TYPED LETTER TO EDUCATOR HAROLD RUGG OF TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, SIGNED BY LABOR LAWYER AND LEADING ENVIRONMENTALIST ANTHONY WAYNE SMITH, FUTURE PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL PARKS AND CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION.

Smith sends friendly regrets that as he only comes to New York at weekends for events such as CIO conventions he will not be in New York in the near future and cannot accept an invitation to take part in one of Harold Rugg's lunchtime forums at Teachers College. Smith's letterhead has a New York address but he had actually been living in Washington since 1937.

Much of the letter concerns the travails of the National Conservation Foundation [NCF], and the impossibility of cooperation between communists and fellow travelers and trade unionists and democratic progressives. He notes that the NCF has now reorganized itself and he has decided to rejoin it.

Anthony Wayne Smith [d. 1992] had worked as a labor lawyer in New York and took a variety of labor-related jobs when he moved to Washington. He was attorney for the AFL-CIO Political Action Committee from 1956 to 1958 when he became president and counsel of the National Parks and Conservation Association. The Army Corps of Engineers nicknamed him "Mad Anthony Wayne Smith" for the sharpness of his attacks on their construction plans for the Potomac Basin. He also orchestrated campaigns that led to the establishment of the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, Fire Island National Seashore in New York and Point Reyes National Seashore in California, among others. He was outspoken in his warnings against overdevelopment and overuse of National Parks.

One of the best-known educators during the Progressive era of education, Harold Rugg [1886-1960] was a professor of education at Teachers College of Columbia University. A civil engineer, he had become interested in how students learn and pursued a doctorate in education. He was responsible for producing the very first series of school textbooks from 1929 until the 1940s.