The Rise of Business EDOs

Chambers of Commerce

Chambers of Commerce had been around, in Europe as early as the 16th century[1]. They spread to America early in the colonial era[2], but colonial/Early Republic chambers crashed and burned on a regular basis. Most Early Republic chambers failed by the end of the Civil War; only a few remained in cities such as Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and New York. A new-style chamber[3] became commonplace after the Civil War. Old-style chambers (ignore Boston) stayed away from public affairs and served as mediators of business disputes and purely commercial/trade and production matters. New-style chambers, however, assumed a wider scope of action, a larger world view, and assumed responsibility and leadership for key municipal affairs. Most Northeast/ Midwest Big (and small) City chambers of commerce were established throughout the Gilded Age[4]. In 1868, in Philadelphia, thirty-three chambers and boards of exchange (including the New York City Chamber) established the National Board of Trade[5]. By 1890, a report prepared by Scranton Board to Trade to the National Board of Trade had uncovered 1,171 relevant chamber/boards of trade in existence at that time[6].

 

One reason the new-style chamber caught the attention of political folk is the business leadership that had coalesced behind them. Gilded Age chambers were restricted to the largest firms/old money in the jurisdictional economic base. Kenneth M. Sturges describes the new style chamber produced “a new organization conducted by the best type of citizens and businessmen, and interested not only in the upbuilding of commerce, but also in the betterment of community life.”[7] The example was set by the New York City Chamber, its membership limited to the top 1000 corporations. In 1896, for example, its Board of Directors held eleven millionaires out of twelve directors. Included as its Vice-President was J.P. Morgan: directors were John Jacob Astor, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.[8]

 

[Chambers/Boards of Trade] issued a growing body of resolutions to the city councils and mayors’ office and organized a string of committees to draft municipal legislation or lobby for change in municipal policy. Realizing superior municipal services and commercial prosperity were intrinsically linked, the chambers and boards applied their traditional booster spirit to the cause of good government and became potent forces ….[9]

 

Chamber after chamber, the jurisdiction’s “one per cent” formed the nucleus of the Chamber[10]. Chamber Secretaries, while very prestigious, were more facilitators for the Great Men of Business than independent powers. If staff were needed, the big boys would second staff from their own corporations. Campaigns, initiatives and budgets were consensually determined so sufficient resources to purposes required were available. The Gilded Age’s most prestigious chamber, which thought of itself as national in scope of interest and action, was the New York City Chamber. States formed state-level chambers, Utah may have been first in 1879 (it published a guide, “the Resources and Attractions of the State of Utah”), Louisiana had rudiments of a state organization in 1889, Maine in 1889, Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1890, New York in 1891, Virginia 1892 and Ohio in 1893[11]. By the turn of the century were the undisputed primary business organization in the nation—embedded in the largest, and many second third tier cities, they were equally conceded (by me) to be the undisputed primary actor in Big City economic development policy-making.

 

Gilded Age Chamber Initiatives

First, a thorough discussion of chamber economic development initiatives, strategies, and tools will be presented in Chapter 4. At this point, discussion will be limited to major “city-wide” initiatives relevant to city growth, the city’s economic base, and the physical expansion of the city conducted in several Big Cities during these years.

 

Chambers/Boards of Trade very early on became vociferous opponents of the railroad “robber barons”. It is not hard to understand why. Just about every sector of industry was the victim of freight discrimination, excessive rates, the need to pay bribes, rate pooling, and to complete the picture, stock manipulation. Cities, as we have already described paid enormous subsidies to attract railroads to their cities—but that doesn’t mean they enjoyed doing it. It was the cost of growth, pure and simple. In 1879 the National Board of Trade voted 42-3 for national regulation of railroads. The Chicago Board of Trade had harsh words for railroads, but when the New York City Chamber of Commerce formed a Committee on Railroad Transportation in 1878 and called its director Cornelius Vanderbilt to task (he admitted to the committee that “we [his railroad] have been actuated by selfish motives”) the worm had indeed turned[12].

 

The New York State legislature responding to the New York City Chamber, approved anti-railroad legislation and established the state railroad commission in 1882. Many states followed its example in i887, with active and public support from hundreds of chambers across the nation, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Commission. No claim is made that the traditionally cited populist and farmer outcries were not also responsible for its passage—only that chambers played a vital, and powerful role in what easily was the most critical urban transportation issue of its day. The National Board of Trade also took “progressive” positions for regulation of food and drugs (responding to the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878). Also as early as 1883, the New York Chamber advocated for state preservation of the Adirondack Forest and Niagara Falls.[13] Positions such as these are not traditionally associated with chambers today—and there may be a reason for these positions then, but not today. As was argued earlier, “the business community” is not monolithic. Chambers at this time are dominated by what will later be called “the corporate elite”—the largest and most powerful corporations in America. This will change. The corporate elite in the first decades of the twentieth century, will move on to “other climes”, leaving the chamber leadership to other business segments. Chambers in the Gilded Age are indeed private actors, but these chambers are different than other chamber leaderships to follow.

 

Another example drawn from the New York City Chamber further demonstrates its locally-applied power, vitality, and the commitment to city growth and prosperity: the role of that chamber in the 1890’s approval and installation of the New York City rapid transit system. London in 1890 opened its underground, electrically-powered subway. Abram Hewitt, former chamber president and former NYC mayor tacked the task of building this system in his city. He got nowhere for over three years. In 1894 the Chamber assumed leadership, formed a committee, and formulated a plan which required public financing (and private). Deciding that the city government would frustrate the project, the Chamber secured from it authorization to form an independent (self-perpetuating) Subway Commission with six of the eight members being chamber leaders (including the chamber president). The Tammany legislature attempted to gain control over the Commission, but the Chamber successfully resisted.

 

The Chamber Committee drafted and submitted a bill to the New York State legislature in 1894 and it was approved and signed by the governor in three months. The state legislature required approval by popular referendum, however. The referendum endorsed the chamber plan; the Subway Commission issued the public bonds and sub-contracted construction management and contract issuance to the Chamber itself. In October, 1897 the line opened for business[14]. We must be careful concerning the lessons drawn from this New York City example. The power and capacity of the 1890’s New York City Chamber of Commerce was not typical of Big City chambers in general. But chambers across the North and Midwest tackled, certainly provided advocacy, critical leadership, planning and resources for  significant infrastructure projects and path-breaking initiatives.

 

The Philadelphia Board of Trade stopped dead its tracks a proposal for an elevated loop rail system through the CBD; it successfully pressed the city government to form a “Docks Department” to dredge the harbor and modernize its facilities to render it more competitive. The chamber campaigned to establish water and sewer lines into the CBD. In the 1890’s it arbitrated a solution on where to locate/build the Reading Rail terminal and lobbied to construct a beltline railway. In Newark, the Chamber successfully lobbied to construct a park system and opposed plans for a new reservoir, It secured approval of a Park Commission and the chamber president became its first president. pressed for construction of sewers, urged enhanced building codes on wooden residential structures, and continuously battled street railways over excessive charges and bad service.

 

The Cleveland Board of Trade reincorporated as the Cleveland Chamber, becoming in the process the city’s most powerful proponent for modernization, infrastructure and city growth. In 1897 in its annual report, Cleveland’s Chamber Secretary reported that “nearly all of the important propositions for [public] improvements were submitted to the Chamber for consideration and approval [and] with rare exceptions the legislative representatives, city officials, and members of the chamber labored unitedly”. Apparently Columbus followed Cleveland’s aggressive chamber lead, that the claim was “The Board of Trade is Columbus”. In Indianapolis, the Board of Trade under the presidency of Eli Lilly (pharmaceutical company) drafted and secured a new charter for the city, framed and secured passage for a park commission, and hired engineers to examine the city’s sewer system and develop proposals. The Minneapolis Board of Trade and the Chamber combined efforts to overturn an adverse city council decision not to establish a park commission by going directly to the state legislature for authorization.[15]

 

Leaving Chicago for another chapter, there are plenty more examples; it seems clear that chambers/boards of trade during the late Gilded Ages were aggressive promoters and developers of infrastructure and public improvements—and at least as far as economic development-related policy-making, arguably the dominant player. To provide one last confirmation and to bookend the New York City Chamber’s aggressive involvement in city policy-making, this section concludes with Boston. In 1896 Mayor Josiah Quincy set up a city hall “Merchants Municipal Committee”. Composed of the heads of the city’s six major business organizations, the Merchants Committee over the next four years submitted recommendations to the mayor, drafted legislation to the state legislature, drafted a tax reform, arbitrated differences between railroads and the city/track relocation and terminal location. In September 1897, the Tremont Street Subway (the first section of the “T”’s Green Line opened for business, one month before the New York City line—earning Boston’s bragging rights to house the nation’s first subway. Boston, anticipating the later Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, had been in a race with the New York City to build the first subway[16]. Henry Whitney, owner of Boston’s West End Street Railway Company had beaten his rival Abram Hewitt.

 

Civic Reform Clubs

The alter-ego of chambers in the early Gilded Age, the “dark side of their force” was undoubtably the civic reform or good government clubs which flourished from the 1870’s and increased in strength through the era. Perhaps, the earliest of these semi-formal elite-based “political clubs” was the Boston Commercial Club founded in 1868. Civic Reform Clubs were founded in city after city from the 1870’s onward, including Philadelphia’s Citizens Reform Association (1871); the Citizens Association of Chicago (1874; the Commercial Club of Chicago (1877); the Baltimore Reform League (1885); the New Orleans Committee of 100 (1885), the Citizens Association of Boston (1887).

 

These early clubs were populated by “generally wealthy , well-educated business or professional types, men of the Mugwump persuasion were galvanized by the independent Republican movement of the 1872 presidential election and the reform candidacy of Democrat Grover Cleveland [later] in 1884. … Most of the men involved were elitist and patrician in social outlook, Protestant in religion,, and old-stock Anglo-Saxon or Yankee in family background”.[17] While most were certainly members and leaders in their city’s newly forming chambers of commerce, these Mugwump city reformers formed the reform clubs for largely, but not exclusively, political reasons.

 

Intensely opposed to the new immigrant and ethnic “machines”, and frankly extremely uncomfortable with the social and cultural threat of immigrant newcomers to their sense of what has since been labeled “the American way”. Hofstadter wrote in The Age of Reform[18] “… they found themselves checked, hampered and overridden by the agents of new corporations, the corrupters of legislatures, the buyers of franchises, the allies of political bosses”. The first post-Civil War urban reformers (I’m tempted to use terms like neo-conservatives or “old money”) wasted little time in challenging the immigrants, their machines (and big business) that upset the old order.

 

The first substantial urban machine of the era was, of course, New York City’s Tweed Ring run out of Tammany Hall. The Tweed Ring offended a number of New Yorkers on many different levels and Thomas Nast cartoons, a constant barrage of New York Times articles, and the Union League Club’s expose report, prompted the calling of a public meeting at Cooper Hall in early September 1871. With the upcoming November elections in mind, a “Committee of Seventy” composed of city business and lots of Mugwumps and led by Samuel Tilden, was formed to put those crooks in jail. The chairman of the Cooper Hall meeting, William F. Havemeyer (a former 1840’s mayor and a Mugwump) stood for mayor and was elected.

 

His administration, in the midst of a very severe panic or recession, cut drastically public funds for relief programs for the city’s poor. He also stopped infrastructure and public improvement programs which created jobs. He imposed an honest, efficient, free market-oriented, low tax administration (not too dissimilar from that of Herbert Hoover sixty years later). Havemeyer pushed a new city charter through the state legislature which created several independent boards and commissions (which will be discussed shortly), and dispersed key policy-making authority into the Board of Estimate (which controlled budgeting, financing, taxing and bond-issuance).

 

In so doing, he weakened substantially his own power and that of the New York City mayor’s office. Simultaneously, it weakened the city legislatures dominated by the machine. The policy-making coherence of New York’s City government was badly impaired in the aftermath. Havemeyer’s administration provides a sense of early, Mugwump era, business reform and its confused impact on the city’s policy-making process. Fortunately, for the other Big Cities, they could sit back, watch and learn from New York’s City’s Mugwump experiment. After two years in office, Havemeyer, the Mugwump reformers, the Committee of Seventy were swept out of office. Tilden, who went on to greater glories, was another matter. Tammany, in very short order, minus Tweed who was convicted, jailed and shortly after died, formed a new style-ethnic controlled machine under Irishman ‘Honest John Kelly’ and journeyed forward into its Golden Years.

 

The Civic Reform Clubs that followed were less “Mugwump” and more sophisticated in their approach to reconstructing the urban policy system. Their membership tended to be more representative of the various wings of their city’s business and professional community. Recognizing the need to strengthen mayoral power as potentially the most effective means to counter the decentralized control of the city legislatures by the machine and its control ward elections. This, of necessity, meant new city charters which could only be granted by the state legislature. The burden imposed by Dillon’s Law, of having to convince the state legislature for every structural and many policy/budget/tax/administration changes, added a new dimension to urban reform: home rule or the delegation by the state legislature of broad and sometimes sweeping authority to the city to change its own government. The quest to obtain municipal home rule legislation from the state legislature reshaped the drive to change municipal governance.

 

Mohl claims that by 1890 eighty good government associations had been established. These were supplemented by thirty city civil service reform associations, followed in 1881 by the National Civil Service Reform League. Magazine editors such as E. L. Godkin (the Nation) and George William Curtis (Harper’s Weekly) were chairs of such groups[19] entered the fray. By the  mid-1880’s, certainly the 1890’s, Gilded Age Mugwumps were only one of many groupings concerned with city governance. The Municipal League eventually took over the reform effort and by the late 1890’s reform had changed character and had evolved into what we will, in Chapter 5, label the “structural reformers”. Structural reformers will prove to be one of the most significant forces in our history of state and sub-state economic development policy. They deserve to be attended to, and described, separately from our present concern with the Gilded Age formation of a municipal policy system.

 

Real Estate Boards

Real Estate Exchanges[20] were common throughout the United States and they pretty much did what their name implies. Real estate boards were, and are, industry trade associations, composed of individuals and firms engaged in real estate transactions, property ownership and sub-division development-redevelopment. Their membership also extended to all sectors (for instance banking, construction and insurance) relevant to real estate development, they eventually assumed responsibility for issue advocacy and legislation desired by their membership. Since in most states, the state governments retained considerable authority over city matters, state-wide real estate associations were also established at the state level. Allegedly, the first state-wide Real Estate Board was set up in New York in 1896. I am uncertain as to which city’s real estate exchange developed first—probably New York City.

 

The earliest evidence of a residential and commercial body having influence on city agencies and codes, was probably the National Board of Fire Underwriters founded in 1866. Its purpose was to fix uniform rates nationwide and act as a lobby for and against state-level legislation. The national board also worked hard to push localities into more stringent building codes and to develop well-trained and equipped fire departments. The symmetry of logic between strong fire codes and city governments is fairly self-evident. In 1871 Chicago burned down. The fire destroyed an estimated 15,000 buildings (3 ½ square miles), and drove sixty-eight insurance companies into bankruptcy. The Boston fire of 1872 destroyed 750 buildings and sixty-five acres of its CBD[21]. As early as 1857 (San Francisco) individual cities had formed their own boards of fire insurance. In the course of their efforts to prevent fires, insurance firms naturally, through city regulation, imposed constraints on home builders (mostly a pretty heterogeneous lot of small builders), banks and the like. By 1892 electrical codes were fairly commonplace as well. Each of these codes, however, accepted and necessary reached into the pockets of real estate-related businesses. The more stringent the codes, the more expensive. That’s why New York City was probably the first to form a Real Estate Exchange. Amendments to New York City’s building law in 1885 and 1892 added four new members to the City’s Board of Examiners: one being the Real Estate Owners and Builders Association and the other the New York Real Estate Exchange.[22]

 

The Greater Boston Real Estate Board (Real Estate and Auction Board) claims to be the nation’s oldest–formed as it was in 1889—metropolitan real estate exchange. The GBREB’s first chairman, Frederic H. Vaux, played a critical role in introducing the electric trolley to Boston. Originally GBREB signed up 100 members (versus 7,000 today) “including the best known real estate men in the city”. Their activities and membership grew quickly and in 1903 “at the bequest of the chamber of commerce, the exchange took part in high level conferences regarding reforms under consideration by the Boston city government”. By the 1920’s, GBREB was deeply involved working with planners in the formulation and implementation of the new zoning and building code ordinances.

 

We have no reason to question that most municipal and metropolitan real estate boards followed some version of the GBREB’s evolution–at least until World War II.[23] The Boston Exchange, by virtue of its specificity focus and intense and consistent involvement, its professional membership, and its pivotal intermediary role to private financing and insurance supported a near monopoly over the city’s residential/commercial expansion. As discussed, the Big City grew beyond its periphery during this era. It did so because transportation innovation propelled real estate development, making it a gazelle of the Gilded Age. The transformation of the CBD was essentially a real estate-driven activity dominated mostly by private real estate organizations like real estate exchanges and property owners associations.

 

Functions, which today are viewed as inherently public (bus, street car, subway lines, bridges, electric power stations, and water/sewer plants). In the Gilded Age privately-owned and managed public franchises or utility-style corporation–in close alliance, if not partnership with the municipal administration and real estate exchanges. These firms fit the image associated with the infamous growth coalition of future years. The obvious reality is these firms translated population growth into private profit. While individually, these real estate firms may have been members of the chamber of commerce, they could not control or easily manage chamber policy positions or decision-making and the likelihood is that the latter could do little to influence their actions as well.

 

In the Gilded Age, Exchanges were neither responsive to, or sympathetic with larger political or partisan issues. They preferred to stick to their own real estate “knitting”. In this more Privatist age, Real Estate Exchanges  participated heavily in what today would be physical economic development matters including CBD, neighborhood and commercial development and redevelopment. Much of their growth and prosperity resulted from “streetcar chasing” or following the street car routes out toward city peripheries and beyond. To repeat some observations the reader should remember that in the late 1880’s stretching past World War I, the CBD and periphery expansion were the engines of Big City economic growth and industrialization. New industrial districts, new subdivisions of working and middle class neighborhoods, commercial development of streetcar routes—annexation and eventually suburbanization all were critical to municipal economic development and heavily involved with Exchange membership. Real Estate Exchanges therefore extended their tentacles into hinterland cities well beyond the confines of the larger central city. They became metropolitan-wide players in the jurisdictional policy systems.

 

This centrality to city growth remained largely unchanged through World War II, if not the 1970’s. These metropolitan-wide real estate exchanges, therefore, played a very serious role in local public policy—and would form a national association (eventually becoming the Urban Land Association and the National Association of Real Estate Bureaus). Real Estate Boards and national associations such as the National Realtors Board and Urban Land Association would play a major role in the evolution of economic development during the 1920’s thru 1950.

 

The Rise of Bureaucracies

Although, I discuss city bureaucrats last in a series of Gilded Age policy actors, it is very unclear they are last in their impact over the municipal policy process—or our history. Economic development owes a great deal to the independent park commissions of the Age, but that will not be apparent until Chapter 5. Also, the formation of city bureaucracies relevant to economic development, while not widespread across Big Cities, did begin in New York City and Philadelphia during these years—but that also will be not be known to the reader until Chapter 4. In any case, this section will focus on two city bureaucracies which were key elements of the Gilded Age municipal policy system: the comptroller and independent commissions.

 

The city comptroller played a role not dissimilar from that of a chief operating officer (COO), or even a city manager of later years. He certainly was the city’s chief financial officer. The comptroller was central to development of the budget, usually possessed control (sign off) on city contracts and expenditures, conducted the city’s financial affairs and bookkeeping, a sometimes auditor of departments and commissions, city’s agent in the sale of bonds, and responsible for city’s credit rating. The comptroller was probably more important than the mayor in tax abatements and city incentives. He was also usually ex officio on most boards and commissions along with the mayor and corporation council. The comptroller in most cities was independently elected, often not in the same years as mayor (Philadelphia, Brooklyn, St. Louis, New York City, for example); or the comptroller was appointed by the mayor (Boston, Baltimore and Chicago). “During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, downtown businessmen, not ward politicos, occupied the post of comptroller, just as they did the office of mayor.”[24]

 

 “Few comptrollers of major cities were supine servants of party leaders, or mindless flunkies of the mayor or council. Most had some previous political experience… partisan loyalty to the dominant political faction was not a chief criterion for attaining the post … the emphasis on integrity, financial acumen, and favorable ties with the banking community also strongly influenced the choice of comptroller”[25]. The professionalism and the autonomy of the comptroller’s office are evidenced by the process which followed the death of bureaucrat New York City Deputy Comptroller Richard A. Storrs. Storrs served in that position from 1856 to 1896 when he died. His estate upon death totaled only $15,000—he had a reputation for honesty, early opposition to Tweed and an effective protector of city funds. In any event Ashbel Fitch, the comptroller, received a nomination for Storrs’s replacement from Richard Croker, the famed Tammany boss. Fitch instead called a meeting of twelve presidents of New York City’s leading banks and insurance companies, and they nominated a candidate whom Fitch then appointed[26]. The comptroller’s was not a policy-making position, but it clearly was preeminent in the policy implementation stage. The comptroller was certainly the key liaison on the day to day interrelationships between the chamber and other business organizations, the independent commissions, and the last bastion of hope against municipal legislatures.

 

Gilded Age municipal commissions could be regarded as an experiment, or another example of hybrid, quasi-public organization. Like now discredited, Early Republic corporate charters before them they were arguably clumsy attempts to make both policy-making and public powers accessible to private elites. Commissions were indisputably government agencies. Commissions were governed by their board of directors, whose appointments were determined by mayor and council. The comptroller and mayor usually served as ex officio, and their activities were included within the comptroller’s fiscal, expenditure, bond issuance and audit authority. According to Teaford, selection for these board positions was heavily influenced by chambers, and reserved for “persons of standing and character”. Some boards were self-perpetuating, as their members would fill any vacant position. Many important commissions had independent funding and taxing powers. Teaford calls these independent boards, bureaus and commissions as a third element [after executive and legislative] in [Gilded Age] city government.[27]

 

Among the earliest example of autonomous municipal bureaucracies were police bureaus. As early as the 1860’s police bureaus appointed by state governors were found in New York City, Brooklyn, St Louis, Baltimore and Cleveland, and by the 1880’s Boston and Cincinnati enjoyed state appointed boards. Public health, libraries, schools, and sinking bond commissions were overwhelming candidates for being set up as an independent commission/board. The motivation for forming a board was usually to separate politics for administration, i.e. keep the legislature out—but specialization of expertise in a critical function, public health for example was also important. Between 1870 and 1885, corporate charters permitted boards and these were the golden years of their formation.[28] That they declined after the passage of the 1883 Civil Service Act strongly suggests their transitional role between the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian city government and a strong mayor government.

 

The commission most interesting from an economic development perspective was, of all boards, the park commission. A hint why park commissions are of importance to our history is reveal when Boss Tweed “injected city government” into the construction of Central Park an ongoing project of a New York City Park Commission. Disruptive at the time to the construction, it spurred our soon-to-be-friend Frederick Law Olmsted Senior into launching an independent parks movement, complete with parks commissions and review boards across the nation. In city after city for the next several decades, Big Cities established parks commissions and entered into major projects, such as Boston’s Emerald Necklace. As shall be discussed in future chapters, this movement provided occupations, training, experience, and expertise to a new developing profession of great future importance to economic development: planning. Another economic development-related policy area was public works which Griffith believes “were among the most numerous”. His observation that between 1870 and 1890, it was “medium-sized and smaller cities” that were most “remarkable for the frequency with which such boards of public works appeared in these new charters”—Tennessee and Wisconsin “well nigh universal in medium-sized cities”[29]. As shall be discovered, this is the age of infrastructure installation and public works bureaus handled that vital economic development function—we suspect with chamber involvement and perhaps assistance.

 

Finally, the reader might ask if Big Cities reasonably portray what goes on in second and third tier cities. With some frustration, it must be acknowledged that research on these cities can be sparse, and their sheer number inhibits our ability to deal with them responsibly. One smaller city example, Manchester New Hampshire, suggests that as far as trends such as strengthening the mayor’s office and the propensity to use boards and commissions previous to twentieth century, their experience is similar. In City Politics, Banfield and Wilson observe

 

During the nineteenth century, when reformers were anxious to keep certain functions out of the hands of party machines, the practice was to create a large number of entirely independent boards and commissions—sometimes twenty or thirty. Most of these eventually became city departments under the mayor and council, but today (1963) many are still loosely tied or not tied at all to the city government proper. The distribution of authority in Manchester, New Hampshire [1880 population 32,600 and 1900 population nearly 57,000] is typical of what exists in many small cities. Manchester [in 1963] has twenty-one boards and commissions loosely tied to city government …[30]

[1] Marseilles France claims it is the first–established in 1599–followed by a second in Bruges Belgium in 1664.

[2] America’s earliest chamber, New York City, was found in 1768–although that fact is contested by Boston Chamber of Commerce which claims to be America’s first, inspired by Daniel Webster in 1825. See Chris Mead, the Other Chambers of Commerce, New Geography, November 18, 2010. Selected Big City Chambers include: Chicago 1848, Buffalo NY 1844, Cleveland OH 1848, Toledo OH 1849, Baltimore 1820, Philadelphia 1801, Albany 1823, Pittsburgh 1835, St. Louis 1836, Cincinnati 1839, Hartford 1799, and Detroit 1856.

[3] We will refer generically to the Chamber of Commerce. In some communities  they could be called the Committee of One Hundred, Businessman’s Association, Board of Trade or many other titles. Each title reflects a different historical tradition and economic function which, while interesting, is beyond the scope of this study. Boards of Trade, for instance, originated in colonial times, imported from the United Kingdom. Boards of Trade in New England were a hotbed of revolution. Ask Sam Adams, a Boston Board of Trade member; he’ll tell you some interesting stories about a tea party planned at a Board of Trade meeting.

[4] See Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street (Oakton, VA, the John Cruger Press, 2014). Mead’s Appendix 1 provides the founding dates of many chambers. This list goes way back to the seventeenth century. Selected cities and dates of Gilded Age founding: Salem  MA, Scranton PA (1867); Dubuque IA , Newark NJ, Providence RI (1868); Madison WI, Knoxville TN (1869); Portland OR, San Diego CA (1870); Duluth MN, Lancaster PA, Burlington VT (1872); Minneapolis MN (1876); Rochester NY, Grand Rapids MI, Springfield OH, Muncie IN (1887). There are literally a hundred or more chambers listed in this period, pp. 392-397.

[5] Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting National Board of Trade (Richmond), 1870 (Google Books)

[6] Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, op. cit, p. 129.

[7] Kenneth Montague Sturges, American Chambers of Commerce, Printed for the Department of Political Science of Williams College, 1915, p. 43.

[8] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p. 189.

[9] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p. 189.

[10] Mead expands this list of notable business leaders in leadership position in various chambers. Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, p130.

[11] Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, op. cit., p. 132.

[12] We are indebted to Mead for most of this description and we borrow from him a rebuttal to the Committee made by William Vanderbilt:  “The encouragement by such a body as the Chamber of Commerce to such [anti-railroad] ideas will not stop with railroad corporations, but will reach all kinds of associated capital, and will not be stopped before it reaches all property. This growing tendency to socialist principles is one of the most dangerous signs of the times…”; Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, op. cit., p. 124.

[13] Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, op. cit., p. 125.

[14] The case study was a composite constructed from Chris Mead, the Magicians of Main Street, op. cit., pp. 144- 145 and Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., pp. 190-191. The contemporary plaque detailing the line’s construction, a picture of which is included in Magicians of Main Street, includes the phrase “suggested by the Chamber of Commerce”.

 

[15] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., pp. 190-192.

[16] Doug Most, the Race Underground: Boston, New York, the Incredible Rivalry that Built America’s First Subway (New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2014). P.S. The Green Line might be named for Dr. Samuel Green, former mayor, who issued an important report to the subway commission in 1895.

[17] Raymond Mohl, The New City, op. cit, p. 109. To confuse the reader, Mugwumps were Republicans who voted for Democrats (especially Grover Cleveland). Mugwumps were also usually anti-machine , chiefly from New England and New York, and several, such as Louis Brandeis and the famous cartoonist Thomas Nast became identified with Progressives.

[18] Richard Hofstadter, the Age of Reform  (New York City, Knopf, 1955); Mohl, the New City, op. cit. pp. 109-113.

[19] Raymond Mohl, The New City, op. cit, pp. 111-112.

[20] These private real estate-based trade associations had many names, but in this history we refer to them as “real estate exchanges”.

[21] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p. 199.

 

[22] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p. 203.

[23] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Post-War Detroit (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005).

[24] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.58.

[25] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., pp.58-59.

[26] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.61.

[27] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.66.

[28] Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: the Conspicuous Failure, 1870-1900 (New York, Praeger Publishers and National Municipal League, 1938, 1974), pp. 52-53. Griffith believes there were some states that used boards and commissions more than others. The South for instance “lagged” in their use. He also noticed our aforementioned “herd” effect,  arrows in the quiver, in regards to forming public health boards and commissions. By 1873, he found between thirty and thirty-five cities had already formed public health boards

[29] Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: the Conspicuous Failure, 1870-1900 , op. cit., p 56.

[30] Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics, op. cit., p. 82.