Business papers document Bell's career as salesman, vice president, and president of the Washburn Crosby Company (1901-1928) and as president and board chairman of General Mills (1928-1947); transportation (particularly rail) and food processing industries; agriculture and the grain trade in Canada, England, and France; economic conditions in various parts of the world; the Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1930s New Deal legislation and relief programs, especially in agriculture, transportation, and economic and monetary policy; relief activities and reconstruction in Europe during and after World War I; military operations, diplomacy, and the wartime economy during World War II, and postwar reconstruction in Europe and Japan; the Korean War; other aspects of U.S. foreign policy; state and national politics and presidential campaigns; Sister Elizabeth Kenny's treatment of polio (1940s); the Minnesota Resources Commission (1940s-1950s); and conservation of wildlife and natural resources.

1917-1922: Milling operations under the Food Administration during World War I. Comments by correspondents on Europe; especially economic conditions, Red Cross care of refugees in France, the armistice; and European reconstruction. Correspondence with Walter H. Newton concerning congressional hearings relating to the revision of the Tariff Act of 1913, and correspondence regarding economic theories and conditions.

1923-1929: Correspondence pertaining to wildlife conservation; the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill, expressing opposition to the bill; politics and the presidential campaigns and elections of 1924 and 1928; comments on business and economic conditions; and the railroad situation and the anthracite coal strike of 1925.

1930-1935: Letters discuss the depression, unemployment, the National Industrial Recovery Act, economic recovery and devaluation of the currency; the International Monetary, Economic, and Tariff Conference held in London (1933); Europeans' comments on the devaluation of United States currency and its effect on international trade; the Agricultural Adjustment Act; silver's increasing value and its affect on China (1935); and New Deal legislation.

1936-1939: The depression, relief and recovery measures; railroads' economic problems and a possible increase in rail freight rates (1937-1938); the Hugo Black senate committee investigating lobbying practices; the presidential campaign and defeat of Alfred M. Landon (1936); the program and progress of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration; letters from congressmen and senators regarding the Reorganization (tax) Bill, on whether relief programs should be handled by local or the federal government, and the attitude of congress toward business (1938); Stassen's gubernatorial campaign; possible Republican presidential candidates (Thomas E. Dewey and Arthur Vandenburg); the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Supreme Court; causes of Sino-Japanese War.

1940-1946: Invasions of Normandy and Sicily; the Cairo Conference (December 1943); the Pacific war; the Allied liberation of Paris; reconstruction and economic conditions in Europe and Japan; accidents in defense plants resulting in loss of manpower; the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and Elizabeth Kenny (polio patients' care and treatment); U. S. Commission of Inter-American Development (Nelson Rockefeller, chairman); conservation in the Minnesota Quetico-Superior area; Minnesota Resources Commission; Russia and its foreign policy; and comments on Winston Churchill's "iron curtain" speech.

1947-1960: Minnesota Resources Commission; the Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program); postwar economy, taxation and reconstruction; the Korean War; communism in Russia and China; possible Republican presidential nominees in 1948 and 1952; Dwight D. Eisenhower and the 1952 presidential campaign; Minnesota's congressional delegation and the world trade situation; Ezra Taft Benson, Secretary of Agriculture (November-December 1952).

1923-1931: Check signed by Alexander Graham Bell (May 21, 1918); an account of the fortune of John Jacob Astor as being based on his purchase of the treasure originally buried by Captain Kidd on Deer Isle; information on the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill; and programs for unemployment relief.

1932-1941: Material concerning the depression and relief programs; Bernard Baruch's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee (economic recovery and means of preventing war); material on the Agricultural Adjustment Administration; devaluation of U.S. currency; comments on a letter written by Alfred E. Smith to Franklin Roosevelt concerning Roosevelt's fitness for the governorship of New York and Smith's subsequent refusal to criticize the Roosevelt Administration (1935); Senator Hugo Black's committee to investigate lobbying practices; the depression of 1937-1938; railroads' problems (1938); the European political situation; Nazi Germany; and the outbreak of the Second World War.

1942-1956: Papers relating to World War II; wartime economy and plans for the transition to a peacetime economy; commentaries by Sir John Powers, London, regarding military and political aspects of the war; reports of the Minnesota Resources Commission; biographical data on Will Keith Kellogg; speeches by Vannevar Bush on education, science, national security, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The newspaper clippings cover flour milling; agriculture; the St. Lawrence Seaway; McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill; economic, business and financial subjects; editorials on the depression and the New Deal; politics and elections; the Black Senate Committee investigation of lobbying; Franklin Roosevelt and the Supreme Court; World War II; Sister Elizabeth Kenny and the treatment of infantile paralysis; Will Keith Kellogg (1951); articles by Vannevar Bush regarding national security; and John S. Pillsbury (November 1959).

Topics: agriculture and farm relief; the depression and economic recovery; the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill; tariff policies; biographical data on William C. Edgar; the United States and the silver issue; milling industry; agriculture; Sister Elizabeth Kenny and the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis; postwar economy and tax programs; diseases of dogs; Minnesota resources; education and science.

Of particular interest: a farewell edition of The Bellmen (June 28, 1919) autographed by William C. Edgar; Coolidge's veto message on the McNary-Haugen Farm Relief Bill (1927); "The Hoover Administration and the Maintenance of Wages" by Walter Lippmann (1931); a memorial to John Russell Vanderlip (1935); "John M. Gorris, M. D." (1950); an article on Korea in Monsanto Magazine (1953); and "A Keepsake in Honor of Vannevar Bush" (1957).

Includes correspondence among James Ford Bell; his wife, Ann Louise Heffelfinger; and their friends and family. The letters mostly discuss day-to-day activities—highlighting gatherings with family and friends, including Andrew Carnegie, Fred Hubbard, George Wullsen, John Donaldson, and Charles S. Pillsbury—and trips taken by James Ford Bell to Egypt and by Louise Heffelfinger Bell to New York, Georgia, Montana, and Chicago.

Specific topics include their engagement, marriage, first child, deaths in the family, a trip on the Santa Fe Railway, the Great Chicago Fire (1871), the untimely death of President Benjamin Harrison, a musical performance at the White House, and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. There is also a three-page typescript of a letter from Major Christopher Heffelfinger to his sister, recounting in detail the Civil War's Battle of Bull Run (1861).

See the scrapbooks for additional correspondence.

Contain correspondence and loose material, playbills and concert programs, telegrams, restaurant menus, hotel receipts, photographs and autographed portraits, wedding invitations, and newspaper clippings. Correspondence from envelopes fixed in the books has been removed and placed in folders next to its volume.