Prologue > - Page Two
Such a night, the founders of the Chamber could not have anticipated as they gathered over cheese and bread in the long room above Fraunces Tavern in 1768. And yet, the organization that they created had done much to transform a struggling provincial harbor town into, as Coolidge said, “the greatest center of population and business that the world has ever known.”
During the intervening century and a half, the Chamber of Commerce had embodied elite New York, adding institutional weight to the already imposing authority of the nation’s most prosperous business leaders. Only the most successful merchants, preferably from well-known families, were welcome. Membership was limited, admission obtainable only by a nearly unanimous vote. Lawyers were barred in 1769, “on the ground that if they talked to a certain subject, no one else would have the opportunity to do so.”
“Nearly every man who has been great in trade or finance in this country has representation there,” claimed a reporter in World’s Work in 1902. “That unsatisfactory and almost objectionable phrase, ‘the best citizens,’ may even be used with full propriety of the membership past and present of the Chamber of Commerce.” Signs everywhere attest to the institution’s influence. “Prominent business streets in the metropolis bear the names of more than half of its original members,” and subsequent generations continued to inscribed their surnames on bridges, academies, libraries, and other landmarks.
The Chamber wielded different tendencies of power; its authority might press on any point, and yet it never exerted official sovereignty over any specific aspect of civic administration. Arbitrating business disputes, licensing harbor officials, administering poor relief – these were its administrative duties. But, its influence stretched far more widely. At monthly meetings, members debated questions of local and global moment. Then, through bulletins, reports, and resolutions they made their conclusions known to the public, fully expecting their fellow residents to heed their decisions as commandments. Usually, this expectation was fulfilled.
The voice of the Chamber’s members might inspire deference or revulsion, but it could never be ignored. The merchants knew that their influence was fragile, and so they self-consciously constructed and guarded the power of their voice with care. “If we speak upon every topic we shall soon cease to be heeded upon any,” a committee had cautioned in 1851. “The Chamber cannot step out of its true path without lessening its dignity, impairing its usefulness, and detracting from the weight of its judgment.” There were times when conflicting interests amongst the members made unanimity impossible. But for any important question on which the City’s businessmen could agree, they spoke through the voice of the Chamber.
In matters economic and political, the merchants were essentially conservative. Though many had achieved their wealth through reckless speculation, now that they possessed it – as well as the influence and authority entailed therein – their main priority was to keep it safe. But, their conservatism was so mutable that, at times, it could pass for radicalism. The Chamber men were neither pro- nor anti-slavery, nativist nor cosmopolitan, trust-busting nor monopolist, laissez-faire nor New Dealers. Whatever position seemed most suitable to the needs of business at the moment – that was the stance they took. In the 1870s, they resolved against the Chinese Exclusion Act. By the 1930s, they applauded a speaker who said, “immigration should, in the interest of race integrity and race improvement, be cut down to the vanishing point.”
On some questions, the Chamber was more consistent. From the earliest meetings, when members had voted to build a floating light off Sandy Hook, through to the mid-twentieth century, when they were among the first to recommend the construction of the World Trade Center, the merchants worked to increase the reach of New York’s commercial networks. If a construction project had enhanced the City’s infrastructural position, the Chamber had debated it, planned it, endorsed it: the Erie Canal, the Atlantic Cable, the Pacific Railroad, improving the harbor, spanning bridges, laying tunnels, surveying tracks, siting airports.