This collection consists primarily of Addie Viola Smith's correspondence, reports, scrapbooks, genealogy, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, and notebooks. Topics include trade and commerce in Shanghai, motors and highways in China, international and Chinese law, the United Nations, tourism development in China and promotion in Asia and the Far East, international women’s movements and organizations, Smith's personal recollections, and Eleanor Hinder. Highlights include Smith's work with E.C.A.F.E. (the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East), correspondence from former First Lady Lou Henry Hoover and Judge Florence Ellinwood Allen, manuscripts on the China Trade Act (1922), Smith's work as trade commissioner in Shanghai, and censored love letters written by Smith's partner, Eleanor Hinder, to Smith.

Addie Viola Smith, otherwise known as 施芳蘭 (Shi Fanglan), ‘Viola,’ ‘Auntie Vee,’ 'Vee,’ 'Elephant Child,' or 'Elfie,' was born in Stockton, California on November 14, 1893. At the height of her career in 1928, she served as a trade commissioner in Shanghai, China. However, throughout the years leading up to her international career, Smith spent the years prior pursuing education and gaining work experience. In 1908, she studied business administration at Heald’s Business College, San Francisco, and by 1910, Smith worked in the import and export department at a large merchandising firm in California. In 1917, she moved on from her previous job to work for the United States Department of Labor in Washington, D.C. while simultaneously pursuing an LL.B. degree at the American University Washington College of Law. During her time at the United States Department of Labor, she held several positions such as confidential clerk to assistant secretary, assistant chief of the women’s division of the United States employment service, chief of the information division of the United States training and dilution service, clerk to the employers group of the President’s first industrial conference in 1919, and assistant editorial clerk to the first international labor office conference at Washington in 1919. Finally, in October 1920, she was assigned as clerk to the trade commissioner in Beijing, China, making her the first woman to join the Foreign Service of the United States Department of Commerce and perhaps one of the most important people who helped facilitate trade between the United States and China. After taking the civil service examinations in October 1922, she was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai and finally to trade commissioner in 1928.

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