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The papers include correspondence, letterbooks, scrapbooks, writings, topical files, photographs, and clippings which document the career of Charles Nagel. The papers highlight Nagel's legal practice and detail his role as counsel to Adolphus Busch and the Anheuser-Busch breweries. Files relating to Nagel's cabinet term include discussions of patronage appointments and efforts to win support for President Taft's re-election through the foreign language press, and his concerns as secretary of commerce and labor, including the 1910 census, the abolition of pelagic sealing, and fair enforcement of immigration laws. The papers reveal Nagel's love for German culture and his attempts to understand the events preceding World Wars I and II. Nagel's activities on behalf of German-Austrian relief efforts and German ethnic and cultural organizations are documented as is his involvement in the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Industrial Conference Board, and numerous St. Louis civic, educational, cultural, and charitable organizations. An addition to the papers includes correspondence from Nagel to his wife, Anne Shepley Nagel.