The history of the American labor movement, with its British antecedents and its evolutionary relationship with the Roman Catholic Church, has been a major focus of Catholic U’s Special Collections, including the University Archives and American Catholic History Research Center, for more than three quarters of a century.  Testament to this effort is displayed online via teaching sites, exhibits, research guides, blog posts, and scholarly articles. We are especially pleased that increasing numbers of these labor-related collections are being digitized and now available from The History Vault of ProQuest via subscription. Our earliest labor collections, the papers of John Mitchell of the United Mine Workers of America and T. V. Powderly and John W. Hayes of the Knights of Labor debuted in 2017 as part of the Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974 module. Since then, we have shifted to uniquely Catholic phenomenon of the ‘labor priest,’ a cleric dedicating his spiritual, intellectual, and activist energies into Church supported labor justice. The first of these collections are Msgr. John A. Ryan, a major supporter of The New Deal, whose digitized papers went online in 2022. Recently, the Papers of his protégé, Bishop Francis J. Haas, which were moved offsite to ProQuest facilities in installments in 2023-2024, were digitized and returned to CatholicU safe and sound, with the digital collection going online late in 2024.

The Haas Papers, 1904-1953, more than 100,000 pages, chronicle the life of a noted priest, later a bishop, dedicated to both church and labor. It includes family documents, his student records, and his adult educator and clerical files, but focus mostly on his role as a New Deal public servant and labor arbitrator in the 1930s and 1940s with correspondence, reports, press releases, meeting minutes, notes, lectures, sermons, speeches, publications, and photographs. Priest, educator, and labor relations advocate, the Wisconsin born Haas (1889-1953) was the child of German and Irish immigrants and ordained a Milwaukee priest. A doctoral student of Msgr. Ryan at Catholic University, Haas authored Man and Society (1931), which reflected the social teachings of Ryan and recent Popes. He also published the Vatican-approved English translations of Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931), the two major papal encyclicals that guided his activism and encouraged other priests and Catholics to be active in labor and social justice issues. In the 1930s Haas directed the National Catholic School of Social Service (NCSSS) and the School of Social Science at Catholic U as well as leading the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems (CCIP) and the Catholic Association for International Peace (CAIP). He was Bishop of Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1943-1953.

Haas is best known for his work in labor relations and civil rights, mediating over 1,500 labor disputes, especially the Minneapolis Teamsters’ Strike of 1934. He strongly supported the New Deal ethos of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to initiate long overdue labor and social reform. He served in several New Deal programs, including the National Industrial Recovery Act’s Labor Advisory Board, where he wrote codes for equal racial employment and child labor, Senator Robert Wagner’s National Labor Board where he mediated several labor disputes, as Special Commissioner for Conciliation for the US Labor Department, and as chairman of several industry committees of the US Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. He briefly served at the helm of the President’s Fair Employment Committee where he actively fought racial discrimination in hiring practices. After becoming Bishop, he also served on President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights as was Chair of the Michigan Advisory Committee on Civil Rights.

The History Vault provides rich resources on the labor movement and researchers may be interested in the following History Vault modules: Reverend J. H. Jackson and the National Baptist Convention, 1900-1990; American Federation of Labor Records: The Samuel Gompers Era, 1877-1937; Progressive Era: Voices of Reform; Progressive Era: Reform, Regulation, and Rights; Workers, Labor Unions, and the American Left in the 20th Century: Federal Records; Labor Unions in the U.S., 1862-1974: Knights of Labor, AFL, CIO, and AFL-CIO; and Fair Employment Practices Commission Records. In addition to the Ryan and Haas papers, we are now working to digitize the monumental papers of Msgr. George Gilmary Higgins (1916-2002), a considerable archival trove priceless to understanding church, state, and labor relations in the last half of the twentieth century, and especially in matters and events relating to the United Autor Workers, migrant farm labor, the anti-Communist Polish Solidarity movement, and Catholic-Jewish relations. Like the Ryan and Haas papers before, the Higgins Papers will be digitized by ProQuest offsite at their facilities in installments, 2024-2025. For more on CatholicU Special Collections, see our website or email us at lib-archives@cua.edu