Salant, Walter S. Papers

Senior Staff Member, Council of Economic Advisers, 1946-1952; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution, 1954-1976

The papers of Walter S. Salant consist of correspondence, printed materials, handwritten notes, unpublished articles, and other items primarily relating to his career as an economist with the U.S. Government and with the Brookings Institution.

[Administrative Information | Biographical Sketch | Collection Description | Series Descriptions | Folder Title List]

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ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION

Size: 36 linear feet, 9 linear inches (about 67,200 pages).
Access: Open.
Copyright: Copyright interest in the writings of Walter S. Salant in this collection shall belong to his sons, Stephen and Michael Salant, during their lifetimes, and thereafter shall be donated to the U.S. Government. Documents created by U.S. Government officials in the course of their duties are in the public domain. Copyright interest in other documents in this collection presumably belongs to the creators of those documents, or their heirs.
Processed by: Erwin Mueller (1971); Randy Sowell and Jim Armistead (2014).

[ Top of the page | Administrative Information | Biographical Sketch | Collection Description | Series Descriptions | Folder Title List ]

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

1911 (October 24)		Born, New York City
1933		Bachelor of Science, Harvard University
1933-1934		Graduate student, Cambridge University
1934-1936		Junior Economist, Division of Research and Statistics, Treasury Department
1936		Junior Statistician, D. M. Minton and Company, New York City
1937		Master of Arts, Harvard University
1938-1839		Associate Financial Economist, Trading and Exchange Division, Securities and Exchange Commission
1939-1940		Senior Economic Analyst, Division of Industrial Economics, Department of Commerce
1940-1945		Held various positions in the Office of Price Administration and predecessor agencies, including Chief of the Price and Economic Policy Branch, Research Division, and Adviser in the Office of the Economic Adviser
1945-1946		Economic Adviser to the Economic Stabilization Director, Office of Economic Stabilization
1946		Economic Adviser, Price Decontrol Board
1946-1952		Senior Staff Member, Council of Economic Advisers
1952-1953		Special Consultant, Economics and Finance Division, North Atlantic Treaty Organization
1954-1976		Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
1962		Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University
1976-1999		Senior Fellow Emeritus, Brookings Institution
1999 (April 30)		Died, Washington, D.C.

[ Top of the page | Administrative Information | Biographical Sketch | Collection Description | Series Descriptions | Folder Title List ]

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COLLECTION DESCRIPTION

The Papers of Walter Salant consist of correspondence, printed materials, handwritten notes, unpublished articles, and other documents mostly relating to Salant's career as an economist with the U.S. Government and with the Brookings Institution.

The Salant Papers are composed of five series. The first series, the Subject File, makes up about 80 percent of the collection, and includes Salant's extensive correspondence with other government officials and economists, dating from the 1930s to the 1990s, as well as memorandums, printed materials, and unpublished speeches and articles pertaining to a variety of topics, such as the balance of payments, budget deficits, economic development, inflation, international monetary policy, international trade, the Marshall Plan, the Point Four program, price control, rationing, stagflation, and subsidies. The Subject File contains documents relating to Salant's career in government, particularly his work with the Office of Price Administration during World War II and with the Council of Economic Advisers (with responsibility for international economic matters) during the Presidency of Harry S. Truman. Included in this series are documents that Salant donated to the Truman Library during the early 1970s. The folders in the series that were opened for research at that time are identified in the folder title list with the dates "1971" or "1973," in brackets. These folders, and those entitled "Notebook," contain what Salant regarded as the most important documents he wrote or helped write during his government service and his subsequent career as a private economist.

Also included in the Subject File are materials relating to economics courses taught by Salant at Stanford University, conferences on national and international economic policy that he attended, various organizations to which he belonged, and his association with the English economist John Maynard Keynes. Salant was a student of Keynes at Cambridge University during the early 1930s, and he later became a leading interpreter of Keynes's economic theories. Other prominent economists whose correspondence and assorted writings appear in the Subject File include Alec Cairncross, Lauchlin Currie, Emile Despres, James Earley, John Kenneth Galbraith, Alvin Hansen, Leon Keyserling, Charles Kindleberger, Wassily Leontief, Paul Samuelson, Lorie Tarshis, James Tobin, and Walter Salant's brother, William Salant, who was killed in an automobile accident in 1966.

The second series, the Outgoing Correspondence File, contains copies of Salant's letters to others during part of his career as an economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. The letters in the series cover the period from 1967 to 1986, with significant gaps. Most of the letters are to professional colleagues or close personal friends. The series also includes indexes to the correspondence prepared by Salant.

The third series, the Chronological File, is comprised of correspondence, printed materials, handwritten notes, unpublished articles, and other documents that were not in folders when the collection was received by the Truman Library. Covering the period from 1934 to 1995, this series includes materials relating to Salant's participation in economic policymaking as a government official during the Great Depression, World War II, and the postwar period, and his continuing involvement in national and international economic issues as a Brookings Institution economist from the mid-1950s to the mid-1990s. During the later years, the series includes further correspondence between Salant and such longtime colleagues as Alec Cairncross, James Earley, and Charles Kindleberger.

The fourth series, the Articles File, contains printed materials, correspondence, handwritten notes, and handwritten and typewritten drafts relating to articles and other writings by Salant on a variety of economic topics. In addition to published items, this series includes unpublished speeches, statements, articles, and papers by Salant dating back to his years as a graduate student in economics in the 1930s, and extending through his career as a prominent economic analyst with the Brookings Institution. Preliminary drafts of some of Salant's published writings are also included in the series.

The fifth series, the Printed Materials File, is comprised of publications that were not in folders when the collection was received by the Truman Library. Much of this series consists of books, articles, and other publications concerning economics that were written or edited by Walter Salant. Also included are articles on economics by other scholars, reports by the Office of Price Administration and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, and Congressional legislation and reports. Handwritten annotations can be found in some of the published items.

The Truman Library has the papers of economists who were contemporaries and associates of Walter Salant, including Roy Blough, John Clark, Gerhard Colm, Leon Keyserling, Charles Kindleberger, and Edwin Nourse. The Library also has an oral history interview with Walter S. Salant.

[ Top of the page | Administrative Information | Biographical Sketch | Collection Description | Series Descriptions | Folder Title List ]

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