The papers relate to Brown's association with General Motors Corporation (GM), and reflect his concern with financial policy, organization and operation, and employee relations. They are especially concerned with the period of World War II. Files from the 1920s and 1930s describe Brown's effort to relate pricing policies to financial control. Papers from the World War II period document the effects that government regulation had on GM There is also correspondence relating to the 1948 antitrust suit which forced the DuPont Company to divest itself of its holdings in GM.

Correspondence with Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. (1926-1940) is chiefly during the period of his presidency of the DuPont Company (1940-1948) and is largely concerned with financial policy. Elements relating to General Motors Corporation affairs (1921-1957) cover the years of Brown's vice presidency, when he was in charge of finance (1921-1937), his chairmanship of the Finance Committee (1937-1946), and as a member of the board of directors.

Subjects covered by the General Motors Corporation files include: pricing policy in relation to financial control, 1923; a report by John Lee Pratt on the Winton Engine Company, 1929; the Michigan bank holiday, 1933, and Brown's role in meeting the emergency with Detroit banks; labor-management relationships during World War II; letter to James F. Byrnes, director of war mobilization, with memorandum on proposed basis for control of prices of manufactured goods during the immediate post-war period, 1944; General Motors Company in relation to "Bigness and Labor", 1934-55; government investigations, 1955; Sloan's story of his association with General Motors Corporation; materials for Brown's personal memoir, SOME REMINISCENCES OF AN INDUSTRIALIST (Privately printed, 1957), 1929-1957; and draft of chapters 1-12 of Alfred P. Sloan's MY YEARS WITH GENERAL MOTORS (New York, 1964).

Papers concerning the Gulf Oil Corporation: exchange of General Motors Corporation stock, 1946-47; incentive compensation plan, 1948; dividend policy; matters concerning financial control, 1948-53; organization, including Broseco Corporation, Brown's holding company, 1948-1954.

Speeches describe Brown's approach to industrial management and labor relations.