 KB] External
Davenport spent most of his life in the pursuit of commerce, particularly overseas trade. In company with William Whaley and others, he began investing in trading ventures with an interest in the African trade and became a slave trader. The depth and breath of the collection of business papers provides a good picture of the transatlantic slave trade.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 310 KB]
The Research Guide can provide a bit more guidance and information to help you understand what is in the collection.
The agency directed by the Pinkerton family to protect interests of clients in business and industry. The records include business and family correspondence, biographical and genealogical records, administrative records such as procedural guidelines and training manuals, and criminal case files which include correspondence, reports, photographs, legal documents, and printed matter. Some of the letterpress copybooks held by the Library are part of the Gale Primary Sources database.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 107 KB]
R. Hoe was a company that manufactured printing presses and saws in New York. Business and family correspondence, letter books, subject files, financial records, advertising material, and legal records relating to the company.

Volume I: Court Book Part A
Volume II: Court Book Part B
Volume III: Miscellaneous Records
Volume IV: Miscellaneous Records
The London Company was an English joint stock company established by royal charter by King James I with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America. This is a Microfilm collection but is also found in print as well. Related resource: Virginia Company Archives

Microform & Electronic Resources Center
This has now been digitized.
This title is sometimes seen as Credit Reference Book and microfilm holding are roughly v.127-v.226 (1900-1924). Each volume is organized by state and then by county, city, or township. Related material is the Bradstreet's Book of Commercial Ratings. The Library also holds print versions of this title from 1866 with a gap in the 1890's-1920's (HF5573 .D7).

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF]
Trading house founded in 1819 by Samuel Russell in Guangzhou (Canton), China. Correspondence, financial and legal records, and miscellany relating to the company and its founder, Samuel Russell (1789-circa 1862), and members of his family.

Manuscript Division
Thomas Beall was a merchant of Georgetown, D.C. Ledgers and account books constitute this collection, including lists of notes taken from the ledgers, giving names, dates and occupations of early residents of the District of Columbia and Montgomery County, MD.

Science & Business Reading Room
This is a microform collection of the printed volumes of the Thomas Register of American Manufactures and begins in 1905/1906.

Manuscript Division
Finding Aid [PDF, 147 KB]
Cotton mercantile firm. A diary, correspondence, letterbooks, bills, receipts, invoices, notebooks, purchase orders, and rent statements relating primarily to the cotton trade in Louisiana and Alabama.