Archives West Finding Aid

Robert W. Dunn was Born in Huntington, Pa. June 1, 1895. After graduation from Yale in 1918 he worked in New England for the Amalgamated Textile Workers Unions as an organizer and economic researcher.

He was an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union from its creation in 1920, and was secretary of their affiliated division, the New England Civil Liberties Committee. In 1923 he joined the ACLU National Committee, and from 1933 through 1941 he served on the Board of Directors.

In 1927 he founded the Labor Research Association and was its executive secretary until 1975. The Association assembles economic data on American labor for trade unions. Among its publications is The Labor Fact Book, a biennial reference volume, of which Dunn edited seventeen volumes.

In the 1920's he was interested in the Soviet Union and made two trips there, one as research director of the Quaker Relief Committee in 1922- 1923 and later as secretary to the American Trade Union Delegation to Russia in 1927. He was a co-author with Stuart Chase and Rexford Guy Tugwell of the report, Soviet Russia in the Second Decade.

Source:Wayne State University, Walter P. Reuther Library https://www.reuther.wayne.edu/files/LP000096.pdf