Scope and Content Note
The papers of Robert Smith Simpson (1906-2010) span the years 1833-1991, with the bulk of the material covering 1925-1979. Simpson, a labor and industrial relations expert before World War II, helped initiate the labor attaché program of the Department of State during the war. In the postwar era, labor attachés were appointed to blunt communist penetration of trade unions in recently liberated western and southern European countries. Simpson served as labor attaché in Belgium and Greece during 1945-1949 and went on to a further three-year labor posting in Mexico before serving as deputy consul in Bombay, India, and consul general in Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, 1952-1957.
The collection consists of correspondence, printed matter, scrapbooks, subject files, and photographs arranged alphabetically by type of material or subject. File headings include family papers, general correspondence, and labor attaché's reading file.
Family papers are chiefly related to the genealogy of the Hendree, Simpson, Smith, and Tinsley families. A file on Simpson's grandfather, John T. Smith, a naval officer, includes a letter dated January 16, 1865, describing the participation of his ship, theWabash (steam frigate), in the capture of Fort Fisher in North Carolina during the Civil War. Most of the letters are to Simpson from his mother, Northern Virginia civic leader Edith Smith Simpson, while he was attending Cornell and Columbia universities during 1930-1932. There is also correspondence with his father, Hendree P. Simpson, a civil engineer employed by the Navy Department and a horticulturist specializing in irises.
General correspondence spanning 1931-1932 is mainly with college professors and friends, some of whom were active in peace movements. Simpson was preparing to write a dissertation on the American peace movement during the post-World War I period. Material includes Simpson's correspondence relating to surveying the files and archives of peace, disarmament, and women's groups. Correspondents include Marcel J. Lemmers, Hugh Anderson Moran, Irene H. Moran, Jean Moran, Oscar W. Underwood (1890-1962), and Richard Wilson. Correspondence spanning 1936-1941 relates mainly to the International Labour Organisation. Correspondents include Robert W. Bruère, Kenneth W. Colegrove, M. H. Hedges, Elmo Paul Hohman, James Thomson Shotwell, William L. Tayler, Florence Calvert Thorne, Pierre Waelbroeck, Robert J. Watt, and John C. Winant.
Simpson culled most of the material in the labor attaché's reading file from the American popular, official, industrial, and trade union press during a period spanning 1945-1954 when he was a labor attaché in Belgium, Greece, and Mexico and deputy consul general in Bombay, India. The file also includes "The Labor Movement of the United States" by Simpson. He used the material for reference when answering questions from contacts in the host countries and as a source of ideas and opinions to exchange with his foreign interlocutors. According to Simpson, the labor attaché material in the collection is a sampling from a much larger file.
Simpson reviewed his diplomatic career in an interview he gave to the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project in 1991. Other files that document his time in the Foreign Service include photographs and scrapbooks. His continued interest after retirement in the conduct and history of diplomacy and in overcoming deficiencies in the recruitment and training of Foreign Service officers is reflected in his numerous articles and letters to the editor in the writings file and in a file on the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, which he cofounded.