Primarily the correspondence of Jacob Chandler Harper from 1908 to 1921, including 10 William H. Taft letters. Also present are several items relating to the Scripps family dated 1921 and 1939.

Jacob Chandler Harper (1858-1939) was general counsel for the E.W. Scripps Company, a newspaper and media company that began in 1878 when journalist E.W. (Edward Willis) Scripps (1854-1926) started the Penny Press newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. The company expanded, acquiring and founding more newspapers and later radio stations, and creating the United Press news agency (now UPI) in 1907 and the United Feature Syndicate in the 1920s. Harper was also a friend and business advisor to journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps (1836-1932), a half-sibling of E.W. Scripps who was instrumental in the growth of the E.W. Scripps Company as an investor and supporter. In addition, Harper served on the board of trustees of the Claremont Graduate School and as an advisory board member of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He died in La Jolla, California at age 80.William Howard Taft (1857-1930), the twenty-seventh president of the United States, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1886, he married Helen Herron. After an early career as lawyer and judge in Ohio, Taft was named solicitor general of the United States in 1890. From 1892 to 1900 he served on the federal circuit court for the Sixth District. Taft spent four years in the U.S. territory of the Philippines and was named civil governor there in 1901. In 1904, he returned to the U.S. to serve as secretary of war in the Theodore Roosevelt administration. During his tenure, Taft pursued American interests in the Philippines, Cuba, and the Far East, as well as Panama Canal construction. Taft was elected president in 1908 and served one term from 1909 to 1913. His presidency involved railroad regulation, such as the 1910 Mann-Elkins act; enforcement of anti-trust laws; efforts to increase government efficiency; and diplomacy in Latin America, Asia, and Europe. He ran for reelection in 1912 but was defeated. In 1921 he was named chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a position he held until just before his death in 1930 in Washington, D.C. at age 72.

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