Raymond T. Moyer Papers
Scope and Contents
The Raymond T. Moyer papers consist of correspondence, writing files, speeches, lectures, and topical files, as well as non-textual materials and collected publications. The collection covers Moyer’s professional career in Far East Asia, dating from the 1920s to his retirement in the 1960s. This documentation suggests that Moyer was not a Cold War warrior, à la John Foster Dulles, but that he probably stood near the center of the political spectrum. The files attest to his commitment to contain communism in the Far East by advancing peacefully the social and economic progress of the people.
The Moyer papers are arranged into nine (9) record series: 1. Appointments, Awards, and Diploma Files; 2. Correspondence Files (incoming and outgoing); 3. Lectures, Official Statements, and Speeches; 4. Writing Files; 5. Research Files Relating to Moyer’s Professional Work; 6. Name and Subject Files Relating to Other Assignments and Interests; 7. Collected Publications Relating to Moyer’s Professional Career; 8. Miscellaneous Files; and, 9. Non-Textual Materials.
The documentary strengths of the Moyer papers are to be found in his writing files and public speeches. The writing files, dating between the 1930s and 1980s, document Moyer’s role as an agricultural reformer, advocate of U.S. foreign aid to underdeveloped Asian countries, and fighter against communism. Files relating to Beyond Yesterday: America in a Changing World further underscore his knowledge of agricultural reform and foreign aid, including his experiences in China, Taiwan, and Korea. The finished publication and its drafts provide some details of Moyer’s private life, almost unavailable elsewhere in the collection. The lectures, official statements, and speeches (dated 1941-1989) complement the writing files.
The correspondence series and non-textual materials are also notable. The correspondence files, dated mainly between 1928 and 1992, provide insight to Moyer’s professional activities, appointments, and contacts with Asians. In addition, a small amount of correspondence exists relating to Moyer’s private life, particularly his experience as a prisoner of war in Hong Kong (1941-1942). A large number of photographs and negatives depict the state of affairs of many Far East nations, chiefly in China and Korea. The photographs report on the progress of Moyer’s agricultural experiments and the conditions and scenery in Shansi Province. The strengths are detailed in following paragraphs.
Lectures, official statements, and speeches (located in series 3) and writing files (located in series four) offer readers insight to Moyer’s experiences in the Far East. Writings, dated between the early 1930s and 1948, deal primarily with Chinese agricultural reform. A 1942 article entitled “Agricultural Practices in Semi-Arid North China,” summarizes Moyer’s activities in Shansi Province between 1927 and 1941. It further reports on Moyer’s extensive familiarity and understanding of agriculture in North China, as well his approach to scientific experimentation. His study includes analysis of the climate, soil, crops, and farming and livestock practices of Shansi Province, and discusses the benefits to Shansi farmers of cross breeding crops (grain, cotton) and livestock.
Moyer’s later writings, when in the employ of the American government, shift from agricultural reform to foreign aid (dating 1948-1968). In a 1976 class lecture to students at Gettysburg College, Moyer discussed his beliefs and goals regarding American foreign aid, how socio-economic aid could be used as a tool to contain communism and stimulate modernization, and why aid often failed. This lecture, along with a 1962 unpublished “Behind the Seen in Korea,” are useful in understanding Moyer's views. Series four (4) also consists of research files from Beyond Yesterday: America in a Changing World. These files contain book and chapter drafts, observations that Moyer recorded on the spot or years later, and news clippings of significant Far East events. In addition, the drafts contain biographical information relating to Moyer’s family and himself, of which some did not make the final printed version.
The Moyer papers also contain significant, but not extensive, files of incoming and outgoing correspondence (located in series two). The bulk of the correspondence, dating mostly between 1938 and 1962, unevenly documents Moyer’s professional career. They often deal with the finer points of international diplomacy, including acknowledgments, thank you notes, and congratulatory letters on new professional appointments. Several outgoing letters are noteworthy. In a series of exchanges in the spring of 1951, Moyer explains to ECA administrators William Foster and R. Allen Griffen his desire to return to the U.S. to be closer to his children. In 1960-1961, Moyer discusses civil unrest in Korea. In an April 1960 letter, Moyer reports to Alvin Roseman of the ICA of student demonstrations and the government’s hardnose reaction. Besides professional correspondence, there are a number of letters written to his wife Dorothy, and incoming and outgoing correspondence for her and other family members and friends.
Of significance to Oberlin’s institutional history are the letters he wrote to the Shansi Memorial Association and his family. Written mostly before 1945, the outgoing letters offer some evidence of Moyer’s activities in Shansi Province. They often discuss current conditions in China, the Ming Hsien school, and his imprisonment in Hong Kong by the Japanese. In two outgoing letters to his mother Emma Jane Moyer (dated December 1929-January 1930), Moyer describes a famine that hit the Shansi and Shensi Provinces. In May-August 1938, Moyer writes a series of letters (ribbon copies) to former executive secretary William F. Bohn and current executive secretary Lydia Lord Davis of the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, in which he vividly details Japanese occupation of Taiku, the move of Ming Hsien to Szechwan Province, and his pessimistic view of the future of the school in Shansi Province. In August 1942, Moyer wrote his wife Dorothy, William F. Bohn, and Lydia Lord Davis describing the lack of food, the camp, and his happiness of returning home after six months in a Hong Kong prison camp. Associated materials regarding Moyer are to be found in the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association papers (RG 15).
The papers also consist of a large number of original non-textual materials (located in series nine) that strongly supplement the paper documents. Of particular significance are the photographs showing the grim conditions Moyer labored under in Shansi Province during the 1920s and 1930s. They report on the success of experimental crops and livestock, the condition of the soil, and climate. The photographs also provide remarkable views of Taiku city and breathtaking rural scenery. In addition, the photographs frequently depict Moyer performing his diplomatic duties (1948-1961), which is the only record in the collection that reports on his specific Far East activities. This often consisted of meeting high government officials, including Taiwan premier Chiang Kai-Shek (undated), Korean president Syngman Rhee (1956), John Foster Dulles (1957), and President Dwight Eisenhower (1960).
The Moyer papers contain notable weaknesses. Most striking is the uneven documentation of Moyer’s professional career. Practically no information exists in the collection on Moyer's time as a Shansi rep (1921-1923), in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1943-1947), the Ford Foundation (1951-1953), and regional director of the Far East division, ICA (1953-1959). Users must consult his lectures, official statements, and speeches, as well as some of his research files from his book, to document these parts of his career. Absent are records detailing his day-to-day activities. In fact, there are no diaries, travel logs, or daily calendars that offer any clues to specific events.
Dates
- Creation: 1913 - 2000
- Creation: Majority of material found in 1921-1980
- Other: Date acquired: 1995 October 27
Creator
Conditions Governing Access
Unrestricted.
Biographical Sketch
Raymond Tyson Moyer, agricultural reformer, internationalist, and progressive citizen, devoted most of his life to advance the socioeconomic status of people in Asia. Living almost exclusively in Asia for nearly fifty years, Moyer used aid the U.S. provided for economical, technological, and agricultural purposes to assist local citizens. At Ming Hsien School in Taiku, Shansi Province, China, as an Oberlin Shansi representative (1921-1923) and as head of the agricultural department (1927-1941), Moyer learned how to assist local people, seek cooperation within the community, and develop methods to improve farming practices. His experiences in China prompted American government officials to seek Moyer’s advice, especially during the critical post-World War II and Cold War periods. Government assignments (1943-1968) took Moyer to China, Taiwan (formerly Formosa), Korea, and Afghanistan, as well as other Far East nations.
Raymond Moyer was born on August 20, 1899, in Lansdale, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to Samuel and Emma Jane Moyer. The eighth child of eleven, Moyer grew up in a nineteen room home his father, a country doctor, built on the family farm. It was on the farm that Moyer first became interested in agriculture. Even though he enjoyed agriculture, Moyer entered Oberlin College in 1917 as a pre-med major. Despite his desire to become a doctor like his father, Moyer said in his personnel account entitled Beyond Yesterday: America in a Changing World, “I felt drawn toward some sort of service work overseas.” At the end of his senior year in 1921, the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association (OSMA) named Moyer as a student representative to serve a two year term in Shansi Province, China, at the Ming Hsien school. Here, he taught English and headed the physical education and athletics programs. In April 1985 in a Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association newsletter, Moyer admitted, “Virtually everything I did after being a rep started with my Shansi experience.”
Following his two years of service as an Oberlin Shansi representative, Moyer returned to the United States to pursue graduate education. Prior to his enrollment in graduate school, Moyer worked as Student Secretary with the YMCA in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1923-25). His knowledge of Shansi Province, his concern for the plight of the farmers, and his budding interest in agriculture, led OSMA to name Moyer head of the new agricultural department at Ming Hsien in 1927; he held this post until 1941. In preparation for his new assignment, Moyer received a fellowship from the OSMA to study agriculture. He attended Colorado State Agricultural College (1925-1926), Fort Collins, Colorado, and Cornell University (1927), Ithaca, New York. After graduating in 1927 from Cornell with a master's degree in agriculture, Moyer and his new wife, Dorothy, set out for Taiku, China, to begin an agricultural program aimed at improving the farming methods of rural Shansi province.
Out of these combined experiences, Moyer established himself as a leading Asian agricultural reformer. At Ming Hsien, Moyer studied and built upon the techniques and long-standing agricultural traditions of Shansi farmers. Moyer tried many different plant breeding methods, introduced and tested fruit varieties, improved animal husbandry, and created more efficient and effective farm implements. Between 1928 and 1941, Moyer imported leghorn chickens and Rambouillet rams, tested 25,000 heads of wheat, millet, and sorghum, and helped develop industry to produce plows, cultivators, and corn shellers. In 1939, Moyer returned to the United States to finish his Ph.D. work at Cornell University. Upon receiving his doctorate in agronomy in 1941, Moyer returned to China. Trapped in Hong Kong en route to Shansi Province in December 1941, the Japanese army interned Moyer and other Westerners for six months. World War II effectively ended Moyer’s formal relationship with the Ming Hsien school, but his expertise in Chinese agriculture soon cast him in new roles in Asia and the U.S.
Upon returning to the U.S. in mid-1942, Moyer worked in a variety of capacities for the federal government over the next eight years. From 1945 to 1947, as a Head of the Office of the Far East division of Agricultural Relations, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Moyer studied agricultural and food conditions of the Far East for use by the U.S. military. In 1946-1947, Moyer investigated the economic aspects of agriculture policies in China and other Far East nations, seeking ways to improve them. These appointments led President Harry S. Truman to appoint Moyer to the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR) in 1948.
Joined by John Earl Baker and three Chinese representatives on the JCRR, Moyer tackled many of China’s post-World War II economic needs. The commission conducted a multi-faceted plan to improve agricultural production, marketing, and processing; farm tenancy; local government administration; rural health; and, social education. However, the commission’s primary focus was to develop ways to improve the Chinese Nationalists’ weak political grasp on rural China, which suffered immensely from war with the Japanese and Communists during the 1930s and 1940s. By November 1949, the Communists conquered mainland China, and the JCRR followed the Nationalists to Taiwan to continue its reform program. In 1950 and 1951, Moyer, who worked concurrently with the JCRR and as director of the U.S. Economic Aid Mission in Taiwan, helped implement radical land reform. This program reduced rent paid to landowners from tenants and returned land to farmers. In 1951, Moyer left Taiwan for the United States proud of his accomplishments.
During the 1950s, Moyer continued to develop his commitment to economic reform by working for the Ford Foundation and the International Cooperation Administration (ICA). After serving two years (1951-1953) at the Ford Foundation, Moyer became a regional director of the U.S. Foreign Operations Administration, under the ICA, to strengthen the economies of nations in the eastern and southeastern part of Asia. Using American aid, and private foreign and local capital, Moyer sought to rebuild infrastructure, develop new industries, and improve agriculture. This economic assistance, Moyer believed, would stimulate activity to fulfill a nation’s needs without further aid, encourage trade with neighboring countries, provide technology to mobilize resources, and contain the spread of communism. In 1959, when the ICA appointed Moyer to a two-year term as director of the U.S. Economic Aid Mission in South Korea, his work continued on a smaller scale. At this time, Moyer witnessed a divided nation struggling with sweeping change, including new-found democracy, modernization, and recovery from the Korean War (1950-1953). Moyer helped reinforce the economy of South Korea to promote internal political and social stability, enabling the nation to support its military. In 1962, Moyer retired and returned to the United States.
Wooed out of retirement in 1964, Moyer relocated to Afghanistan as a member of the J.G. White Engineering Corporation (New York City) to develop the economy of the Helmand Valley region. Specifically, the Moyer-led team assisted the Helmand Valley Authority (founded in 1959) in preparing plans for expanding agricultural production, developing agricultural processing industries, improving management and supply practices, and creating training programs. In 1966, he transferred to the U.S. Economic Agency in Afghanistan, under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to serve as assistant director. Continuing the programs begun by the J.G. White Corporation, Moyer worked to increase crop yields, improve irrigation, and foster cooperation between Americans and Afghans in the Helmand Valley. In 1968, at the age of 69, Moyer retired again and moved to Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.
In 1927, Moyer married Dorothy Brown Tschiffely (1904-1989), whom he met while a student at Colorado State Agricultural College in 1925. Dorothy and the children often traveled and lived with Moyer while in Asia. The Moyers raised three daughters; Susan Moyer Breed (1930-) and Ann Moyer Scharff (1931-, Oberlin College, A.B. 1953) were born at the mission hospital at Taiku, and Joan Moyer Root (1928-, Oberlin College, A.B. 1950) was born in Peking. The girls lived in China until 1941. Dorothy accompanied her husband on his later assignments in Taiwan, Korea, and Afghanistan.
During his career spanning five decades, Moyer received many honorary degrees and awards. In 1953, Oberlin College awarded Moyer a doctor of science degree, and in 1961, he received a doctor of laws degree from Seoul (Korea) National University. In 1968, Moyer accepted the Order of Propitious Clouds for his contribution to Taiwan’s social and economic development. In addition, Moyer was active in several professional and academic organizations. He belonged to the American Society for Agronomy, Soil Science Society of the United States, and Sigma Xi. Over the years, Moyer offered encouragement and financial support to the Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association.
In retirement, Moyer received a well-deserved rest and a chance to finish his personnel account covering his most of his professional career. Taking over twenty years to write, Beyond Yesterday: America in a Changing World was published posthumously by his family in 1995. Moyer described his purpose for writing the book in the Preface, “the whole book is personal history: a record of how one individual set about his quest for answers to the questions and concerns that trouble us all. Beyond Yesterday, therefore, is directed to all of those who, like myself, are concerned and searching for the means to a better tomorrow.” In 1993, at the age of 94, Moyer died at his home in Stonington, Connecticut.
Major Professional Positions:
1921-1923: Shansi Representative, Oberlin College
1927-1941: Head, Agricultural Dept., Ming Hsien School, Taiku, Shansi, China
1945-1947: Head, Far East Division, Office of Agricultural Relations, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
1948-1951: Member of Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR), China and Taiwan
1950-1951: Concurrently, Director of U.S. Economic Aid Mission in Taiwan
1951-1953: Deputy Director Overseas Activities, Ford Foundation, Pasadena, California
1953-1959: Regional Director, Far East Operations, Foreign Operations Administration Washington, D.C.
1959-1961: Director, U.S. Economic Aid Mission, Korea
1964-1967: Head of advisory group under J.G. White Engineering Corp. in Afghanistan. In 1966, transferred to the U.S. Economic Agency to oversee operations in the Helmand Valley.
SOURCES CONSULTED
Campfield, Mary. Oberlin-in-China, 1851-1951. Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Virginia, 1974.
Judd, Miriam B. “Hope for Rural China,” Oberlin Alumni Magazine 44 (November 1948): 2, 15.
Moyer, Raymond T. “America and the Post-War World: Our Role in East Asia.” Oberlin Alumni Magazine 39 (September-October 1942): 5-7.
Moyer, Raymond T. Beyond Yesterday: America In A Changing World. [United States]: The author, ca. 1995.
Oberlin College Archives. Record Group 15. Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association.
Oberlin College Archives. Record Group 28. Alumni File, Raymond T. Moyer.
Note written by Thomas Steman.
Extent
9.00 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
English
Method of Acquisition
The Raymond T. Moyer papers were donated to the Oberlin College Archives by his daughters after his death as he requested. Two separate lots of records were donated; one in 1995 and one in 1996 (accessions #1995/151 and 1996/062). Two additional installments were received by Susan Moyer Breed and donated in 2008 and 2009 (accession #2008/017 and 2009/005).
Accruals and Additions
Accession Nos: 1995/151, 1996/062, 2008/017, 2009/005.
Subject
- Moyer, Raymond Tyson, 1899- --Archives (Person)
- Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association (Organization)
- Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (Organization)
- Oberlin College--History--20th century--Sources (Organization)
Genre / Form
- awards
- certificates
- diplomas
- lecture notes
- letters (correspondence)
- manuscripts
- photograph albums
- photographs -- negatives (photographic)
- photographs -- photographic prints
- photographs -- slides
- postcards
- programs (documents)
- publications
- records (documents)
- research (document genres)
- speeches
- theses and dissertations
Geographic
Topical
- Title
- Raymond T. Moyer Papers Finding Guide
- Author
- Thomas Steman
- Date
- 1997 September 1
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 1997 September-October: Processed by Thomas Steman, assisted by volunteer Sabra Henke.
- 2000 June: Revised by Benjamin Bor.
- 2008 April: Revised by Benjamin Bor.
- 2009 June: Revised by Anne Cuyler Salsich.
- 2024-2025: Prepared for migration by Emily Rebmann and Lee Must.
Repository Details
Part of the Oberlin College Archives Repository
420 Mudd Center
148 West College Street
Oberlin OH 44074-1532 US
440-775-8014
440-775-8016 (Fax)
archive@oberlin.edu