Scope and Content Note
The papers of Robert Smith Simpson (1906-2010) span the years 1833-1993, with the bulk of the material covering 1925-1979. This collection documents Simpson's career as a lawyer, labor and industrial relations expert, professor, federal government administrator, and diplomat. A portion of his papers was arranged and described in 2002, with additional material processed in 2022. In both depth and breadth, the addition constitutes the main body of Simpson's papers and includes journals, the bulk of his correspondence, and material relating to the main concern of his late career and retirement, what he called the "campaign for quality in American diplomacy." The 2002 material, which includes correspondence, family papers, printed matter, photographs, and subject files, can be viewed as supplemental to the addition. Simpson had most of the material in the addition bound in large chronological volumes to facilitate storage and access in his retirement home.
Simpson's journals in the addition were written in 1955 during his last Foreign Service posting as consul general in Lourenço Marques, Portuguese Mozambique (now Maputo, Mozambique), resume 1958-1960 when he advised the Labor Department on African affairs, and continue 1960-1962 when, retired from the State Department, he served on the Board of Examiners for the Foreign Service. The journals are rich in diary entries; correspondence; newspaper clippings; obituaries of friends, colleagues, and correspondents; mementos; and miscellaneous material interleaved throughout the journal volumes.
The correspondence in the addition spans from 1920, when Simpson was in grade school, through 1951 and the early years of his diplomatic service. Career and life highlights reflected in the correspondence include his undergraduate and graduate days at the University of Virginia; law studies at Cornell Law School; his time with the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration as a special labor advisor with the National Recovery Administration (NRA)and as an administrator with the Asphalt, Shingle, and Roofing Code Authority, an NRA sub-agency; a tenure as a professor at Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; his World War II stint as assistant director and director of the War Shipping Administration's Foreign Division, Recruitment and Manning Organization, charged with finding foreign nationals to crew allied shipping; and dual postwar first secretary and labor attaché postings at American embassies in Brussels, Belgium, Athens, Greece, and Mexico City, Mexico. Many correspondents recur in both the addition and in the supplementary material, such as his father, civil engineer Hendree P. Simpson, his mother, Northern Virginia civic leader Edith Smith Simpson, and his wife, Henriette Lannièe. Other correspondents, namely college friends, peace activists, professors, national and international labor leaders, particularly leaders of the International Labour Organisation, and diplomats include Newton Diehl Baker, Gilson Blake, Bruce Bliven, James B. Bowers Jr., Robert W. Bruère, Kenneth W. Colegrove, Marion Hawthorne Hedges, Elmo Paul Hohman, Marcel J. Lemmers, Helen Margaret Moats, Hugh Anderson Moran, Irene H. Moran, Jean Moran, Frances Perkins, E. J. Phelan, James W. Riddleberger, James T. Shotwell, William L. Tayler, Florence Calvert Thorne, Oscar W. Underwood (1890-1962), Pierre Waelbroeck, Robert J. Watt, Richard Wilson, and John G. Winant.
The campaign for quality in American diplomacy file in the addition documents the execution of foreign policy, or diplomacy, over foreign policy development in the education and development of Foreign Service officers; his leadership of institutions developing diplomats, especially the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, which he cofounded at Georgetown University; and his writings on American diplomacy, including many articles and two of his books, Anatomy of the State Department (1967) and Crisis in American Diplomacy (1980).
The material processed in 2002 includes family papers 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 January 16, 1865,letter describing the participation of his ship, the Wabash (steam frigate), in the capture of Fort Fisher in North Carolina during the American Civil War.
Also part of this material is a labor attaché reading file Simpson culled from American popular, official, industrial, and trade union press (1945-1954) when he was a labor attaché in Belgium, Greece, and Mexico and deputy consul general in Bombay, India. The file also includes Simpson's "The Labor Movement of the United States." He used the material as reference when answering questions from contacts in host countries and as a source of ideas and opinions to exchange with his foreign interlocutors.
Other supplementary material includes his 1991 interview as part of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Project. Photographs and scrapbooks also document his time in the Foreign Service. His interest in the conduct and history of American 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 in the material processed in 2002.