Business records (financial, stock, and customer order files), manuscripts, author information, and publishing, production, and promotion information for the Charles H. Kerr Company, the oldest labor and socialist publishing house in the United States. The collections also includes some information about The Socialist Party, The Proletarian Party, unions, and radical organizations, primarily in the United States.

Publications, official documents, song books, and other materials created by and related to the Industrial Workers of the World, an historic union and labor organization.

Book reviews, flyers, articles, photographs, letters, and periodicals stemming from Franklin Rosemont's surrealist, leftist, and labor activities, including the Charles H. Kerr Co.

A variety of files concerning the Chicago Typographical Union (Local 16), and its parent organization the International Typographical Union, compiled by the Union's unofficial historian, Henry Rosemont. Includes ephemera, manuscript and printed materials relating to the union activities, Rosemont's research notebooks about unions and union history, and information about other labor and trade groups. There is extensive information about the Chicago newspaper strike of 1947-1949.

Gilbert Mer’s over 900 page unpublished manuscript, entitled "One Step at a Time - Some Backward," an autobiographical account of Mer’s years on the Texas waterfront as a longshoreman and radical union activist. Portions of the manuscript were published in 1988 by University of Texas Press under the title "Working on the Waterfront."

Family papers including correspondence, photographs, and genealogical research materials of the Saylor and Smith families, early settlers in Oregon and Washington. Also includes historical records and genealogical materials related to the Butler, Heslep, and other related families, including early Civil War letters.

Compiled by Chicago-based Franklin Rosemont and donated by his wife, Penelope Rosemont, this collection consists of pamphlets, wall posters, and periodicals focusing on the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the 1968 Democratic convention.