L. WILLIAM SEIDMAN FILES, 1974-77

The L. William Seidman Files document all aspects of his work as Assistant to the President for Economic Affairs and executive director of the Economic Policy Board (EPB), 1974-77, including: the operation of the EPB, the administration's handling of specific economic issues, interactions with other agencies handling economic questions, and Seidman's trips and speeches.

Described below under separate headings are Seidman's role in the Ford White House, the scope and content of the collection, and related materials in other Ford Library collections.

Seidman's Role in the Administration
Seidman, a successful businessman with considerable experience in public affairs at the state and local level, came to Washington to join the Ford vice presidential staff in February 1974. On August 18,1974, he transferred to the White House Staff.

A few days later President Ford named Seidman as executive director of the Conference on Inflation to be held on September 27-28, 1974. Seidman worked with an eight member steering committee (four from the executive branch and four from Congress) and drew together a staff from the White House and several departments and agencies. Besides the final Conference on Inflation in Washington, Seidman and his staff organized twelve small conferences held around the country between September 5 and 23, each relating to a specific sector of the economy. The objective of these sector conferences and the final conference was to explore thoroughly the causes and cures for inflation and to solicit advice on how to deal with the problem. After the Conference on Inflation ended on September 28, recommendations were compiled and analyzed so that the President could present a specific program to Congress in his economic address on October 8.

Another outgrowth of the inflation conferences was the recognition of a need for some changes in the methods and structures used by the executive branch in handling economic policy questions. On September 30 the President signed Executive Order 11808 establishing the Economic Policy Board. He named Seidman its executive director, with the additional title of Assistant to the President for Economic Affairs.

The EPB was responsible for providing advice to the President on all aspects of national and international economic policy and for the formulation, coordination and implementation of all economic policy. It did so by coordinating the work of existing executive branch agencies and departments and not by building a new bureaucracy to take control of economic affairs.

The full EPB included virtually all the members of the Cabinet and was chaired by the Secretary of the Treasury. The Executive Committee, also chaired by William Simon, included only the Secretaries of State, Commerce, and Labor; the Director of the Office of Management and Budget; the Chairman of the CEA; the executive director of the CIEP; and Seidman.

The Executive Committee met three or four times a week, considering an average of three agenda items per meeting. Approximately once a week the President met with them. Members of the full board were encouraged to attend Executive Committee meetings when issues affecting their departments were under consideration.

In addition to these frequent meetings, each quarter the EPB undertook a full scale economic policy review, including an extended session with a group of leading non-governmental economists to discuss the economic outlook and to review policy options.

Seidman was assisted in his work by a small staff including William F. Gorog, Roger Porter, Marvin Kosters, and David Wheat. Seidman also drew administrative support from Birge Watkins, Douglas Metz and other staff members of the CIEP, of which he was deputy chairman. During Ford administration the role of the CIEP was downgraded and the staff often functioned as an extension of Seidman's personal staff, doing research on issues for him and even performing such tasks as scheduling his public appearances and answering routine correspondence.

Because Seidman was the senior White House economic official, he served as a member of numerous interagency bodies such as the Council on Wage and Price Stability, the President's Labor- Management Advisory Committee, and the Energy Resources Council. He also served on several bodies involved with international economic policy such as the East-West Foreign Trade Board, the Agricultural Policy Committee, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, and the National Advisory Council on International Monetary and Financial Polices.

Scope and Content of the Seidman Files
The Seidman material concerns the entire range of domestic and international economic policy. Among the issues with the strongest documentation are: airlines, automobile industry, capital formation, energy, exports, foreign investment, Generalized System of Preferences, grain sales to the Soviet Union, inflation, international economic summits, maritime policy, New York City finances, tax policy, and unemployment. This collection is also useful for studying the activities of federal departments and agencies involved in economic questions such as the Treasury Department, the Council of International Economic Policy (CIEP), the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), and the Council on Wage and Price Stability (COWPS).

The Seidman files are composed of series from four sources. These are files maintained by Seidman's Conference on Inflation staff, by his assistant Roger Porter in the EPB offices, by his personal secretary in his White House Office and by the CIEP staff. The two Conferences on Inflation series are useful for studying the planning and coordination of the conferences, including many top level meetings at the White House and some staff meetings. Much of the series however, consists of full verbatim transcripts of presentations made at the conferences and drafts and final copies of the lists of participants. There is little material on advance work for the sector conferences and little correspondence with the general public.

The series maintained by Roger Porter in the EPB offices in the Old Executive Office Building include agendas and minutes for all executive committee meetings, memoranda distributed to the executive committee, and a large subject file on issues. These series form the most important resource in this collection for studying both the organization and operation of the EPB and the administration's handling of specific issues. Virtually no material from the first two months of the administration is included here as the EPB did not hold its first meeting until October 1974.

The two major series maintained in Seidman's White House Office (the Seidman Subject File and the Name File) both contain some materials from the first two months of the administration, including a small amount on the transition of Ford to the Presidency. The bulk of the material dates from October 1974 to January 1977, however. The materials cover the entire range of economic issues and there is much duplication between these two series and the EPB Subject File, although some unique materials appear in each.

CIEP staff members Douglas Metz and Birge Watkins maintained Seidman's Computer Controlled Correspondence and the Daily Events File and logged these materials into the CIEP computer for tracking purposes. Most of the correspondence in these two series is of fairly routine nature and was from businessmen or the general public, although some important correspondence with members of Congress is included. Little mail from other officials in the executive branch is included with the exception of occasional invitations.

For researchers interested in most economic issues the EPB Subject File will be the strongest single series. In order to find all of the material on any subject, however, one should consult several series. Because of the large number of series and their various arrangements, it is possible to find materials through a subject approach (EPB Subject File and Seidman Subject File), a name approach (Name File), or a chronological approach (EPB Minutes, EPB Memoranda, or Porter Chronological File).

Related Materials(March 1995)
Key related collections include the papers of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Arthur Burns, the records of the Council of Economic Advisers, and the files of Seidman's aides William Gorog, Marvin Kosters, Birge Watkins and David Wheat. Other related collections include those of Counsellor to the President for Economic Affairs Kenneth Rush; Paul McCracken, who worked briefly as a consultant in Rush's Office; the Seidman files in the Ford Vice Presidential Papers; and the White House Central Files Subject File, especially categories BE (Business-Economics), CM (Commodities), MC 3-1 (Conference on Inflation), and TA (Trade). The National Archives hold the records of CIEP and a copy of the finding aid for that collection is available in the vertical file.

Researchers interested in the organization and operation of the EPB should consult Roger Porter's book Presidential Decision Making: The Economic Policy Board (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Seidman has donated 48 linear feet of personal papers to the Library, but these are currently unprocessed. Much of that collection, however, consists of duplicates of material in the Seidman files or his chronological files, so most researchers will not be hampered significantly by the unavailability of these papers.