Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbitration Records

These papers were given a preliminary sorting at Lake Mohonk by Professor Warren F. Kuehl (Department of History, Mississippi State University) who also imposed some order on the collection. In his report, Professor Kuehl states: "...it will take considerable effort to put [the papers] in workable shape. The material was moved at least twice, transferred from box to box in which some of it was just 'dumped'...the correspondence section is an imponderable." Minimal sorting was done shortly after the papers arrived at Swarthmore.In 1982, most of the papers were re-housed into new acid-free boxes. Analysis of the papers in 1982 and 1994/1995 found difficulties and inconsistencies in the arrangement of this collection. There were many boxes in which the chronology was completely out of order, and boxes in which the contents were quite miscellaneous. At times an alphabetic sequence was interrupted, or simply not completed.

Many of the books and pamphlets received as part of this accession had already been incorporated into the Peace Collection library. No list of these books remains. Duplicate books removed in 1994/1995 are noted in the checklist.

In 1994/1995, an attempt was made to restore boxes to approximate chronological order, which was clearly the order preferred by the administrators at Lake Mohonk. It is important to note that the boxes were never numbered until the processing work of 1994/1995. Every effort was made to retain the original order of the papers, not only out of respect for the administrative decisions originally made at Mohonk, but also because there is a card file (Series IV) which makes reference to various categories established as part of the Mohonk filing system. Much of the correspondence for 1911 and 1912 was received in a 1988 accession, much later than the bulk of the material. The 1988 accession clearly came as an entity, as it is labelled sequentially from "Drawer 1, box 1" to "Drawer 9, box 39." It was considered preferable to keep this material together, rather than integrating it chronologically into Series III. Series V is still quite confusing. It may be properly sorted at some later date.

The labels on the boxes contained no reference to the filing system, nor did the folders within them. Some papers were coded with a letter or letters, indicating their place in the filing arrangement. These include: B = businesses / businessmen / Chambers of Commerce C = correspondents [people who agreed to be on their official correspondents list] G = general L = libraries M = miscellaneous N = newspapers P = Pugsley Essay/Prize Contest U = universities and colleges However, some files contain a miscellany of codes.

It is important for the researcher to understand that, while much work has been accomplished, much remains to be done. There were many discontinuities and irregularities in filing in the papers as they were received from Mohonk which could not be addressed at this time.

Note: Later processing (2003- ) included re-foldering contents, rearranging material in and between boxes, and, at times, creating new folder titles to reflect the contents better. When original boxes were too full, new boxes have been added. This may mean that the card file is no longer as useful in matching names etc. with box and folder numbers/names. See older checklists for how 1994/1995 arrangement of boxes related to Lake Mohonk's drawer filing system, which will no longer match up the same. Even the Series titles no longer make complete sense. USE THIS CHART TO FIND MATERIAL WITH CATEGORIES.

Also note that correspondence in Series III was sorted by the SCPC archivist into collective folders, for persons whose last names began with the same letter (such as "A"), or into individual folders, if there were enough letters to/from a person to justify it. Some of these individuals were particularly important in the peace movement of the time, but this is not necessarily true for all. Also, there many have been enough letters to/from an individual in one box, but not enough to/from the same individual in another box to make a separate folder for him/her.

All of this collection is in off-site storage (except for some periodicals). A request for retrieval of boxes must be given to the Curator at least two weeks in advance of a visit to the Peace Collection.