Main content
Senator John J. Williams papers
Notifications
Held at: University of Delaware Library Special Collections [Contact Us]181 South College Avenue, Newark, DE 19717-5267
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Delaware Library Special Collections. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
John James Williams was born in Bayard, Delaware on May 17, 1904, the ninth of eleven children in a farming family. He attended Frankford High School and settled in nearby Millsboro where he married Elsie Steele in 1924. With borrowed money, John Williams established the Millsboro Feed Company with his brother Preston.
The partnership was successful, and John Williams's business ventures broadened to include the Williams Hatchery, raising broilers and turkeys, and 2000 acres of farms and timberland. He was a Mason, a Rotarian, and a Sunday school teacher and trustee of the United Methodist Church in Millsboro. His civic duties included serving on the Town Council of Millsboro, population 470 in 1946.
In 1946, with little more political experience than his fourteen years on the Town Council, John Williams decided to run for the United States Senate. The forty-two-year-old businessman was dissatisfied with the post-war Democratic administration's handling of domestic affairs and wanted to counter what he feared was a drift toward socialism. Williams disapproved of Truman's continuation of New Deal programs, lingering wartime price controls, and government regulations. The incumbent from Delaware was the popular Democratic Senator James M. Tunnell. Everyone assumed that Tunnell would be re-elected easily, and so, even as a political unknown, John Williams had little difficulty winning the state Republican Party nomination to challenge the incumbent. But the campaign of a small businessman against big government struck a sympathetic chord in voters and Williams won the 1946 election with an 11,713-vote margin out of 113,500 votes cast.
John Williams's senatorial career began on firm footing, due in part to the assistance of a small but experienced staff. His administrative assistant, George S. Williams (no relation), was a former U.S. representative and mayor of Millsboro with special expertise on civil service issues. Arden Bing, executive secretary, was well connected in the Republican State Committee, and had administrative experience under the Assistant Secretary of State and secretarial experience in the office of two previous congressmen. Mr. Bing was knowledgeable about legal issues and foreign affairs. Eleanor Lenhart, a native of Millsboro and graduate of Goldey Beacom Business College, managed all aspects of the office and knew every detail of Senator Williams's work.
From the very beginning, John Williams's senate activities were true to the goals of his conservative campaign. He worked to promote the poultry industry in Delaware, opposed government farm price support programs that benefitted large cooperatives at the expense of small farmers, opposed the continuation of the New Deal Office of Price Administration, supported reduced taxes, and suggested that the budget could be balanced with a reduction of one million federal jobs.
With his first committee assignment in 1947--to the Committee to Investigate the National Defense--Senator Williams began the investigative work to which he devoted much of his career. The committee was charged to investigate contracts and programs for supply of war equipment and facilities, in particular to examine cases of fraud, inefficiency, and waste. The period of his committee service coincided with the investigation of the aircraft and tool companies owned by Howard Hughes, which received widespread news coverage. His other early assignments--to the committees on Post Office and Civil Service, Public Service, and the District of Columbia--gave him thorough exposure to the bureaucracy of the Capital. An appointment in 1949 to a special bipartisan committee to investigate the relationship between the federal and state governments provided Senator Williams with the opportunity to study another area of significant concern to him, what he saw as the tendency of the federal government to usurp the responsibilities of state and local governments.
Senator Williams was awarded an important committee assignment at the opening of the 80th Congress in 1949. In recognition of Williams's diligent work on the National Defense Committee, Senator Arthur Vandenberg (MI) pulled rank during committee assignments and threatened to claim a coveted spot on the Finance Committee if the position was not given to John Williams. Senator Williams was appointed to the influential Finance Committee and the partisan support he had received in seeking the position was noted in the press as well as the Senate.
Although Senator Williams was dropped from the Finance Committee in a political rebalancing in the 81st Congress, he regained his seat in 1951 and rose to become ranking minority member by 1958. In anticipation of this seniority, Williams declined to consider running for the governorship of Delaware in 1956. He wanted Delaware, the state which paid one percent (the highest per capita rate) of the nation's income tax, to reap the benefits of having a senator on the Finance Committee with ranking position.
The Finance Committee remained Senator Williams's primary committee interest throughout his career. As a member of the committee he had access to detailed reports and information that enabled him to study taxation issues and other financial aspects of government programs. Williams launched several significant projects from his position on the Finance Committee, including investigation of complaints about widespread fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid in the late 1960s. Six months after Williams retired in 1970, rules resulting from the findings of Senator Williams and Committee Chairman Russell Long (LA) were issued to prevent Medicaid fraud.
It was also from his position on the Finance Committee that Senator Williams, who had opposed deficit spending throughout his career, was able to win what he considered to be the most significant legislative battle of his career. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson was unable to make progress on legislation seeking a tax increase with Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur Mills (AR). Senator Williams, recognizing that a tax increase was inevitable, began lobbying for simultaneous and mandatory cutbacks in federal spending. With Senator George Smathers (GA), Williams sponsored a tax plan with a 10 percent surcharge on personal and corporate income taxes, accompanied by a $6 billion federal spending reduction. The Williams-Smathers amendment was successful, and it was an unprecedented manipulation of the right of the House to initiate major income tax legislation.
Senator Williams's secondary committee assignments in the 1950s were to the Interstate and Foreign Commerce (1950-1952), Agriculture and Forestry (1953-1960), and Labor and Public Welfare (1957) committees. On each committee, he pursued government accountability. In the early 1950s, Senator Williams engaged in well-publicized debate with Secretary of Agriculture Charles Brannan over the farm programs of the Truman administration. As early as 1949, Williams exposed a $350 million discrepancy in the bookkeeping of the Commodities Credit Corporation (CCC). He called for mandatory audits of the CCC and questioned the authority of Secretary Brannan to appoint the director of the CCC. On the Agriculture Committee, Senator Williams tracked government farm programs of particular interest to his Delaware constituents and monitored costly agricultural policies. He opposed government price support programs because he believed high subsidies set unrealistic prices and increased inflation. As a feed merchant, he understood perfectly the cycle of high-priced subsidized feed driving up the price of poultry raised on the feed. Remembering his experiences as an independent businessman, Senator Williams particularly watched for the programs that benefitted large agricultural corporations at the expense of the smaller rural farmers which the programs were designed to help. In 1967, Senator Williams received the highest award of the American Farm Bureau Federation for his distinguished service to agriculture.
In 1960, Senator Williams was assigned to the Foreign Relations Committee, defeating twenty-five other bids for the seat. He served as the Republican party liaison between the Finance and Foreign Relations committees and automatically became a member of the tax subcommittee. Senator Williams focused on the financial aspects of foreign loan and development programs, issues of foreign currency, tariffs, and international tax conventions. During the late 1960s, Williams followed the affairs of the Agency for International Development (AID) and on several occasions questioned their use of funds. In 1968, he was highly critical of AID's shipment of luxuries such as cocktail glasses and televisions to the Dominican Republic. Also in 1968, Williams began investigations into reports of a black market and corrupt use of AID funds in Vietnam. Senator Williams charged that many government documents were unnecessarily classified in an effort to conceal inefficient distribution of AID funds.
Senator Williams's dual assignment to the Finance and Foreign Relations committees marked the end of an era in the Senate. In 1965 the Senate leadership decided, in recognition of the increased burden of committee work, that no single senator should serve on more than one of five key committees at a time. The key committees were Finance, Foreign Relations, Appropriations, Armed Services, and Labor and Public Welfare. Williams continued in his liaison role until his retirement in 1970, but since then there have been no overlapping assignments.
Committee work contributed to national recognition of Senator Williams, but it was his independent investigative efforts which brought him widest acclaim. In 1947, Senator Williams followed up on the leads supplied to him by a Delaware constituent complaining of irregularities in the Wilmington office of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In early 1948, he was joined by the other members of the Delaware congressional delegation in demanding the resignation of employees involved in the embezzlement of taxpayers' funds through the Wilmington office. As a result of media coverage of the tax fraud, Senator Williams's office was deluged with anonymous tips as well as signed complaints of corruption in other regional offices and the Treasury Department in Washington. The tax scandal was nationwide, and Senator Williams led public denunciation of the tax collection system which had been abused by political appointees. The investigation resulted in indictments of over 200 employees of the Treasury Department and discharge or resignation of many others. Ultimately the scandal brought about reorganization of the system into the Internal Revenue Service, with tax collectors hired through civil service rather than as political appointees.
The investigation which received the broadest press coverage and sparked the widest public interest was Senator Williams's probe into the unethical practices of Robert G. ("Bobby") Baker, Secretary to the Senate Majority, in late 1963. Baker, who had been the political protege of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson, was a potential embarrassment to Johnson as he prepared for the 1964 election. Senator Williams, prompted by leads provided by an individual, pressed for a formal investigation of senate employee Baker before the Rules Committee. When the Rules Committee hesitated to pursue charges against one of their own, Williams renewed his determination to confront the issue of ethical standards for elected officials and government employees. The public, fed up with another case of corruption and fascinated with the details of Bobby Baker's "wheeling and dealing," perceived Senator Williams as courageous and conscientious, and lent tremendous support to this investigation.
Senator Williams had been a member of the "Class of '46," a tide of twelve Republican freshmen who temporarily gave Republicans control of the Senate. The group included, among others, Joseph McCarthy (WI), John Bricker (OH), Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (MA), and Arthur Watkins (UT). Throughout his career, Senator Williams was a prominent member of the Republican party. In 1952, editorials appeared in the national press echoing party interest in John Williams as a running mate for presidential nominee General Dwight Eisenhower. Party strategy calculated that his stand for fiscal responsibility and reputation for addressing political corruption, especially in light of the recent Bureau of Internal Revenue scandals, would appeal to voters and strengthen the Republican slate. But Senator Williams squelched any possibility of his nomination, stating that he had no interest in national office. Senator Williams held to that position twice again, when he was considered for the vice-presidential nomination in 1964 and when he was suggested as a successor to Spiro Agnew who had resigned the vice presidency in 1973.
In 1956, Senator Williams was considered as a candidate for governor of Delaware. However, he declined to accept support for the nomination in the conviction that he could best serve the public by remaining in the Senate where he was just beginning to achieve rank in the seniority system. Senator Williams considered retiring from the Senate in 1964, but he bowed to a sense of obligation to continue with the Bobby Baker case. For this reason, he was targeted by Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic National Committee for defeat. This once again brought national press attention to a Delaware campaign, as Williams won with the narrowest margin of votes of his four elections.
Senator Williams was an active and loyal Republican party member, participating in activities such as Lincoln Day Speeches and the 1960 "Truth Squad" for the Nixon/Lodge campaign, and earning a consistently high rating on conservative issues with his voting record. But he was also recognized for taking stands on issues independent of the Republican party line. Shortly after the investigations that exposed corruption of the Bureau of Internal Revenue under the Democratic administration of Harry Truman, Williams uncovered problems in his own party. In 1951 he denounced abuse of a public position by the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, and in 1959 he called for the resignation of a prominent Eisenhower aide, Sherman Adams. In 1970, his final year in office, Senator Williams led bipartisan opposition to the Family Assistance Plan which was a key program of Republican President Richard Nixon. Williams criticized the welfare plan for decreasing the incentive of relief recipients to take jobs, believed that cost projections for the plan were underestimated, and called for the Department of Welfare to compile data and produce a detailed analysis of the plan. Williams's insistence on financial scrutiny of the Family Assistance Plan cost Nixon support for the program.
Senator Williams was known for doing his committee homework and early in his career earned a reputation as a stickler for procedure. Colleagues were not surprised when he opposed measures on conservative principles, but they were sometimes annoyed when he delayed actions by insisting on procedural review. In 1948, Senator Williams provoked the Chairman of the Civil Service Committee, William Langer (ND), by blocking a maternity leave bill. Although Williams did not oppose the merits of the legislation, he wanted to see the cost estimates of the bill before approving it.
Ultimately, Senator Williams's knowledge and use of senate rules and procedures earned him recognition as one of the Senate's most effective members. In a 1960 poll of Washington correspondents conducted by Newsweek and again in a 1969 UPI poll, Senator Williams was selected as one of the ten most effective members of Congress. In 1967, Senator Williams opposed a proposed rule change to limit floor debate, revealing that it was his use of the existing rules for unlimited debate prior to voting that had enabled him to bring information on both the Bureau of Internal Revenue and the Bobby Baker cases to the Senate floor.
John Williams twice received the Watchdog of the Treasury Award from the National Association of Businessmen. In addition to investigative work exposing corruption in the Department of Treasury, his reputation for fiscal responsibility was based on oversight work performed in committees. From his experiences on the Civil Service Committee, he had a record of opposing costly pension programs and retirement bills. He called attention to significant losses from government employees' abuses of accumulated leave payments and tax-dodging scams. He also followed closely government spending for defense and strongly supported competitive bidding for defense contracts. On one occasion he revealed an Air Force purchase of screws that returned a 2000 percent profit to the seller, and during the 1950s he carefully monitored government losses on surplus ship sales and construction contracts by the Maritime Commission. In 1959, he revealed that Aristotle Onassis received an $8 million windfall because the government underwrote 87 percent of construction costs for three tankers.
Senator Williams believed financial accountability was crucial to the government's ability to counter inflation. In 1951 when the nation was preoccupied with fear of communism, Williams stated that inflation was a greater threat to the country, and that the root of inflation was to be found in loosely audited agricultural programs such as subsidies and stockpiling of government surplus commodities. He called for repeal of 90 percent parity and dramatized the waste of other programs by publicizing the destruction of $50 million worth of potato surplus in 1950. Senator Williams also called for limits on subsidies awarded through the Soil Bank and, additionally, for disclosure of all subsidies over $25,000. In 1962, Williams requested an investigation of Texan Billie Sol Estes who had fraudulently manipulated Agriculture Department programs of crop control allotments and grain storage.
As with many of his issues, Senator Williams was respected for his stand on inefficiency and waste because of his personal adherence to stringent economic policy. Although he was on the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Williams never used public funds to travel abroad while in office, and he sponsored legislation curbing junkets and suggested annual publication of all junkets taken. He waged another economic battle over a second congressional perquisite, use of the franking privilege. Senator Williams persisted with legislation and eventually won passage of bills curbing abuse of the frank for campaign promotion and other congressional junk mail. His best-known campaign against congressional waste was an eleven-year effort to have unused stationery allowances returned to the Treasury. In 1957, he tried unsuccessfully to return the remaining portion of his allowance and was dismayed by official orders to keep the balance. Finally in 1968, legislation was passed returning unexpended stationery funds to the U.S. Treasury.
The career of John Williams spanned the decades which included the important Supreme Court desegregation decision in 1954, the civil rights legislation of 1964, and the escalation of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. Senator Williams is widely credited with having quelled civil unrest in Delaware over the issue of court-ordered integration. In 1954, an agitator from a group called the National Association for the Advancement of White People came to Delaware, and law enforcement officers anticipated major disturbances. Senator Williams called for restraint, stating that although citizens might disagree with the Supreme Court's decision (as he acknowledged he did), it was their civic duty to observe the Court's decision as the law which must therefore be obeyed.
A decade later, Senator Williams withheld support for civil rights legislation until it included an amendment ensuring the right to trial by jury for anyone charged with criminal contempt of civil rights. Williams supported cloture of the civil rights debate to bring the legislation to vote. Coincidentally, he cast the 67th vote supporting cloture which gave the two-thirds majority needed to bring the debate to a close. In 1965, the Senate unanimously passed (86-0) Senator Williams's Clean Elections amendment which strengthened the Voting Rights Bill by making vote-buying and provision of false information at registration federal crimes.
Senator Williams's attitude toward U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia changed during the 1960s. In 1965 he criticized the Johnson administration for what he called an uncommitted policy in Vietnam. By 1967, Williams believed victory in Vietnam was improbable and predicted that the war would end by negotiation. Senator Williams did not support President Nixon's escalation of the war in Cambodia in 1970, but at the same time he opposed the Cooper-Church amendment. Williams pointed out the irony of an amendment, which sought to limit Nixon's power to support Cambodia, but which rode on a bill extending the President's power to ship arms anywhere else.
Senator Williams was sympathetic to criticism of the foreign policy in Vietnam, but he was concerned with widespread civil unrest from anti-war demonstrators and other protestors in the 1960s. He called for the same observance of law and order as he had summoned from Delawareans in 1954.
Senator Williams's disagreement with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 was based on his belief that the Supreme Court had trespassed on states' rights to set their own policies with regard to education. Williams's philosophy of strict separation of state and federal issues guided his involvement on many other Delaware issues. Senator Williams withheld statements on issues and referred cases to state jurisdiction unless federal regulations or funds were involved. For example, he called for an investigation of misused federal funds by the Delaware State Highway Department in 1960. Senator Williams intervened to bring federal aid to the state on the occasion of two disasters. He convened a meeting of federal officials to dislodge the African Queen, a tanker which had been grounded off the coast of Delaware in 1959, and secured tax relief for victims of the March 1962 storm at Rehoboth Beach.
Senator Williams promoted several federally funded projects for Delaware in the 1950s, and his successful realization of them was due to effective collaboration with the other members of the Delaware delegation, especially Senator J. Allen Frear, Jr. Senators Frear and Williams jointly sponsored legislation for public works projects such as the deepening of the Mispillion River, the widening of the Summit Bridge, and the improvement of the Roosevelt and Indian River Inlets. They also presented legislation supporting the interests of the poultry industry, enabling labor law exemptions for the holly wreath home industry, and securing funds for beach erosion surveys.
Senator Williams consistently represented Delaware's interests in federal land holdings within the state. In 1958, he supported plans for the transfer of federal lands to create a state recreational park at Lums Pond. And, throughout the 1960s, Williams sought the return of land leases from the Army and the Navy to increase holdings of the state park at Cape Henlopen.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s Senator Williams was involved with an issue of great interest to many Delawareans, the court-ordered divestment of Du Pont-General Motors stock. In 1957, the Supreme Court reversed an earlier district court decision that Du Pont's acquisition and ownership of General Motors stock did not violate Section 7 of the Clayton Act, and the Department of Justice proposed a divestment plan to distribute the stock to Du Pont stockholders. Of special concern was how the Internal Revenue would rule on the tax consequences of the Department of Justice proposal. Both Senator Williams and his colleague, Senator Frear, were seeking fair and equitable relief for the stockholders caught up in the divestment plan, but Senator Williams was in disagreement with a Du Pont-General Motors bill proposed by Senator Frear in 1959. In addition to several technical flaws in the bill which made it improbable that the bill would pass the Senate, Senator Williams considered it to be more of a private bill than general legislation with broader applications. Final resolution was reached with the passage, in 1962, of legislation sponsored by Senator Williams which stated that divestment of stock to an individual "shall not be treated as distributed dividends, but as a return of capital."
Senator Williams and his wife, Elsie, were able to maintain close ties to Delaware throughout his twenty-four years of service in Washington. The Williamses refused numerous invitations to cocktail parties, receptions, dinners, and diplomatic functions during their years in Washington. They resided in the Capital at the Mayfair Hotel, but preferred to return to their home in Millsboro on weekends. There, Williams was able to see constituents and occasionally enjoy gunning in Delaware's wetlands.
It was also at home in Delaware that Senator and Mrs. Williams were able to enjoy the company of their grandchildren. Their only child, Blanche, lived in Millsboro with her husband, Raymond Baker, and three daughters, Janet, Lora, and Holly. Senator Williams joked when he entered the Senate in 1946 that he was its youngest grandfather, and when he left the Senate in 1970 that he was its youngest great-grandfather.
Elsie Williams was active in Washington charities and social affairs. She served two terms as vice-president of the Senate Ladies Club which supported the Red Cross, and as secretary and president of the Congressional Club. The Congressional Club consisted of wives of congressmen, cabinet members, and Supreme Court justices. Mrs. Williams's election to the Club's presidency in 1957-1959 attests to her popularity in Washington. Mrs. Williams shared her observations of the Capital with Delawareans through a weekly column called "Washington Chatter" in the Wilmington Morning News.
Beginning in 1965, Senator Williams pressed for mandatory retirement at age 65 from elected officials, and adhering to this principle, he announced in 1969 that he would not seek re-election in 1970. Representative William V. Roth won the Senate seat in the November election and Senator Williams left the Senate on January 1, 1971. He had resigned his seat one day early in order to give Roth seniority over other incoming freshman senators.
Upon his retirement, Senator and Mrs. Williams returned to Millsboro. Eleanor Lenhart returned with Senator Williams to continue working with him in a Millsboro office. Williams became an active partner with his son-in-law in real estate ventures, and he also served from 1971 to 1975 on the Board of Directors of the Continental American Life Insurance Company in Wilmington.
Senator Williams's retirement was marked by continuation of public service and interest in public affairs. In 1972 he joined the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and in 1973 he served as vice-chair of the Delaware Tax Study Commission. In 1977, he was honorary chairman of the Inaugural Committee for the installation of Governor Pierre S. duPont. In the same year, he delivered recommendations based on his private study of crime in Delaware to the Council on the Administration of Justice. In 1980, Senator Williams joined the Committee to Fight Inflation, a bipartisan group that formed to urge strong action to control inflation. The group of thirteen former senior government and executive officials was chaired by Dr. Arthur F. Burns and included former Congressman Wilbur Mills (AR), and former secretaries of the Treasury, Douglas Dillon, George Schulz, Michael Blumenthal, and William Simon.
When John Williams died on January 11, 1988, the state of Delaware and the nation lost a dedicated public servant. Senator Williams's career demonstrates the effectiveness of one individual in confronting the issue of ethics in government. At the root of his relentless demands for financial accountability, responsible and efficient use of public resources, and honesty from elected officials, was an uncompromising stand for integrity in government. Williams presented his Senate colleagues and the public with evidence of wrongdoing and provoked awareness of unacceptable practices. He was persistent with his floor speeches on cases of corruption and government waste, but his colleagues learned that he never presented unchecked facts and took his comments seriously. He was called "Lonewolf Investigator," "Watchdog of the Treasury," "Honest John," "Mr. Integrity," and "the Conscience of the Senate" by his peers, the press, and his constituents. Upon Senator Williams's receipt of the George Washington Award from the American Society for Good Government in 1963, Senator Sam Ervin called him "the gadfly of the Senate...on many occasions he has stung the Congress and the executive agencies into righteous conduct." Those words are apt testimony to the significance of his career and his legacy.
The papers of Senator John J. Williams span the dates 1946-1988, with the bulk of the collection representing the years of his career in the U.S. Senate, 1947-1970.
The collection consists of nearly 150 linear feet of papers and also includes scrapbooks, books, photographs, and film and sound recordings. For the most part, the arrangement of the collection reflects the original filing series of Senator Williams's office. The collection is divided into 25 series which are organized under four record subgroups. The first three subgroups--Legislative Staff/Office Files, Constituent Correspondence and Cases, and Administrative and Personal Office Files--consist of series that document the work performed in office by Senator Williams and his staff. The subgroups reflect the functions of the Senator's work and include series typical of a congressional collection.
Duties reflected in the Legislative Staff/Office Files include committee, legislative, and investigative work. The Constituent Correspondence and Cases subgroup includes materials created in response to the concerns and interests of constituents, and those filed on receipt of issue-related opinions from the general public. The Administrative and Personal Office Files reflect the management of the office and the Senator's personal schedule.
The fourth subgroup, Personal, includes series of files and other formats that document the personal activities and opinions of Senator Williams. The material in these files supplements information about his Senate career in the first three subgroups. There is also material from the 1970s and about Mrs. Williams and Senator Williams's family life.
When Senator Williams retired from the Senate in 1971, he returned to Millsboro and set up an office. Eleanor Lenhart, his executive secretary throughout his 24 years in office, also returned to Millsboro and continued to work for Senator Williams. In Millsboro, they reassembled the files and integrated older files which had been removed for storage into each series. When the Williams Papers were given to the University, the reassembled files arrived in 45 filing cabinets from the Millsboro office.
The original order of the files has been preserved as closely as possible in the processing of this collection. For the most part, the arrangement of the collection reflects the original filing series of Senator Williams's office. The series have been presented in this collection in four artificial subgroups; the purpose of the subgroups is to provide thematic structure to the collection. As described in the scope note, three of the subgroups of series reflect congressional functions and the fourth subgroup of series concerns more personal aspects of the Senator's career.
The order of files within most series generally follows office alphabetical subject sequences, but some series are arranged with other appropriate sequences such as alphabetical by state or chronological. Two significant chronological series are Bills of Legislation and Speeches. The most common filing sequence, alphabetical by subject, department, or agency is used in three key series: JJW:ERL Subject files, Executive Correspondence, and Legislative Correspondence. Finding specific topics in the files requires a certain amount of creativity on the part of the researcher. Material related to any one topic may be found in several places according to use of the information, jurisdiction of an agency or department over certain aspects of a topic, the history of agency or department name changes, or the filing practices of different office staff members.
For example, information about "poultry," an issue of primary concern to many of Senator Williams's constituents, may be found in all of the following areas: JJW:ERL Subject Files--AgricultureCommittee Files--AgricultureBills of Legislation (under related bills)Executive Correspondence--AgricultureExecutive Correspondence--DelawareLegislative Correspondence--AgricultureInvitations--Chicken Festival
To plan a search strategy for a specific topic, researchers may also want to consult the "Correspondence Management System (CMS) Topic/Subtopic Listing" appendix in Karen Paul's
Records Management Handbook for United States Senator and their Repositories. CMS is an automated office management system which came into use much later than Senator Williams's tenure in office, but the CMS topics are similar to ones used in the past. The topic listing does not include all of the subjects, departments, and agencies found in the series in the Williams papers, but the CMS list is a very useful guide to the topical jurisdiction of government bureaucracy.Some of the series, especially those in the subgroup of Personal files, had no significant original order. The contents of these series have been arranged either topically, chronologically, or by format as explained in the descriptions which precede each series list in this finding aid.
The usual filing practice in the office was to place contents of folders in reverse chronological order, i.e. latest correspondence was filed in the front of the folder. Similarly, the order of folders in the files (when there were annual folders for a certain topic) is also in reverse chronological order, i.e. the folder from the latest year is filed before earlier years: 1970, 1969, 1968, etc. Exceptions to the reverse chronological order of files and folder contents are described in arrangement notes in each series description.
A Guide to the Papers of Senator John J. Williams of Delaware is a published summary guide to the collection. The guide includes a lengthy biographical note, a chronology of the Senator's career, and brief notes on the series in the collection. This finding aid is a hierarchical list of the contents of each series. The lists are mostly at the folder level, but a few of the series contents (Bills of legislation, Speeches, Photographs, Audio-visual materials, Books) are listed at the item level.Headings on the actual file folders reflect the hierarchical office filing system and each folder includes the entire heading, for example: Leg. Staff/Office Files--JJW:ERL--Agr--CCC--Grain Storage--1949Leg. Staff/Office Files--JJW:ERL--Agr--CCC--Poultry--1953Leg. Staff/Office Files--JJW:ERL--Agr--Cotton Prices--1965
The series contents lists in this finding aid are structured to reflect the hierarchical filing system without repeating non- unique information: Legislative staff/office filesJJW:ERL subject filesAgricultureCommodities Credit Corporation (CCC)Grain Storage, 1949 [Box 1 F1]Poultry, 1953 [Box 1 F2]Cotton Prices, 1965 [Box 1 F3]
The series lists also include box and folder numbers. Folder numbers follow the unique entries on the list and are enclosed in brackets. Folder numbers begin a new sequence with each new series. A series description precedes each series contents list and includes dates of the series, extent of the series, statement of contents, arrangement note, and description. The series description should be read before consulting the contents list.
A NOTE ON SAMPLING: The original extent of the Williams Papers was substantially reduced in processing. The original files included many items suitable for simple appraisal decisions: mailing envelopes, carbons of office correspondence, duplicates of speeches, and government publications. For example, thirty-eight linear feet of copies of the Congressional Record, a publication available in the government documents section in Morris Library, were discarded.
As with many voluminous congressional collections, sampling techniques were also used in processing the Williams Papers. Only representative samples of the contents of some files were saved, particularly in series in the Constituent Correspondence and Cases subgroup. Senator Williams often received large quantities of single-issue mail (such as 300 letters, each unique but all expressing opposition to the president's invasion of Cambodia) or multiple copies of form letters from constituents (such as 200 printed postcards supporting a proposed social security bill). In response, Senator Williams sent a form letter to all constituents. The form letter, know as a "robo" or "dura," expressed the Senator's point of view in general terms appropriate for a large number of correspondents.
The volume of the constituent correspondence series was substantially reduced by sampling. The original extent of each file was recorded before a sample was made, and this record was retained in the front of each file. Generally, twenty percent of the correspondence was saved in the case of large volume, single- issue mail. In the case of petitions, constituent form letters, or multiple copies of the same postal cards, a count of the constituent mail received was recorded and saved with a copy of the correspondence and a copy of the Senator's robo response.
- Boxes 1-137, 144-148: Shelved in SPEC MSS record center cartons
- Boxes 138-142: Shelved in SPEC MSS oversize boxes (17 inches)
- Box 143: Shelved in SPEC MSS manuscript boxes
- Boxes 149: Shelved in SPEC MSS manuscript boxes (1 inch)
- Boxes 150-151: Shelved in SPEC MSS oversize boxes (24 inches)
- Scrapbooks (Volumes 1-45): Shelved in SPEC MSS record center cartons
- Removals: Shelved in SPEC MSS oversize mapcases
The text of this web page can be reused and modified under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Digital copies of the photographs in Subseries IV.H. are available through the University of Delaware Library's Digital Collections website at Artstor Commons.
Digital copies of the audio recordings in Subseries IV.I. are available through the University of Delaware Library's Digital Collections website at Artstor Commons.
If you wish to use the links to the digital objects presented in the Contents List, you MUST allow pop-ups from http://www.sscommons.org Follow your browser's instructions on how to unblock pop-up windows from a specific website.
Gift of Mrs. Elsie Steele Williams, August 1988.
Processed by L.R. Johnson, project archivist, September 1988-October 1990; C. Coven, S. Siemanowski, assistants. Encoded by Lora J. Davis, September 2011. Additional encoding by Jaime Margalotti June 2017.
People
Organization
Place
Occupation
- Publisher
- University of Delaware Library Special Collections
- Finding Aid Author
- University of Delaware Library, Special Collections
- Finding Aid Date
- 2011 September 1
- Access Restrictions
-
The papers of Senator John J. Williams, with the exception of a small amount of material, are open for research. One investigative report from the Delaware State Senate has been restricted for privacy reasons according to Delaware law, and several classified government documents have been restricted pending clearance from the declassification unit of the National Archives. The declassified documents will be returned to the Williams Papers as they are made available. A list of the classified material submitted to the National Archives for declassification may be found in an appendix at the end of the finding aid.
If you wish to use the links to the digital objects presented in the Contents List, you MUST allow pop-ups from http://www.sscommons.org Follow your browser's instructions on how to unblock pop-up windows from a specific website.
This collection contains audiovisual media that has been reformatted. Access to an unedited digitized version of the master reels (unsegmented recordings, no transcripts, etc.) is available by request. Please contact manuscripts staff for access.
- Use Restrictions
-
Use of materials from this collection beyond the exceptions provided for in the Fair Use and Educational Use clauses of the U.S.Copyright Law may violate federal law. Permission to publish or reproduce is required from the copyright holder. Please contact Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, https://library.udel.edu/static/purl.php?askspec
Collection Inventory
Contents: Correspondence, memoranda, reports, speeches.
Arrangement: These files are arranged alphabetically by topic, department, or agency, with alphabetical subfiling by more specific topics. The arrangement of this series parallels the filing order of the executive and legislative correspondence series. Contents of the files are in reverse chronological order. Generally, incoming correspondence precedes office carbon copy of outgoing correspondence.
Description: Eleanor R. Lenhart (ERL), executive secretary to Senator Williams (JJW) throughout his 24 years in office, was responsible for creation and maintenance of this series. The files include the background material for subjects and projects of special interest to the Senator. Ms. Lenhart worked closely with the Senator and was privy to the confidential information in the files. JJW:ERL Subject Files reveal the fact-finding and investigative nature of much of the Senator's work.
File contents of this series reveal the methods by which Senator Williams conducted his investigations. He scrutinized government reports for leads to uncover scandals, received tips from both private citizens and government employees, and developed information through correspondence with investigative journalists. The original files were bulging with charts of figures and reports, many of which were not retained because Senator Williams regularly had pertinent extracts of the reports printed in the Congressional Record.
As with other material in the Williams Papers, the contents of JJW:ERL overlap the subjects of other files and series. Related material may be found in files under a department or agency with cross-jurisdiction in the same series, or in other series such as Committees, Legislative Reference Material, Bills of Legislation, Executive Correspondence, or Legislative Correspondence. Some of the files in the JJW:ERL subject series also complement the Special Investigation Files.
Substantial subseries in the JJW:ERL subject files are Agriculture, Delaware, GAO and GSA reports, and Housing. Among other subseries of interest are Civil Service, Commerce, Defense, Executive Office, Interior, Justice, State, and Treasury. Senator Williams's particular interest in most of these topics was their relation to the welfare of his Delaware constituents and their financial ramifications for the U.S. government.
The Agriculture subseries covers the Commodities Credit Corporation, price support and soil bank programs, abuse of the Department's Disaster Relief Program by wealthy landholders such as Texan Ellsworth King, the Billie Sol Estes grain storage scandal, and information about the poultry industry. Commerce files include information about ship sales, with specific attention to the developments of Greek shipping magnates Niarchos and Onassis, and government contracts for ship constructions. The Defense subseries has material about contracts and government surplus, information generally pursued in response to complaints from citizens about government waste.
The Delaware subseries covers a range of miscellaneous topics. Most interesting are the files documenting the scandal in the State Highway Department which include the "Bove Reports," and the file on Senator Williams's disaster assistance to the state following the March storm of 1962. The 1954 file on "Integration of Schools" is not extensive, but is also of interest.
The Executive Office subseries includes information on executive programs such as stockpiling by the Office of Defense Mobilization and on individuals from each administration. Senator Williams fundamentally distrusted Lyndon Johnson and kept several files on the President's activities. One such file, "Austin Geriatric Center 1969," was compiled to investigate LBJ's suspected abuse of disposal of surplus federal real property.
General Accounting Office and General Services Administration reports were the sources for many of Senator Williams's revelations of government waste. He was quoted in a 1957 American Mercury article as saying "millions and millions of dollars are spent preparing [government reports], but almost nobody reads them. Most of the scandals I've uncovered have been from leads developed from such reports, or from material in the government's own files." The extensive files of the GAO and GSA reports were reduced by retaining only the title covers and summary submission letters of each report. Many of the files include copies of Senator Williams' Senate speeches to which he added extracts from the reports.
The lengthy HUD files include material gathered for a nationwide investigation of the Federal Housing Administration loan programs in the 1960s. Some of the correspondence in these files is with journalist John Barron, author of a 1966 Reader's Digest article titled "The Stench at FHA." The exchange of correspondence illustrates one of several important relationships Williams had with reporters. In some cases, the reporters were valuable sources of information for him as they developed leads for stories which paralleled Senator Williams's investigative work. The FHA files also contain a large amount of correspondence from citizens across the country who, once they heard Senator Williams was investigating the housing loan scandal, knew where to send their complaints and comments.
The Justice Department files include files on court nominations, a Delaware group's participation in the 1963 civil rights march on Washington, and a Senate incident in response to the civil violence at Kent State University. Labor files address the Delaware home industry of holly wreath-making as well as reflect Senator Williams's concern for the ethics of convicted felons leading labor unions.
The State Department files cover Senator Williams's objections to the nominations of Matthew McCloskey and Julius Holmes to ambassadorships, and probe the financial aspects of many Department programs. This subseries includes files on black markets, the 1963 Austrian Grain Scandal, foreign debts, the 1954 Greek war relief, and "kickbacks and payoffs." More financial information, especially on taxation, is found in the Treasury Department files. Several Treasury files of interest cover the taxation of stock under antitrust for GM/Du Pont.
Physical Description11 linear feet
Contents: Correspondence, memoranda, bills, reports, printed documents, and hearing transcripts.
Arrangement: The series includes alphabetically arranged topical files in committee subfiles which are also alphabetically arranged. Contents of the files are in reverse chronological order.
Description: Committee files, considered official government records, are transferred to the National Archives for permanent retention. Therefore, it is not uncommon for congressional collections to have few or no files of this type. Small and incomplete sequences of committee files remained in Senator Williams's papers and these subseries (by committee) were consolidated to form the Committee Files series. The material remaining in these files reflect some of Senator Williams's fact- finding, legislative, and budgetary committee work. Other material in the papers which supplement topics in the committee files can be found in the Bills of Legislation Files, the JJW:ERL Subject Files, and the Legislative Correspondence Files. A significant amount of background files for legislative review by the Finance Committee is also found in the Legislative Reference Files.
The most extensive of the subseries are the Agriculture, Finance, Foreign Relations, and National Defense Committee files. Although far from completely documenting Senator Williams's work on these committees, the subseries do give some indication of his legislative interests and investigative activities.
As contents of the files reveal, Senator Williams's service on the Agriculture Committee gave him the opportunity to represent the interests of rural Delaware and to pursue the financial accountability of several major agriculture programs. Significant material in the Agriculture Committee files includes information about the Commodities Credit Corporation and Senator Williams's criticism of Secretary of Agriculture, Charles Brannan; the Mineral Rights program; and Williams's support for the Delmarva poultry industry.
Senator Williams served as the Republican liaison between the Finance and Foreign Relations Committees and paid particular attention to overlapping financial issues. The files in the Foreign Relations subseries concern foreign currency and international loan funds, and those in the Finance subseries document committee consideration of tax legislation. The Finance Committee files also include reports and figures studied by Senator Williams for his last major project, review of President Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Plan.
Senator Williams's first committee assignment was to the Committee to Investigate the National Defense in 1947. The National Defense Committee reviewed war contracts, and these files include transcripts of hearings with Howard Hughes who had been involved in airplane manufacturing with contractor Henry Kaiser.
Physical Description5.5 linear feet
Contents: Correspondence, memoranda, printed documents, newspaper clippings.
Arrangement: The contents of the subseries are arranged in alphabetical sequences with folder contents in reverse chronological order.
Description: The investigations which gained Senator Williams his reputation as "The Conscience of the Senate" are documented in the series of Special Investigations Files. The three subseries include correspondence and tips from informants, reports and printed documents, hearing transcripts, data, newspaper clippings, and other background material collected in the process of the investigations.
The first subseries, Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), documents Senator Williams's early 1949-1952 investigation into corruption in the offices of regional tax collectors. The investigation was nationwide and the files include extensive leads from citizens and government employees charging conflict of interest, bribery, negligence, and other abuses from tax officials. Among the regular correspondents was Ted Link, an investigative journalist who provided Senator Williams with information on developments in the regional tax office in St. Louis.
The BIR files include one folder of index cards to names in the files, a state sequence consisting of substantial correspondence and leads from citizens reporting to Senator Williams from around the country, an alphabetical sequence of name and subject files, and a sequence of miscellaneous constituent correspondence. The bulk of the files date from 1951- 1952, the period when the tax scandals were investigated by the Subcommittee on Administration of the Internal Revenue Laws of the House Ways and Means Committee, but also contain later material dating to 1969.
The second subseries concerns the Bobby Baker investigation. In the early 1960s, Williams initiated inquiries into the unethical behavior of senate staff member Robert G. (Bobby) Baker. The files of this subseries include the information which prompted the investigation, press clippings which followed disclosure of the case, and memoranda and correspondence with the Rules Committee which document the Senator's role as instigator of the investigation.
The files also include a folder of index cards to names in the files, and transcripts of hearings before the Rules Committee. Related material in the Williams Papers is found in the files of the Rules Committee in the Legislative Correspondence series. The large volume of constituent correspondence in those files reflects the favorable public response to Senator Williams's role in fighting corruption in government.
The Medicare investigation into charges of widespread fraud in the Medicare systems was a large-scale project begun in the late 1960s as part of Senator Williams's work for the Fiance Committee. These files consist of two filing sequences--one filed alphabetically by state with reports of local fraud, and a second sequence filed alphabetically by topics and names. The bulk of these files date from 1969-1970.
Physical Description21 linear feet