This folder contains correspondence and other documents relating to Edison's membership in, and activities on behalf of, social clubs, professional societies, political groups, and civic organizations. There are also appeals from charitable organizations. Among the items for 1916 are letters pertaining to Edison's election as an honorary member of the Illuminating Engineering Society and the Engineers' Club of Philadelphia, his contribution to the National Security League, and his refusal to contribute to The Student Pacifists, an organization opposed to compulsory military training in schools. The correspondents include longtime Edison associate Henry M. Byllesby; Howard H. Gross, president of the Tariff Commission League; Henry M. Howe, emeritus professor of metallurgy at Columbia University; and mathematician and electrical engineer Charles P. Steinmetz, who was president of the Illuminating Engineering Society in 1916.

Approximately 1 percent of the documents, including all items bearing substantive marginalia by Edison, have been selected. The following categories of documents have not been selected: requests for Edison's autograph or signature, including its reproduction; form letters and other routine correspondence regarding meetings and activities; invitations and other requests that Edison either declined or did not acknowledge; invitations for which no substantive response has been found; correspondence from organizations in which Edison was not involved; published proceedings and printed circulars; and duplicates.