Scope and Content Note
The papers of Emory Scott Land (1879-1971) consist of correspondence, speeches, copies of orders, diary notes, scrapbooks, photographs, and clippings relating primarily to his forty-eight years in government service. The collection spans the years 1900-1972, with the bulk of the material from the period 1932-1946 when he served as chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair (1932-1937), as chairman of the United States Maritime Commission (1938-1946), and as chief administrator of the War Shipping Administration (1942-1946). Although Land was on the staff of Admiral William Sowden Sims during World War I, the collection contains very little for that period. The speeches, correspondence, photographs, and clippings deal largely with shipbuilding. Included are technical papers concerning costs, audits, shipbuilding programs, and documents regarding the need for ships during World War II. As chief administrator of the War Shipping Administration, Land conflicted with labor unions and advocated the use of the army to control labor disorders. Many newspaper clippings and some correspondence deal with labor strikes in 1941 and 1942. A few items deal with the services of Admiral Land as naval attaché in London; as vice president and treasurer of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics; as adviser for his cousin, Charles A. Lindbergh, on his tours in 1927 and 1928; and Land’s testimony in the Lindbergh kidnapping case in 1938. Speeches by Josephus Daniels, Julius Augustus Furer, James G. Harbord, T. M. Girdler, William A. Moffett, Henry L. Roosevelt, William Harrison Standley, and Clark H. Woodward are among the papers.
The Land Papers are organized into nine series: Diaries, General Correspondence, Personal Correspondence, Subject File, Speeches, Scrapbooks, Photographs, Addition I, and Addition II. The addition series complement the main part of the papers chronologically and in type of material, with Addition II especially substantive relating to special correspondence and speeches and writings. Included in the Photographs series are early photographs of Charles A. Lindbergh at the time of his epochal flight.
Correspondents include Admirals Richard Evelyn Byrd, William Sowden Sims, William Veazie Pratt, Julius Augustus Furer, William A. Moffett, and D. W. Taylor; shipbuilders Homer L. Ferguson and Edgar F. Kaiser; aeronautical engineer Jerome C. Hunsaker; aircraft manufacturer William Edward Boeing; and government officials Joseph P. Kennedy, Theodore Roosevelt (1887-1944), Edward R. Stettinius, James Forrestal, Henry L. Stimson, Fred M. Vinson, and James F. Byrnes.