Scope and Content Note
The papers of William Cameron Forbes (1870-1959) span the years 1904-1946. The collection consists of typewritten transcripts of journals documenting Forbes's activities in the civil government of the Philippines as secretary of commerce, vice-governor, governor-general, and member of the United States Philippine Commission, and as receiver of the Brazil Railway Company, member and chairman of presidential missions to study conditions in Haiti and the Philippines, ambassador to Japan, chairman of the American Economic Mission to the Far East, and partner or director in several American business and banking firms. Some correspondence is transcribed with the daily entries and a few printed items are tipped in to the journals.
Presidential correspondents include Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Warren G. Harding, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Others major correspondents are Emilio Aguinaldo, Warwick Greene, James G. Harbord, Francis Burton Harrison, Conrad Hatheway, Frank Ross McCoy, Sergio Osmeña, Henry L. Stimson, and Leonard Wood.