Executive officer files are fragmentary. A small body of records from the Washington office describes the Institute's activities coordinating the steel industry during World War I, including correspondence of J. L. Replogle, director of steel supply for the War Industries Board and U.S. Steel's directives for the war effort. Records of the Engineering Division include files of Senior Research Engineer A. L. Johnson, Vice President-Building Research W. G. Kirkland, and Vice President-Manufacturing & Research William E. Dennis. These files describe the developments of new codes and standards; the competition posed by plastics as a substitute for metals and between steel and wood as a building material; the use of robotics in the 1980s; and a survey of safety in sheet mills (1989).

Files of General Counsel & Secretary Barton C. Greene describe attempts during the Carter, Reagan and Bush Administrations to reduce imports of cheap foreign steel and the rash of American plant closings. There is also a report on unionism in the American steel industry by the European Social Initiatives & Research Institute.

Files of Vice President-Industrial Relations John H. Stenmark deal with matters of industrial health and safety, noise control, and pollution abatement, including symposia, studies and codes by the Environmental Protection Agency, the International Labour Organisation, the World Health Organization, and the International Iron & Steel Institute. The last includes in-plant environment studies at Kawasaki Steel Corporation and Nippon Kokan, KK.

The executive files also include drafts and notes of the 1993 strategic plan and some documentation of the Steel Fellows Program” (1970-1989), a training program to attract and place college graduates in steel industry management.

The largest series of executive files are those of outside counsel Cravath, de Gersdorf, Swaine & Wood (1933-1964) who advised the AI&SI on many important matters during the New Deal era. Most of the papers are those of Hoyt A. Moore, the Cravath partner most closely associated with the AI&SI, although Chester McLain and others are also represented.

Moore's most important contribution was in coordinating the formulation and defense of the steel industry's Code of Fair Competition” under the National Industrial Recovery Act, and this is the major subject of the Cravath/Moore files. In addition to the correspondence that traces the development, implementation, and opposition to the Code from beginning to end, there are copies of AI&SI board and committee minutes and agendas, working and final drafts of the Code, resolutions that became amendments to the Code, and Code-required sample forms and standardized agreements with jobbers and transporters. There are also records of hearings and samples of NIRA codes in other industries, particularly the construction industry; records of complaints against the Steel Code, particularly by automakers and some of the smaller steel producers; records of investigations and hearings on the Steel Code by the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department; relevant antitrust case histories, NIRA workplace posters outlining its labor provisions; and memoranda on the Schecter Case under which the NIRA was ruled unconstitutional.

The files also contain extensive papers of the Council for Industrial Progress (1936-1937), including minutes, agendas, membership lists, reports and press releases. The Council was organized by Major George L. Berry, President Roosevelt's Coordinator for Industrial Cooperation, as an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to find an alternative to the NIRA.

One element of steel industry pricing that antedated and survived the NIRA was the basing point” system which set a single, industry-wide shipping charge based on a single shipping point (Pittsburgh) instead of reflecting the actual cost of transportation. Producers closer to the individual consumer than Pittsburgh pocketed the difference, while those further were forced to absorb part of the freight costs. The system had been implemented by U.S. Steel in 1903 and tended to stabilize prices and limit competition. The industry adopted multiple basing points in 1924 after an FTC investigation. Congress outlawed the basing-point system in 1938, and it was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1948. Moore's files contain data on the basing point system and the related issue of rail and water freight tariffs. There are copies of the various tariffs in force under the Code, as well as extensive coverage, including transcripts, of the Federal Trade Commission's investigation of a related basing point system in the cement industry in 1937 to 1948.

In addition to NIRA matters, Moore's files also contain important coverage of legal cases and public hearings regarding a wide range of other New Deal legislation. Among these are: the Social Security Act; the Public Utilities Holding Company Act; the Wagner Act, particularly the struggle to amend it in 1939 to 1940; the O'Mahoney Bill for the federal licensing of corporations; the Robinson-Patman Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act; the Walsh-Healey Act; the Anti-Basing Point Bill; the 1939 monopoly investigation of the steel industry; and other bills relating to workmen's compensation, unemployment insurance, uniform wage scales, and pollution control. Post-New Deal issues include the creation of the National Wage Stabilization Board and War Labor Board during World War II, the stainless steel investigation of 1944 to 1945, and the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946.

Moore's files also contain a great deal of information on general Institute business and copies of numerous Institute documents. Among these are: the certificate of incorporation, constitution, bylaws, board meeting minutes and agendas, a run of AI&SI press releases (1934-1959), speeches and booklets by steel industry executives, and miscellaneous Institute and company publications, manuals, and specifications. Files on the Building Code Committee document its attempts to have local building codes revised to permit the broader use of light steel, while those on the Industrial Relations Committee discuss the Institute's plans to expand its collection of statistics relating to labor relations issues during the 1930s. There is also information on the Institute's pension plan and its attempts to seek exemption from certain federal and New York City taxes.

Files on the critical state of labor disputes and the CIO organizing drives in the mid-1930s include memoranda, pamphlets and a report of a meeting held at Homestead, Pennsylvania, on July 5, 1936. There are also copies of numerous collective bargaining agreements signed with the United Steel Workers between 1942 and 1944 covering blue and white collar employees as well as plant watchmen and police. There is also a file on the Aeronautical Research Council (1941), which had erroneously implied in its literature that it was sponsored by the AI&SI, and another on an exhibit of stainless steel architectural elements installed at 101 Park Avenue by the noted architects Kahn & Jacobs.