Most people are more interested in organized crime than in organized business. Chambers of commerce do not often attract headlines except for the occasional, inevitable dustup with a public authority. For that reason, this April’s 100 year anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce may pass without much public attention. This would be a shame, as groups of companies have left their fingerprints all over the American civic landscape, and were busy even at the birth of Tom Donohue’s organization in 1912.
President William Howard Taft, who called the U.S. Chamber into existence, was a frequent visitor to local chambers of commerce. He once joked that even towns without any commerce had a chamber or a board of trade. Indeed, during the Progressive Era these groups were proliferating wildly, and filled with excitement .
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