Files of the New York State Civil Service Reform Association and the National Civil Service Reform League relate to the organization, development, history, and activities of these associations. They include correspondence, briefs, extracts, reports, clippings, pamphlets, and other material relating to appointments, examinations, investigations, prosecutions, and removals, finances and membership campaigns, Civil Service laws, assembly and senate bills, congressional activities, the views on civil service of presidential and gubernatorial candidates, newspaper and other publicity, annual and council meetings, and many other matters; minutes (microfilmed) of meetings of the Association and the League; and papers of H. Eliot Kaplan, Executive Secretary of the League. Records relate to the internal administration of the Association and to the accomplishment of its aims; the former category includes minutes of monthly and annual meetings of the executive committee, financial reports, lists of members and contributors, data on the election of officers, and papers of special committees on law, finance, and other matters; the latter and more extensive category includes papers pertaining to civil service reform in New York City, upstate New York, and other states.

Also, a League report and letters from U.S. senators regarding civil service reform and the Pendleton Act (1880-85); a League report on civil service during the Spanish-American War, with supporting documents (1899-1901); manuscripts of speeches by Elliot H. Goodwin on civil service reform (1906-10); an unpublished study by the League on civil service in the Philippines (1901); official publications and correspondence with officers of other state civil service reform organizations; correspondence with Woodrow Wilson and others regarding appointments in the consular and diplomatic services (1913-26); correspondence and research reports pertaining to Albert S. Burlson's administration of the Post Office Department and his patronage policies; League research reports on patronage scandals, including the cases of William E. Pulliam (1913), Thomas E. Rush (1913), and Ruskin McArdle (1918); considerable correspondence and research reports illustrating the interest of the League in the question of the unionization of federal employees (1910-26) and in the "preparedness" campaign (1915-1917); minutes and correspondence of the "Committee of Seventy" regarding the N.Y.S. Constitutional Convention of 1894; and correspondence and other papers on New York City politics and the municipal civil service (1910-26), the N.Y.S. Constitutional Convention of 1915, and civil service and emergency hiring by the federal government during World War I.

Also, material on the New York State Constitutional Convention (1938), including Citizens Union and Civil Service Reform Association proposals; files on other states include those for Minnesota, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (1925-1938); a substantial file on the efforts of the Committee for the Modification of Veterans' Preference to effect improvements in the application of the Veterans' preference principle to New York Civil Service through changes in the New York State Constitution, including letters from the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, and individual veterans setting forth their views on this issue; press releases; letters to the editors of various newspapers, chiefly New York City, explaining the stand taken by the Civil Service Reform Association on various controversial questions; newspaper clippings, publicity pamphlets, and various printed materials. Also, correspondence of Robert L. Johnson, Eliot Kaplan, and Samuel Orway, Jr., concerning the internal administration of the Association and the promotion of Federal, state, and municipal (especially New York City) civil service reform; reflecting the changing preoccupations of the Association, such as patronage under the New Deal, government efficiency during World War II, and Veterans' Preference before and after World War II, the papers include many letters from Congressmen concerning federal legislation, e.g. the Ramspeck and McKellar Bills.

Also, correspondence and reports regarding veterans' benefits after World War I; correspondence with the U.S. Civil Service Commission and the National Federation of Federal Employees; material illustrating the League's opposition to the establishment of the U.S. Employment Service (1918) and its interest in the enforcement of the Volstead Act; correspondence with government officials and reports on the patronage policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations; correspondence with the U.S. Bureau of Efficiency (1922); correspondence regarding the War Risk Insurance Bureau (1919); and letters (photostats) from Franklin D. Roosevelt stating his views on civil service and suggesting a non-partisan effort to promote the merit system (1925). Other correspondents include Richard H. Dana, William Deming, William Donovan, Charles Eliot, Hamilton Fish, Jr., William Foulke, Elliot Goodwin, Warren G. Harding, Abram Hewitt, Herbert Hoover, Edward House, Charles Evans Hughes, Robert LaFollette, Fiorello LaGuardia, Franklin Lane, Herbert Lehman, Henry Cabot Lodge, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Frank Loomis, Andrew Mellon, Robert Moses, Charles Nash, A. Mitchell Palmer, George Foster Peabody, Rush Rhees, William G. Rice, Eleanor Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Jacob Gould Schurman, William Schirer, Carl Schurz, Alfred E. Smith, William Howard Taft, Arthur Vandenberg, James Wadsworth, Jr., Robert Wagner, Henry Wallace, Everett Wheeler, and Henry L. Wilson.