Scope and Content Note
The papers of Henry Smith Pritchett (1857-1939) span the period 1876-1967, with the bulk of the material dated between 1900 and 1939. Although there are comprehensive letter files only for the years 1932-1935, a much longer span of select correspondence with notable political leaders and educators has been preserved. The collection also includes a partial autobiography, several shorter autobiographical documents, reprints and drafts of Pritchett’s articles and speeches, and subject files that document certain phases in Pritchett’s public life including his term as president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The collection is organized into seven series: Travel Diaries and Autobiographical Fragments, Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, Subject File, Speeches and Writings File, Miscellany, and Oversize.
Pritchett’s career as a scientist and educator of wide interests and as a leader and initiator of social projects is reflected in the Special Correspondence with Nicholas Murray Butler; Andrew Carnegie, Charles William Eliot, Herbert Hoover, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and others. Among other topics, Pritchett wrote to Roosevelt his opinion of the president’s relations with leaders in the South and elicited in return the president’s views of racial matters. The correspondence with Taft, includes exchanges regarding Woodrow Wilson, about whom both shared a caustic opinion. Pritchett’s most faithful correspondent was Nicholas Murray Butler, longtime president of Columbia University and trustee with Pritchett of various of the Carnegie endowments. The two men shared many of the same views in correspondence that lasted forty years. Also extensive are letters to and from Elihu Root, who shared political affiliations and an interest in the administration of the Carnegie endowments.
The General Correspondence features administrators and staff of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, of which Pritchett was president for more than twenty-five years. Included are Samuel S. Hall, Walter A. Jessup, Frederick P. Keppel, William S. Learned, Gladys Noon, Margaret Rabitte, and Alfred Zantzinger Reed. Other prominent correspondents include Charles Francis Adams, Samuel Bowles, Charles Gates Dawes, Elihu Root, Jr. (1881-1967), and W. B. Storey.
The Subject File is arranged largely as the Library received it. In addition to files on the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching donated by that organization, the series includes material on Pritchett’s role in the Charles River Basin Project (1901-1908), the Santa Barbara Relief Fund Committee (1925-1926), the formation of the U.S. Bureau of Standards (1900-1919), and his work as a trustee of the Franklin Fund (1903-1938). Of particular interest is material on controversy over Woodrow Wilson’s attempt to get a pension from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The Speeches and Writings File contains a published volume of addresses to students titled What is Religion? (1906) as well as articles on scientific subjects from the early phase of his career and on education in later decades. Included are drafts and reprints of writings and typescripts and transcripts of speeches.