Scope and Content Note
The papers of Maurice Frank Neufeld (1910-2003), state and military government administrator, union organizer, labor historian, professor and labor relations consultant, span the years 1919-1998, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1932-1994. The papers are organized into Diaries and Related Matter, Correspondence, Allied Military Government, Italy, Xerox Corporation, Miscellany, 2020 Addition, and Oversize series.
The diaries, spanning sixty years and including annotations, clippings, correspondence, reports, and other material, focus on Neufeld's service in state and military government and on his academic career. Retrospective commentary in the diaries affords insights into Neufeld's life and career lightly documented elsewhere in the papers, such as his boyhood in Washington, D.C., and his early experiences as a union organizer and official.
The Correspondence series is organized into family, general, and personal correspondence. The family correspondence is arranged alphabetically by name of the correspondent, while the general correspondence is organized chronologically. The division between general and personal correspondence, seemingly arbitrary since much of the general correspondence is intimate in tone and some correspondents are represented in both the personal and general categories, was established by Neufeld. Much of the family correspondence consists of letters from his wife, Hinda Cohen Neufeld, to Neufeld during his military service in Italy. An administrator with the New York State Division of Women in Industry and Minimum Wage during World War II, Hinda Cohen Neufeld wrote lengthy, informative letters to her husband on home front concerns such as rationing and the New York state government under wartime stress. Correspondents represented in both the general and personal categories include prominent New York political figures Irving McNeil Ives and Herbert H. Lehman.
Neufeld's continuing interest in Italy after World War II is represented by a voluminous correspondence, much of it in Italian, with prominent Italians such as the writer Ezio Bacino. Correspondence spanning 1955-1957, when Neufeld was codirector of the Labor Relations Seminar in Bologna sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, is an especially rich source on Italy. Also of interest in the general correspondence are letter reports by School of Industrial and Labor Relations graduate student James Wilson from Chile during 1973-1975 on social conditions and the labor movement in that country early in the regime of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Other general correspondents include Alice Cook, John M. Gaus, William B. Groat, Anna Rosenberg Hoffman, Val R. Lorwin, Jean T. McKelvey, Robert Moses, Selig Perlman, Charles Poletti, and Philip Taft.
The Allied Military Government, Italy series documents the stewardship of New York political figure Charles Poletti as military governor of Allied-occupied Sicily, Naples, Rome, and Milan during World War II. Before the war Poletti served as legal counsel to governor Herbert H. Lehman and as state supreme court justice, lieutenant governor, and, briefly, governor of New York. As military governor, with Neufeld acting as his executive officer, Poletti strove to facilitate the defascistization process in Italy and to restore water, electricity, public health, movement of foodstuffs, law and order, and other essential public services disrupted by war. The series also includes material on Dante Almansi and the Jewish community in Italy, the trial and execution of the Fascist police chief of Rome, Pietro Caruso, for war crimes related to the massacre by German troops of Italian hostages at the Ardeatine caves, and emergency humanitarian operations necessitated by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. During 1945, Poletti entered Milan ahead of Allied combat troops and witnessed the desecration of the corpse of Benito Mussolini by Italian partisans. Material on this episode is found in the Allied Military Government, Italy series, as well as in the Diaries, Correspondence, and Miscellany. The Allied Military Government series also includes a scrapbook containing American and Italian newspaper clippings spanning 1943-1947 which can be found in the Oversize series.
Neufeld collected the material comprising the Xerox Corporation series as a sampling and overview of the company's records that would enable researchers to approach the Xerox archives with greater facility. The series includes organizational and human development manuals, files related to the history of the company, and correspondence with William S. Asher, longtime director of industrial and labor relations, as well as with David S. Raub and Joseph C. Wilson. There are numerous, lengthy entries in the diaries, supported by attached contextual material, on Neufeld's service as a consultant with the Xerox Corporation.
The Miscellany series includes a file on the Experimental College, an innovative program established by Alexander Meiklejohn at the University of Wisconsin in 1927 for the purpose of dispensing with undergraduate curricula of discrete courses and specialization in favor of integrated study of ancient and modern civilizations. The file includes correspondence with Meiklejohn, bulletins, syllabi, and alumni newsletters. Neufeld matriculated at the Experimental College, where one of his formative influences was professor of government John M. Gaus, who steered him towards a career in public administration. There is a file on Gaus in the Miscellany series.
Also in the Miscellany is a file on Neufeld's colleague at the New York School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Frances Perkins, who, as the first female cabinet member, served as secretary of labor in all four of Franklin D. Roosevelt's administrations. The file includes correspondence with Perkins and with her biographer, George Whitney Martin.
Material in the Miscellany series related to Neufeld's service in the New York state government include files on such bodies as the state Bureau of Rationing, Division of Commerce, and the Joint Legislative Committee on Industrial and Labor Relations, and on personalities such as Herbert H. Lehman and Charles Poletti. Neufeld's shorter writings, spanning 1927-1977 and including student papers, journal articles, reports, opinion pieces, and bibliographies, comprise the writings file of the Miscellany series.
The 2020 Addition series includes a diary, manuscript drafts, biographical information, correspondence, clippings, printed matter, and subject files. Drafts of Neufeld's unpublished book, "Persistence of Ideas in the American Labor Movement," comprise the largest group of material in the series. Also included in the 2020 Addition is a subject file containing notes, clippings and printed matter relating to labor history and current events in the United States, and correspondence and printed matter relating to Italian history, culture, labor relations, and Italian-American relations.