Contents of the collection are primarily newspaper clipping scrapbooks and files maintained by Shelley's office staff and provided by a professional clipping service. Newspapers represented include the San Francisco Chronicle, Examiner and Call-Bulletin, the Sacramento Bee and as well as a number of neighborhood and ethnic publications. (A full list of publications can be found in Addendum A.) Additionally the collection contains campaign literature and ballots, photocopies of private and public bills sponsored by Shelley and Congressional Record speeches and inserts pulled together by the Library of Congress Congressional Information Service.

Jack Shelley was born in San Francisco on September 3, 1905, the eldest of nine children in a working class, Irish Catholic family. Raised and educated in the city, Shelley made his first of many trips at sea after graduating from grammar school. Sailing and the shipping industry remained a passion of his for the rest of his life. While attending Mission High School, he regularly shipped out summers as a member of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific. He continued this practice while attending St. Ignatius College (later the University of San Francisco Law School) where he played varsity football and continued to work part time in a steamship office. The economic necessities of supporting a large family forced him to drop out of school after two years, when he had the opportunity to ship as a purser, eventually becoming a licensed officer. After various trips, he was able to locate employment at home as a bakery wagon drive during the day, allowing him to continue the study of law at night. In 1932 he received his law degree from the University of San Francisco and rather than enter the legal profession he chose to continue working with the bakery wagon drivers' union as a business agent.

Copyright has not been assigned to the Labor Archives & Research Center. All requests for permission to publish or quote from materials must be submitted in writing to the Director of the Archives. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Labor Archives & Research Center as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

Collection is open for research.