National Economic Council

This correspondence for the years of Hughes' greatest activity at the Chicago Tribune is the heart of the collection and the most revealing of the man and his times. Having written a series of stories in 1946 on communism in Hollywood which later figured in investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hughes spent the following years extending his anti-communist investigations to the fields of public education and textbooks, universities and their faculties, foundations, etc. He became widely known for this work and developed into a popular speaker on such subjects as propaganda in education, freedom of the press, world government, and the implications to America of the socialist state. His correspondence with conservative groups and individuals throughout the country became voluminous; he also collected many pamphlets and other printed material pertaining to these groups (now in boxes 22 and 23 of this collection).