The papers of Richmond Pearson Hobson (1870-1937) span the years 1889-1966, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1890-1937. Hobson's career is noted for his naval operation against the Spanish during the Spanish-American War; proficiency in naval design and construction; his activism in the campaign to enact a prohibition amendment to the United States Constitution, both as member of Congress and afterward; and his efforts to restrict the availability and use of recreational narcotics. All of these facets of Hobson's life are chronicled in these papers. Hobson is also noted for predicting a global war among European powers, ten years before it began in 1914, and between Japan and the United States, thirty years before Pearl Harbor. Hobson's papers contain his analyses and correspondence regarding both conflicts. The collection consists of six series: Family Papers , Navy File , Congressional File , Organizations File , Miscellany , and Oversize .

Hobson and his wife, Grizelda, wrote frequently to one another during times of separation. Hobson also corresponded with other members of his family, including his brother, sisters, and mother. The Family Papers contain information regarding both professional and personal endeavors related to subjects also documented in other series in the collection.

The United States Navy series includes files regarding a congressional bill to retire him as admiral and his service in the Spanish-American War. His papers record his inspections of the battle fleet under wartime conditions, his attempts to sink the Merrimac in a Cuban harbor and bottleneck an opposing fleet, and his efforts to refloat and refit ruined Spanish warships near Cuba and the Philippine Islands. Hobson believed the United States needed to secure naval facilities in the Far East, and his visits to Chinese, Japanese, and British colonial yards produced detailed descriptions of each area. He also was the first to report on the small Spanish Philippine station at Olongapo on Subic Bay, later developed as an American base. Included are accounts of the Mexican warship Donato Guerra and correspondence with French E. Chadwick, Nikola Tesla, the crew of the Merrimac , Naval Academy classmates and shipmates, and Pascual Cervera y Topete, the Spanish admiral who captured Hobson at Cuba. Lecture notes and correspondence regarding the first ship construction course at the United States Naval Academy, organized and taught by Hobson but canceled because of faculty opposition, are also included.

The Congressional File documents Hobson's career as a member of Congress from Alabama and his efforts to enact a prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Correspondents include leaders of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Anti-Saloon League of America (which he later joined as traveling orator), and other anti-alcohol movements. It also features his work to enlarge the American fleet, fund an aggressive battleship construction program, and establish a permanent fleet in the Pacific Ocean. His distrust of Japanese intentions, which he believed were rooted in aggressive imperialism, spurred his interest in a permanent Pacific fleet, and many of his speeches and correspondence are devoted to the subject. Of particular note is a series of exchanges between Hobson and Theodore Roosevelt in which the two debated issues related to Japan. Hobson also headed a congressional panel investigating alleged police brutality during a 1913 national suffragette march in Washington, and the Congressional File contains correspondence and reports from participants.

The Organizations File contains the records of several associations as well as of the 1936 New York Olympic Committee . These organizations, with exception of the Olympic committee, operated more or less concurrently from the same offices with shared officers, and the administrative files of the three overlap. Hobson remained interested in prohibition after leaving Congress. He traveled on behalf of the Anti-Saloon League of America until passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, after which he worked to restrict narcotic use. He established and directed the Alcohol Education Society of America , the International Narcotic Education Association , and the World Narcotic Defense Association to educate Americans regarding drugs and to lobby state, national, and international legislatures to eliminate the drug trade. He organized an international convention during which he was received privately by the pope and secured worldwide agreement limiting the drug trade. Afterward Hobson, believing patriotism to be waning, founded the Public Welfare Association to campaign for greater love of country. He also organized the Constitutional Democracy Association , which worked to defeat Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempt to enlarge the United States Supreme Court, and he campaigned with Hubert W. Eldred to establish a national Veterans Reserve Corps, ideological forebear of the contemporary military reserve system. After Hobson's death in 1937, these organizations disbanded.

Papers that are personal in nature are grouped in the Miscellany File. Included are correspondence, memoranda, newspaper clippings, photographs, and reports regarding Hobson's life and death, a plan of George Huntington Hull, Jr., to spark industrial recovery during the Great Depression, the sinking of the British passenger liner Lusitania , prohibition, Theodore Roosevelt, and World War I.