Vandiver Brown to C. J. Stover on the Air Hygiene Foundation's Membership Meeting (1936)

A copy of a three-page letter of December 4, 1936, from Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general attorney, to C. J. Stover of Asbestos magazine, reporting on the Air Hygiene Foundation of America's membership meeting in Pittsburgh on November 24, attended by about 200 people. Dr. A. J. Lanza of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company spoke for the medical committee, Professor Philip Drinker of Harvard for the preventive engineering committee, and Alfred C. Hirth and Theodore Waters for the legal committee, whose bulletins compiled state laws on employers' responsibility for occupational disease. Brown enclosed membership forms for the asbestos industry and said he was recommending that J-M join for 1937.

What it shows

Brown wrote that although the Foundation approached air hygiene "from an unbiased viewpoint, it is, nevertheless, the creature of industry and is the one institution upon which employers can rely completely for a sympathetic appreciation of their viewpoint." He praised the legal committee's coming study of occupational disease legislation, since many state legislatures would soon take up such laws. The letter shows J-M's lawyer recruiting the asbestos industry into the industry-funded Foundation.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

V. Brown letter to C. J. Stover, 12/4/36, reporting on a meeting of the members of the Air Hygiene Foundation of America on 11/24/36. Dr. A. J. Lanza, Dr. P. Drinker (Harvard School of Public Health and Chairman of the Preventive Engineering Committee of the Air Hygiene Foundation), A.C. Hirth and T. Waters (members of the AHF Legal Committee) addressed the meeting. Hirth and Waters presented summaries and criticisms of the current occupational disease legislation. Brown encloses membership applications which he hopes Stover will distribute to all members of the asbestos industry and states that he is recommending that J-M apply for membership.

Related documents

• C. J. Stover to the Asbestos Industry on Joining the Air Hygiene Foundation (1936)

About this copy

This is document 201 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001279 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001281.