Scope and Content Note
The papers of Donald Randall Richberg (1881-1960) span the years 1900-1960 and consist of correspondence, book material, articles, speeches, interviews, radio broadcasts, statements, poetry, musical compositions and songs, book reviews, plays, skits, short stories, legislative and political files, biographical material, financial papers, photographs, printed matter, and miscellaneous items. The collection is organized into four series: General Correspondence , Writings , Subject File , and Miscellany .
The Richberg Papers relate mainly to his service as a member of the New Deal brain trust, labor and public works adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in formulating the National Industrial Recovery Act, general counsel and chairman to the National Recovery Administration, executive secretary of the President’s Executive Council, director of the Industrial Emergency Committee, executive director of the National Emergency Council, and special assistant to the attorney general. There is material on Richberg as an author of important labor legislation including the Railway Labor Act, the Norris LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Law, and the Ball-Burton Hatch Labor Relations Bill; to his political career in the Bull Moose movement and later in the Progressive Party as director of the National Legislative Reference Bureau; as supporter of the New Deal; and later as a conservative. Rounding out the collection is material on his legal career, specifically relating to his corporate and labor practice in which he argued landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court, and to his literary and public speaking career. The papers comprising the latter element of Richberg’s career dominate the collection. In addition to his many articles, book reviews, short stories, and poems, he was the author and coauthor of books on economics, politics, works of fiction and poetry. The papers contain material concerning most of his published works including The Shadow Men (1911), A Man of Purpose (1922), The Rainbow(1936), Government and Business Tomorrow (1943), My Hero (1954), Labor Union Monopoly (1957), Only the Brave Are Free(1958) (coauthored with Albert Britt), Old Faith and Fancies New (1949), More Faith and Fancies (1955), and Poems of Donald R. Richberg(1959).
The correspondence is small in volume but important. Prominent among his correspondents were David Tennant Bryan, George Creel, Herbert David Croly, Allen B. Crow, Homer S. Cummings, Joseph Edward Davies, Cecil B. DeMille, Felix Frankfurter, Albert W. Hawkes, B. E. Hutchinson, Harold L. Ickes, Joseph P. Kennedy, James Jackson Kilpatrick, William Draper Lewis, David Eli Lilienthal, Peter Locke, John S. Lord, Charles Edward Merriam, Marvin Hunter McIntyre, Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), Samuel I. Rosenman, Edward A. Rumely, Gerard Swope, and Edwin Watson. Other correspondents included Clarence Darrow, Herbert Hoover, Edward F. Hutton, Ben B. Lindsey, Ben Moreell, Frances Perkins, A. Willis Robertson, Richard B. Russell, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and DeWitt Wallace.