The records contain correspondence; program plans and proposals; medical records and statistics; budgets and other financial records; staff rosters; miscellaneous religious publications; newspaper clippings; brochures, and other publications describing the work of All Nations; annual reports; committee reports, agendas, and minutes; and staff reports on activities. This collection encompasses the years 1925-1978, with the bulk of the material dating frmo the decade of the 1930s.

All Nations, in its heyday the largest and most effective social welfare organization in Los Angeles, was begun in 1918 in an east-central section of the city known as "Eastside." Immigration from Europe, Latin America, and Asia into Eastside, coupled with the incursion of wholesale businesses there, led to the departure of the middle class residents of this formerly comfortable community. Local churches, deprived of their original congregations, were dismayed at the prospect of serving this new, needy immigrant population, but the City Missionary Society of the Methodist Church had been looking for just such a settlement opportunity. It sent in a young pastor, Bromley Oxnam, fired with the church's social gospel doctrine to establish a church settlement house in an abandoned church. The collection records the practical energy of Oxnam--later a Methodist bishop--as he gathered donations, organized volunteers, bought land and buildings, equipped gymnasiums, playgrounds, libraries, and clinics for a community where three-fourths of the families were on public assistance. His crowning work in developing the physical facilities of All Nations was the acquisition of a complex of buildings at 810-816-824 E. Sixth Street, in 1927, just before his resignation from All Nations on 1 July 1927 (Oxnam preached his farewell sermon at All Nations on 19 June 1927). Oxnam's successor was the Reverend Robert A. McKibben, whose superior gifts as administrator, social worker, fund raiser, and collaborator with other social welfare agencies, including the Federal and Los Angeles Relief Administrations, and the National Youth Administration, ensured the continued success of All Nations.

3.13 linear ft. 8 boxes

The use of archival materials for on-site research does not constitute permission from the California Social Welfare Archives to publish them. Copyright has not been assigned to the California Social Welfare Archives, and the researcher is instructed to obtain permission to quote from or publish manuscripts in the CSWA's collections from the copyright holder.

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