The Employee Relations Department of the E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company became a formal entity in 1951, but each industrial department was responsible for its own recruitment and personnel practices. E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company is a chemical company more commonly referred to as the DuPont company. The records include reports, tables of hourly wages for production workers, benefits for employees, and personnel record cards for early twentieth century employees.

Hercules Inc. was a manufacturer of chemicals and munitions based in Wilmington, Delaware. The records consist of a sample of employee personnel records, or service record cards, that date from circa 1914 to 1933, as well as copies of the company pension and retirement savings plans that date from 1982 to 1990. The cards typically contain information on personal characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, age, physical appearance, and family, and also on occupation, wage rates, promotion, discipline, and reasons for discharge. The plants are scattered around the country and thus provide an interesting regional sample of the industrial workforce during the 1910s and 1920s. Pension and retirement savings plans are for both Hercules Incorporated and Simmonds Precision Products, Inc.

Contains departmental correspondence files as well as records of contract negotiations, arbitration, grievance, and National Labor Relations Board Proceedings.

Consists of employee records from Delaware Coach Co., also covering the period when the company was known as the Delaware Electric Power Co. and Wilmington & Philadelphia Traction Co. Includes disciplinary records, medical exams for employment and military service, evaluations, accident reports, applications and reference letters, insurance policies, and pension applications. Some files contain a photograph of the employee.

Includes payroll records showing salaries of individual workers, and registers of employees, from executives to sales girls and "cash boys" who ran merchandise and money between the wrapping desks and the cashiers. There are also records of the Strawbridge & Clothier Athletic Association, the Strawbridge & Clothier Pension Fund Association, the Strawbridge & Clothier Relief Association, the Strawbridge & Clothier Chorus, the Christmas & Vacation Fund Association, the Noon Day Club (for women workers), and the Quarter Century Club, which document the Quaker-inspired welfare work programs aimed at all members of the "Store Family." There is a set of the employee magazine STORE CHAT (1906-1993), files and scrapbooks of biographical information on both executives and representative regular employees (1902-1952), employee rules and service codes, and clippings on a 1938 warehouse strike.

The Reading Company, chartered in 1871 as the Excelsior Enterprise Company, became the holding company for the system of railroads, canals and coal mines assembled by the predecessor Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company between 1833 and 1896. The Reading Company employment and real estate records comprise a largely incomplete and extremely fragmentary synthetic collection of material related to the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company and its successors. The collection comprises incomplete employment records largely dating from the first half of the twentieth century, records related to the employee pension program and the Relief Association, a small amount of contracts, and deeds and agreements reflecting the company's process of land acquisition following initial main line construction in the 1830s and through to the early twentieth century.

Chartered in 1871, Reading Company was the holding company for the system of railroads, canals and coal mines assembled by the predecessor Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company between 1833 and 1896. The collection consists of the corporate records of the Reading Company (1871-1976), the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company (1833-1896), the Philadelphia & Reading Railway Company (1896-1923), and 159 predecessors and subsidiaries.