The items in this section are from Dr. Hansen's personal collection along with Dr. Hansen's correspondence with Helen Foster Snow. Dr. Hansen became acquainted with Helen Foster Snow in 1988 while conducting research on worker cooperatives and their value as a means of job creation and economic development in developing countries. In the course of their friendship, Helen gave him materials on worker cooperatives in China, including typescripts and other published materials, and corresponded with him for several years prior to her death. Dr. Hansen also traveled to the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, CA, where he went through the materials on China that Helen had given to that institution and xeroxed all the materials in their collection relating to worker cooperatives and the Gung Ho movement.

Helen Foster Snow was a Utah native who went to China in 1931, met and married Edgar Snow, and lived in China for nearly 10 years. In 1938, she and her husband Edgar along with a number of other international and Chinese friends started what became known as the "Indusco" worker-owned cooperative system (sometimes called the Gung Ho movement) to provide work and income to Chinese workers dislocated by the Japanese invasion of China prior to World War II. This movement subsequently created over 2,000 worker cooperatives and employed some 30,000 people during its peak wartime period of operation.