Series

DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE,, 1959-1965 and 1972-1977.

Dates

1959-1965 and 1972-1977.

Scope and Contents

DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE comprises correspondence from individuals, institutions (e.g., companies, universities, non-profit organizations, etc.), and state, county, municipal, and other New Jersey-based government entities that were frequently referred (or "bucked") to a department/agency by HAW's office for consideration. Correspondence not explicitly referred to a department/agency appears to have been categorized by HAW's office in this series because of its association with departmental, regulatory, or department oversight matters (rather than legislative matters). Files from the years 1959 - 1964 and 1972 -1973 include project files, as well as correspondence on topical issues. Files from the years 1974 - 1977 tend to include correspondence only on topical issues, not projects. Typical of project files, this series includes not just correspondence, but background documents, including maps, blueprints, photos, financial statements, product specifications, program proposals, brochures, etc. The gap in the date range for this series is caused by a change in the correspondence filing structure in HAW's office; see Related Series below.

This series is particularly rich in a number of areas, especially public works and commerce. Public works well-represented in this series include projects or proposals involving the Meadowlands, Intra-Coastal Waterway, Newark Bay, Delaware River, Morris County Jetport, the Raritan Arsenal, and various housing projects. Public works can be found under various department categories (APW, ARA, Corps of Engineers, Fed Housing Administration, HUD, NY Port Authority, and others, as well as Public Works).

Matters of commerce, including government contracts and import/export issues, can be found in the various military branch categories, as well as Agriculture, Defense, and SBA, among others. Among the companies well-represented here are the NY Shipbuilding Company and Manhattan Refrigerating Company. Much material concerns the General Aniline & Film Corporation, which was the subject of a HAW private bill. Some private bills on immigration matters are also included in the series.

In the 1960s, Senate committees and sub-committees were also included as departments in this series. Nevertheless, these files are not particularly rich in terms of legislative matters. The Committees on Small Business and on Banking and Currency files are perhaps the most substantive, with staff notes, committee programs, reports, and other material. The Committee on Foreign Relations files include briefing notes to HAW regarding his early-1960s trip to Africa and Europe. Democratic Steering Committee files include appeals to HAW from other senators for their preferred committee assignments.

The series includes a small amount (0.5 cubic feet) of casework dating from 1959 - 1964. These cases are restricted (see below).

Language of Materials

From the Collection:

Undetermined .

Physical Description

32.5 cubic ft.

Restrictions

The bulk of the series has no restrictions. Consistent with the CASE FILES, WASHINGTON OFFICE series, the select casework retained from this series is restricted for fifty years, that is, until 2015. When opened, casework of individuals will be made available only to researchers that agree not to use names or other personally-identifiable data in their work.

Additional Description

Arrangement

There are six sets of correspondence within the series, each progressing chronologically: 1959 - 1964, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, and 1976 - 1977. Within these sets, arrangement reflects original order, which was alphabetical by department/agency. Acronyms are used in the container list; see Appendix A. In addition, there is a set of restricted cases from the 1960s, which are stored separately from the open correspondence.

The single set of correspondence from 1959 - 1964 was imposed by the archivist during processing. As shipped to the Federal Records Center by HAW's office, there was no consistency among all the original files as to specific years covered and not all department files for a period were necessarily shipped together. In reconstructing the series, the archivist collapsed the various department folders into one set covering the entire 1959 - 1964 period. This was not done for the files of the 1970s, which were kept together by year by HAW's office.

Many of the folders are "miscellaneous" (e.g., HUD: Miscellaneous). This is the original term as applied by HAW's office to the core folders of the series. All material, substantive or not, was placed in the miscellaneous folders unless the staff saw reason to create a file on the specific subject under the department heading.

The dates used in the container list are from the carbon copies of HAW's correspondence. They do not necessarily reflect the dates of all documents in the folder. Containers with restricted access do not appear in the container list.

Containers 411, 415, 419, 425, and 432 include those files with legal size documents that were separated from the rest of the sub-series.

Related Series

· It appears that casework was filed in large part in the very early 1960s in the miscellaneous folders of DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE. Eventually, casework began to be filed by individual case in separate files; these can be found in CASE FILES, WASHINGTON OFFICE which includes the bulk of casework from the 1960s.

· Project files for the 1960s (and to a limited extent for the 1970s) can also be found in CASE FILES, WASHINGTON OFFICE. The bulk of project files from the 1970s (and some projects from the 1960s) can be found in SPECIAL PROJECTS FILES.

· Although DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE includes a small amount of legislative material in the Committee folders, the bulk is found in several other series that clearly relate to legislative matters.

· From 1959-1964, and again in the mid-1970s, DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE was one of three correspondence series in HAW's office. The other two are found in LEGISLATIVE/ISSUE CORRESPONDENCE and GENERAL, ADMINISTRATIVE, AND PUBLIC RELATIONS CORRESPONDENCE. For the period 1965 - early 1972, HAW's office combined the three types of correspondence into one filing structure; see CENTRAL CORRESPONDENCE. Some DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE from 1964 and earlier was carried forward into these new files.

· By 1977, the scope of DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE appears to have been reduced to encompass only some constituent issue-oriented correspondence. With the 1977 implementation of the Correspondence Management System (CMS), DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE disappears altogether as a series. It appears that these matters were handled within the CMS correspondence sub-series of SPECIAL PROJECTS FILES and the Issue Correspondence: CMS Types 70 and 71 sub-series of LEGISLATIVE/ISSUE CORRESPONDENCE.

Additional material from HAW's tenure on the Democratic Steering Committee can be found in the Administrative Assistants and Press Office Files sub-series of SUBJECT FILES, as well as in CENTRAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Appraisal and Discard Information

DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE originally included approximately 55.5 cubic feet of material, with the bulk (39.5 cubic feet) from the 1960s. The 1960s material included a substantial amount of employment/civil service requests and casework. Generally, these were intermingled with other correspondence for a given department and, in many instances (e.g., Treasury/IRS, HEW/Social Security, and the military branches), cases of individual constituents dominated a department's "miscellaneous" folders. The themes of these cases were generally well-represented in the CASE FILES, WASHINGTON OFFICE series, so the bulk was discarded. A small amount of cases (0.5 cubic feet) was retained because of the extent to which they documented specific actions on the part of HAW's office or because their circumstances were not sufficiently represented in the CASE FILES, WASHINGTON OFFICE sample.

General

Index Terms

Given the large extent of folders labeled merely with a department name or with "Miscellaneous," index terms were used to identify the more extensive and/or substantive topics in the folder. This might be company or other institutional name, municipality, project, or general theme (e.g., HUD: Miscellaneous in folder description; Newark, NJ and Kawaida Towers as index terms).

The index term "contract" was used when substantial information was present on company dealings with government contracts.

Key departments represented in the folders were indexed when the department in the folder description was insufficient (e.g., Public Works in folder description; Corps of Engineers as index term).

Folders containing matters related to HAW private bills are indexed accordingly.

These terms were applied within the time constraints of processing and to folders that contain many specific topics. By no means do the index terms reflect the entire contents of a folder.