David B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958)

IN THE preceding chapter the origins of interest groups and the Circumstances surrounding their orientation toward the institutions of government were indicated as among the factors most relevant to a description of group politics. It was also suggested that the rapid proliferation of associations in recent years, so extensive that "interest group" and "association" are almost interchangeable terms, had been largely responsible for focusing the attention of both layman and specialist upon the role of groups in government. In the course of this discussion the factors involved in the emergence of institutionalized groups and associations were stated in schematic terms. A clearer picture of these crucial political situations will be afforded by an examination of the origins of a number of associations and a statement of the conditions under which they have become involved in the governmental process.

Perhaps the most instructive examples of the growth of association and their involvement in government, as previous illustrations suggest, are to be seen in the labor movement. Labor organizations are important not only because they play a significant role in the current scene, but because they embody one of a variety of responses to the innovations (disturbances) that for more than a century have been the vortex of a rapidly changing society, namely, disturbances in the relationships in economic institutions. These relationships, for centuries stabilized at a relatively simple level necessitating little differentiation of function, have within little more than a century changed so radically that the bonds of habitual behavior by which they had been controlled have been destroyed. The origins of these changes, and of labor organization in the modern sense, lay in specialization, in differentiation of function, making the worker only a producer and not equally owner and merchant of his product. For reasons apparent from previous discussions, the functional differentiation of employer and employee permitted the development of attitudes (interests) peculiar to each. Subsequent and varying disturbances inevitably increased interaction among workers, and the emergence of associations to stabilize these relationships followed.^l These disturbances, it should be noted by way of caution, were not in the beginning, and have not since been, narrowly economic in the sense that they depended wholly upon wages. Wage demands have usually been symptoms of an unacknowledged need for achieving equilibrium in the lives of workers both within and outside the factory.²

Local trade unions in the United States, organizations made up exclusively of wage earners, date from the l790'5. The rise of these associations illustrates in simple and direct fashion the generic processes by which any association is formed. In some instances the disturbing influences were the "merchant capitalists," under the pressure of whose merchandising methods masters were often obliged to cut wages in order to compete for sales. In others the stimulating disturbances were the competition of "foreign" workers, those migratory journeymen who undermined the bargaining position of local artisans. These and other influences, such as the scarcity of skilled workmen, led to the formation of local and intercity workingmen's associations.

In the wavelike fashion discussed previously, the expansion of these workingmen's groups led to the associated opposition of employers, utilizing in considerable measure the institutions of government and particularly the convenient common-law concepts of conspiracy. Reaching a peak in the early 1830'5, these efforts on the part of employers were one cause of a series of attempts to fuse all organized workers into one national organization, a trend temporarily halted by the panic of 1837.

Further efforts toward nation-wide organization were invited by the industrialization and transportation improvements of the two decades before the Civil War. Local organizations were no longer able to, control wages and working conditions under the competitive situation these improvements made possible. Slowed by the war, these federative drives emerged with renewed vigor afterwards under the in creased tempo of industrialization. For workers, as for many in other phases of American life, the postwar decades were stormy, confused, and filled with contradictions. Until the creation of the American Federation of Labor in 1886 these labor movements were amorphous lacking in cohesion, and short-lived. Basic to their high mortality was a vagueness of interest, an interest that could not provide a solid and continuing basis of interaction. Differentiation between worker and employer had gone forward rapidly, and the consequences of this and other developments were painfully felt. Yet, despite these changes, the employee, wage-earning position was not accepted as a permanent one; the dream persisted of individual advancement to property-holding, self-employing security. Not even skilled workers, however well organized locally, were fully interactive nationally as such; instead, they saw themselves as part of the amorphous "plain people"–farmers, middle class employers, and the like. The ill-starred National Labor Union (1866-72) and the considerably more important Knights of Labor, begun in 1869 and past its peak by 1887, had in common a central preoccupation with antimonopoly and other "up lift" matters aiming to eliminate the obstacles to moving out of what was becoming a relatively permanent position in society. The Knights, for example, assumed that "no fundamental disharmony of interest obtained between employers and workers as such" and that the interests of all those who were producers, whether by hand or, brain, were virtually identical.³ Radical in one sense, these romantic and utopian movements were not in harmony with more substantial lines of interest among workers.

The American Federation of Labor, before which the Knights rapidly declined, was in tune with reality in that it was based on a l firmer foundation of common interest than that of belonging to the "plain people." This foundation for continuing interaction was the skilled craft. Skilled workers, especially those having the same skill, could interact, not just as workers, but as workers with a particular specialty that they desired to protect from wage cutting and overcrowding. Although the development of the new type of union had the effect of distinguishing skilled from unskilled workers, it also necessarily helped to create attitudes accepting a more or less continuing wage earner status. Individualism was de-emphasized by being harnessed firmly to the objective of controlling skilled jobs. Other utopian hangovers continued only in much less important form. Statements issuing from a convention in May, 1886, leading up to the formation of the A.F. of L., indicated awareness of the workable lines of interaction in their emphasis upon the "historical basis" of the craft unions and their preclusive qualifications to "regulate their own in internal concerns."⁴ Not despite the fact that it included only skilled workers, but because of that fact, the creation of the A.F. of L. marked a revolutionary change: "The 'natural' unit of organization was that of men in the same occupations, possessed of approximately the same skill and technical knowledge and potential underbidders of each other in the absence of collective selling of labor power."⁵ The proof of this "naturalness" lay in the continuance of the movement despite the upheavals of the next decade. The A.F. of L. survived troubles of the sort that had regularly crippled or eliminated the predecessors of the new organization.

The success of the A.F. of L. and its international craft unions had reached impressive proportions by the turn of the century. In 1902 their membership exceeded one million. Effectiveness in ordering the relationships of skilled workers, however, provided a stimulus to activity on the part of employers' groups, whose equilibrium was affected. Not only did new organizations of employers develop after l90l, as will be noted later, but a number of them engaged in vigorous defensive action in the form of an open-shop drive on a nationwide basis during the years 1901 through 1908.

The reaction of the A.F. of L.'s membership to these efforts was mixed, but some of its aspects are highly instructive. Control within the constituent unions was increasingly centralized as these circumstances called for hard-hitting tactics in order to hold members and force employer acceptance. Some unions reacted to the open shop offensive with vigorous insistence on a wider attack on existing economic relationships than was consistent with the A.F. of L.'s "business unionism." These participated in forming a more revolutionary, industrial union movement in 1906, the Industrial Workers of the World. Division of this sort in the face of changes-in relationships among groups is continual, as was indicated in Chapter 2. The I.W.W., however, never became a real rival to the A.F. of L., since, like similar movements in the past, it was not able to satisfy immediate economic needs of workers and never achieved effective cohesion. It nevertheless had significance and meaning for the future in that it forced the A.F. of L. leadership to contemplate including unskilled workers within its fold.

The most interesting reaction of the A.F. of L. to the open-shop drive and related employer offensives, however, was the development of a measure of political activity. The strictly economic implications of "business unionism" meant avoidance of politics and any reliance upon government. This policy, a reaction against the political movements that had preceded the A.F. of L., had withstood the blandishments of the various socialist parties in the nineties and the efforts of socialists within the A.F. of L. The major influences leading the A.F. of L. to a more active position respecting politics by 1906 included the following: the antiunion efforts of employers, particularly as implemented by the free use of injunctive powers by the courts; the increasing restlessness of the unorganized unskilled workers, partially reflected in the I.W.W., who looked toward legislation as a means of improving their circumstances and who constituted a potential threat to the dominance of the A.F. of L.; the atmosphere of the "progressive" movement; and the tempting success in the elections of 1906 of the organization that later became the British Labor Party. Precedent for this new orientation could be found in State-wide labor organizations four decades earlier. In New York the association that later became the New York State Federation of Labor had since 1864 been primarily concerned with legislative matters, a preoccupation that it has consistently maintained.⁶ The change in A.F. of L. policy, however, involved no real abandonment of the tenets of "business unionism," but merely the use of governmental mechanisms to facilitate achieving the established objectives. Legislative requests were largely efforts to free the union from restraints upon the use of its customary methods–particularly from court injunctions and prosecutions under the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. Political participation was confined to bipartisan endorsement "to defeat labor's enemies and to reward its friends." Nevertheless, the greater preoccupation with government and politics indicated a significant trend.

These new political efforts of organized labor reached something of a peak with the passage in 19l4 of the Clayton Act, hailed overoptimistically by Gompers as a "new magna charta." This act, an amendment to the Sherman Act, seemed to satisfy the major legislative demands of the unions–relief from the injunction and from the requirements of the antitrust legislation that had been so applied as to limit the rights to organize and to strike. Subsequent construction of its provisions by the courts largely dashed these optimistic first hopes.

The trend toward political activity was strengthened during World War I, though it was not changed in character. The Federation demanded safeguards for union activities in return for its vigorous sup port of the war. These were so far forthcoming that by 1920 A.F. of L. membership exceeded a record-breaking four million. Government policies led to labor representation in many of the emergency agencies. More important, in those basic industries, like coal mining and railroads, that the government undertook to operate, official sanction was given to the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.

In the complicated period of the 1920's and 1930's one may discern the operation of two trends in organized labor, not very notice able prior to 19l4, but dominant in the postwar years because of changed circumstances. The first of these was a growing need for the organization of the unskilled and semiskilled workers. The second, closely related, was the demand by organized labor for greater political activity along positive lines and not merely for defensive purposes.

In the background of the increased need to organize the nonskilled workers were a number of novel developments. First, there was the rapid growth of several new or much altered industries, such as auto mobiles, chemicals, and electrical manufacturing. Along with this growth went rapid technological development involving mass production and the partial or complete elimination of many of the traditional craft skills, so that the relative importance of highly skilled workers was greatly diminished. In these and other lines mergers and combinations within industry occurred at a greatly increased rate, a development that, as was noted in the case of the shoe industry, may constitute a major disturbance in the equilibrium of workers' groups. Paradoxically, in the face of a greatly increased number of potentially organizable workers and conditions of rather general prosperity in the 1920's, which normally favor union growth, the number of organized workers steadily declined, showing a net decrease in every year but one between 1920 and 1930.⁷ This decline was due in large measure to the rigidity of established patterns in the A.F. of L., as will be indicated in more detail later.

During this decade associated activity among employers increased in compensation for the aggressive advances of organized labor during World War I. The open-shop movement was renewed in somewhat more sophisticated guise than it had displayed at the turn of the century but still was strongly aided by such judicial weapons as the in junction. It was accompanied as well by a wide range of paternalistic, welfare practices. In a number of industries, especially those in which there had occurred an increase in the real income of workers, labor groups did develop, not spontaneously as labor efforts, but under management sponsorship in the form of the so-called company union. The company unions were

able, in prosperous times, to stabilize workers’ relationships, but they did so by establishing supplementary lines of interaction within the hierarchy of the institutionalized economic group such as the factory; they were not, like the conventional labor union, associations formed around tangential relations between such groups. The company unions were effective in strengthening the existing order within economic groups, making workers "company conscious rather than craft conscious."⁸ It is significant that the means of accomplishing this result was in form more like unionism of the industrial type than like that of the craft skill sort.

When the National Industrial Recovery Act and later the Wagner Act gave sanction to labor organization, unions in all sorts of lines experienced rapid growth. The former legislation, passed in 1933 during the disturbed early months of the first administration of Franklin Roosevelt, involved a gargantuan program of business "self-government." It included a section providing that employees should have the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing and without employer interference. The National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) of 1935 was based on this section, strengthened by provisions deemed necessary to guarantee these rights, notably proscription of the company union and provision of enforcement machinery. The most dramatic union expansion; under these statutes occurred in the newer mass-production industries The "need" for organization in these enterprises is illustrated by the example of the automobile industry:

The readiness in fact went so far that rank-and-file membership in the early stages of organization under the C.I.O. undertook strikes despite advice to the contrary from their leaders.

The company unions, however, offered stiff competition to unions of the conventional sort until after the passage of the Wagner Act. It was an ominous fact that in the N.R.A. period A.F. of L. unions invaded the mass-production industries without supplanting the company-promoted and company-controlled union. The number of the latter nearly doubled between 1932 and 1935, and the number of employees covered by them, equivalent to 40 per cent of total "legitimate" trade union membership in 1932, increased to 60 per cent of the total of unionized workers by 1935. This form of organization, moreover, was particularly common in such mass-production industries as iron and steel, chemicals, and transportation. Not until the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act was established in 1937 was an effective check placed on the growth of the company-dominated labor organization.

The need for positive recourse to political institutions became increasingly apparent as the mass-production industries were organized. It was foreshadowed in the twenties by the problems of the railroad brotherhoods. These unions became increasingly dependent upon government to enforce the right of collective bargaining and to settle disputes, and consequently needed to protect their stability and their access to governmental institutions through greater political participation. Significantly, they were among the most vigorous backers of the LaFollette presidential candidacy in 1924, which the A.F. of L. endorsed only reluctantly and with much dragging of feet. Conservative unionists were brought to accept more aggressive political action partly by the increased migration of industry during the twenties into areas where low standards and wage levels threatened the higher standards in organized areas.¹⁰ Adequate protection against such competition required action by the national Government. These influences toward political activity were reinforced by the activities of local and state officials supporting employers during industrial disputes. Skill changes in industry were equally influential. The semi skilled and unskilled workers of the mass-production industries were unable to protect their job security through "job control" based en a semimonopoly of entrance into a craft. Well before the advent of the Committee for Industrial Organization in 1935 (later the Congress of Industrial Organizations), established unions in such industries were increasingly convinced that they were confronted with economic forces that could be subjected to control only through the use of governmental mechanisms. Since control of entrance into employment was no longer feasible or appropriate, security had to sought by other means. With the great expansion of unions of the industrial type after 1935, including as they did great numbers of nonskilled workers in the mass-production industries, increased political activity by labor organizations was inevitable.

A more detailed consideration of the reasons for the split between the C.I.O. and the A.F. of L. will be reserved for a later chapter, but it should be noted that this break (which represents a tendency not peculiar to labor) was a direct consequence of the trends toward industrial unionism and increased union participation in politics discussed above. Changes in the organization and techniques of industry had, by the beginning of the 1930's and perhaps earlier, made organized relationships among workers along plant and industry lines regardless of skill, far more realistic than organization by craft. That craft organization, which had been made "natural" in the 1880's, was by this time artificial, is evident from the fact that, although workers in industrial unions amounted to only 27 percent of organized; workers in 1933, by the early 1940's the proportion was more than half. These and similar developments also dictated a more aggressive use of national political institutions than was customary for the previously dominant craft type of labor organization. When the established patterns of interaction – that is, the organizational structure – of the A.F. of L. failed to accommodate these new demands, division and the establishment of a rival organization could not be long postponed.

If we turn to another common interest group, the trade association, a similar process of growth and involvement in government is found. The development and characteristics of the trade association are differentiated responses to many of the changed circumstances that stimulated and guided the emergence of the labor movement. It will be unnecessary to restate these in greater detail than is sufficient to demonstrate the similarity of the basic pattern: that trade associations have emerged in response to changes or disturbances in the habitual relationships (interactions) of groups of individuals and that these associations have had increasing resort to the institutions of government in order to stabilize relationships within and between groups.

Although the antecedents of the modern trade association go back on the local level at least to the guild organizations of master crafts men and traces of them can be found very early in American history the beginnings of trade associations of regional or national scope date from the Civil War. By the r890's they had become so widespread as to be a familiar feature of industrial organization in America.^ll The rapid changes during these decades–technological changes, expanding markets, and painfully sharp fluctuations in the trade cycle–provided the stimulus for this growth. As the unsettling effects of unrestricted competition became apparent and were often accentuated by a rising proportion of fixed to variable costs, and as improved means of communication made contacts among physically separated individuals simpler, firms in the same or similar industrial activities in creased the rate of, and regularized the means of, their interaction. Tangent to one another through the market system, these institutionalized groups developed continuing relationships among themselves (trade associations) in response to increased disturbances stemming from the market. The general attitude was put with remarkable frankness by a trustee of the Cement Institute: "The truth is of course–and there can be no serious, respectable discussion of our case unless this is acknowledged–that ours is an industry above all others that cannot stand free competition, that must systematically restrain competition or be ruined…"¹² The same factors that produced the "trusts" and other aspects of what has been called the "combination movement"–pools, market sharing, and price agreements–led in the American setting to the proliferation of the trade association as a specialized form of interaction.^l3

As in the case of labor organizations, the trade association movement received a vigorous stimulus during the period of American participation in World War I. The responsibility of the government for a suddenly increased measure of economic planning in order to satisfy the needs of war led it to invite and encourage the establishment of associations that could simplify its task of eliciting information and coordinated action. Many of the objectives that had led to the establishment of such groups now became governmental objectives, at least for the duration. The larger crisis of international hostilities thus supplemented the older disturbances that had earlier stimulated the movement. The response was striking: an estimate by the Department of Commerce and Labor in 1913 indicated that there were about 240 regional, national, and international trade associations; this number grew to approximately 2000 in 19l9.14 After a decade of fluctuation in the movement, a similar rapid growth took place, again as in the case of labor organizations, during the N.R.A. period. This national effort, growing out of the dislocations of the depression, made the establishment of some such groups essential and promoted a tendency already present both by making trade associations quasi-governmental agencies and by relaxing the restraints of antitrust legislation. A careful study in 1938 indicated that nearly 23 per cent of the associations then extant had been formed in the years l933-5.15 Many disbanded following the nullification of the National Industrial Recovery Act by the Supreme Court in 1935, but the period produced a permanent increase in number. That a somewhat similar development occurred during World War II is suggested by a 1949 estimate from the Department of Commerce that there were in that year 2,000 national and regional trade associations. This figure indicates an increase of 500 over the number estimated to be in operation in 1938.¹⁶

Various cases illustrate the role of government encouragement in the establishment of trade associations. Thus the National Coal Association was founded in 1917 at the suggestion of the Chairman of the Committee on Coal Production of the Council of National Defense in order to facilitate working relationships during World War I between this highly decentralized basic industry and government war administrators.^l7 A slightly different situation, in which the stimulus for association stemmed from disturbed market conditions, although the trail had been blazed by previous interaction under government tutelage, is illustrated by the Sugar Institute. During World War I the Government had closely controlled the sugar industry, producing, incidentally, financial stability and profit for the latter. Following withdrawal of government support in 1919, a somewhat chaotic situation developed, marked by reduced consumption, underutilization of refining capacity, and sharp competitive practices. The year 1927 was a particularly painful one for the refiners, owing in part to reduced consumption following a "slimness" advertising campaign by a cigarette manufacturer. As a direct consequence the Institute was founded in 1928, the initiative being taken, interestingly enough, by those refiners who had been engaging in "unethical" competitive practices.

It was dissolved following a court decree in 1936 that found that its price-control activities violated the Sherman Act.¹⁸ Another variant government influence in the formation of an association is illustrated in the case of the Association of American Railroads. The relatively weak condition of the railroads during the 1920's, aggravated by the development of competing methods of transportation and by the depression, resulted in the establishment in 1933 of a Federal Coordinator of Transportation, the late Joseph B. Eastman, who undertook a series of comprehensive studies of the situation. One of his reports in 1934 indicated that the only alternative to government ownership or enforced consolidation was "a better organization of the railroad industry which will enable them [the managements] to deal collectively and effectively with matters which concern them all." Recognizing the weaknesses of existing railroad associations, a group, of railroad executives, after much consultation among themselves and with Mr. Eastman, formed the Association of American Railroads in

October, 1934. It was looked to by its members as a means of ending "further talk of government ownership and operation" and "further effort to extend the influence of the government over railroad operations, particularly in the field of management." This membership represented, at least in the formal sense, 99 per cent of the Class I railroad mileage, or about 95 per cent of the total railroad mileage in the United States.¹⁹

Evidence of the reasons for the establishment of trade associations is be found in the major functions that they have usually performed. Although many of the early groups primarily engaged in "innocuous and inconsequential social festivities" that indicate merely an in creased rate of interaction, virtually all of them eventually assumed the function of protecting the trade against the rigors of competition and the market, either directly through devices for controlling prices or indirectly through the application of various trading rules. Given the political strength of antimonopoly views and their embodiment in such statutes as the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, many agreements to these ends necessarily operated in secrecy. For example, in the early years of the century an association of cottonseed crushers, known as the Sons of Plato, met as a secret fraternal order apparently to fix prices and divide the market.21 Although this and other such groups were dissolved through government action, less crude efforts to essentially the same ends have been persistent. As a Temporary National Economic Committee study cautiously states: "Mutual restraints of competition . . . are found among the activities of a large pro portion of national and regional trade associations."²² These received the implied approval of the Supreme Court when in 19ll it enunciated the "rule of reason" as a guide in applying the Sherman Act. This "rule," in fact, so softened the restrictions of the act that it gave great encouragement to the growth of trade associations.²³ It provided freer rein to these groups for carrying on the basic functions of relieving the frictions of competition and promoting stability of the market.

In carrying on these activities, trade associations have inevitably and increasingly asserted claims through or upon the institutions of government. There were ancient local precedents for this type of activity. In 1819 a group of writing paper manufacturers met in Boston to prepare a request to Congress for increased tariff protection.²⁴ In 1922 a National Association of Manufacturers survey of the major trade associations indicated that most of them were actively interested in legislation.²⁵ A more exhaustive study in 1938 revealed that "government relations" in various forms constituted the most important of trade association activities. Of the groups queried, over 80 per cent reported that they engaged in such work, and it was the only field of endeavor that more than half of them rated as of major importance. Moreover, the frequency and importance of these relationships showed only slight variation according to the type of industry covered by the association.²⁶

Recourse to the institutions of government results both from the need of these groups for help in furthering their aims and from their closely related need of protection from the activities of economic and political rivals. The use of government in the former connection is easily illustrated. Federal Trade Commission sponsorship of trade practice conferences has materially assisted associations in controlling certain types of competitive practices. Product standardization through the assistance of the Bureau of Standards has been common, and the use of government statistical services for information on the industries represented in these associations and on competing industries has been of general importance. Promotion of legislation consistent with the interests of the group has been a prominent activity.

The efforts of trade associations to obtain the aid of various branches of the government against rivals are perhaps more important than their dependence upon government services like those just de scribed. Inevitably, these efforts have helped to increase the number and political activity of trade associations. For, as we have seen, the work of one political interest group, whether a business association or a group representing some other interest in the society–labor unions, for instance–results in a wavelike development of interest group activity; other groups are created to present different claims and to push opposing policies, and, in turn, still other groups grow up in response to these, and so on. The result, in part, of the proliferation and increased political activity of trade associations and other political interest groups concerned with economic policy has been what is often called "the unparalleled growth of Federal legislation affecting business in recent years,"²⁷ a growth that has, in its turn, stimulated the development of even more trade associations into political interest groups. Herring, in fact, states that the major reason for the concern of these trade associations with government action has been, not the promotion of their own interests per se, but the defense of their interests, both by fostering legislation or regulation to control the activities of their rivals and by fighting legislation or regulation that operates to the disadvantage of their members.28 As changes and disturbances in economic relations have become more severe, trade associations have undertaken, for instance, the kind of action exemplified in the promotion of resale price maintenance legislation by the National Association of Retail Druggists in opposition to the chain stores. For similar reasons such action has also been promoted to an increasing degree by labor groups, farm groups, and others.

An interesting illustration of more purely defensive tactics is pro vided by the Association of Life Insurance Presidents, the principal trade association in this business. It was founded in 1906, and the major impetus for its organization was a barrage of restrictive legislation by the State governments following an investigation in New York in l905, the so-called Armstrong investigation. As the association's manager and general counsel put it in 1939, its function was in large measure "to take care of the legislative matters which were flooding the country in the various legislatures." Its activities have been largely defensive; proposed bills examined by the staff, for example, are classified in three ways: those "quite objectionable," those which might "become objectionable" through amendment, and other "obviously of no interest."²⁹ The United States Brewers Association among others, was also created primarily to defend its members against government action. Within four months of the inclusion by Congress of a dollar-per-barrel tax on beer in the revenue legislation of 1862, this trade association was formed.³⁰ The privileged position of some business groups, particularly those with the resources of large-scale enterprise, has under these circumstances forced upon the trade association, along with other types of business group, the function of defending the economic status quo with as little modification as possible.

Elaboration of these propositions may more appropriately be reserved for later chapters. The point to emphasize here is that trade Associations are organized for reasons that necessarily lead to political activity. For both the associations and their concern with government action are a natural outgrowth of the circumstances attending the establishment of interest groups in the area of economic institutions.

Essentially the same patterns of origin and development seen in the case of the trade associations are shown by the major national federations of such groups–the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States.^3l The former of these, one of the most interesting political interest groups in the United States, is not strictly speaking a federation except in one of its subsidiary forms. Its central organization has a membership of individual firms all over the nation. The N.A.M. emerged out of the disturbed conditions of the panic of 1893. At a meeting in Cincinnati in January, 1895, at which Governor William McKinley was guest of honor, the organization was formed. Its entire program then and for the next eight years was concerned with the promotion of American commerce, particularly international trade. During these years the organization remained relatively small and unimportant.

The N.A.M. did not become a particularly significant group until it also became involved in labor questions in 1903. This change in emphasis and the subsequent growth of the organization almost justify the assertion that l903 marked the beginning of a new association. The point is illustrated by income figures: In 1896, the first full year the N.A.M.'s operation, revenues amounted to about $30,000 and they did not go much above that level until the shift; in 1904 and subsequent years, however, the association's income was in excess of $150,000.³² If one examines such data as the following on the increase in trade union and A.F. of L. membership between 1897 and 1904, a major reason for the change in emphasis in the N.A.M. program will be apparent.³³ The average annual increase in both A.F. of L. and total trade union membership between 1897, when the movement shook off the effects of the depression, and 1904 was over 25 per cent. In some years–such as 1903, significantly enough–it was in the neighborhood of 40 per cent. The total A.F. of L. and independent union membership of more than two million in 1904 represented an increase in excess of 360 per cent over 1897. The increase involved as of the total membership grew from 60 per cent in 1897 to 80 per cent in 1904. Accompanying these changes, as has been suggested earlier was a strengthening of controls within the national and international unions, a greater subordination of the locals, and vigorous demands for the eight-hour day, higher pay, and the closed shop.

Although it is no doubt incorrect to say that union organization has always preceded association on the other side of the employment relation-employers' groups have tended to form as a result of various circumstances making united action on labor policy desirable³⁴- is nevertheless true that increased strength of workers groups has been one of the circumstances producing such employers associations. The reasons will be apparent if one refers to the basic functions performed by associations in stabilizing relations between tangent groups.

At any event, beginning in 1900 a number of local and State-wide associations of employers developed and carried on vigorous drives for the open shop, which was in a sense a symbol for insistence upon the unrestricted discretion of employers in setting the conditions of work in their plants. General leadership of this movement on a national scale was assumed by the National Association of Manufacturers at its 1903 convention, although national action by a 51 group had been taken in 1901, when the National Metal Trades Association shifted to a strong antiunion policy.³⁵

Inevitably the N.A.M. was from the beginning closely concerned with government action. Its continuing concern with the tariff and other trade-promotion policies necessitated such activity, and the new emphasis upon labor relations, particularly following the politic reorientation of the A.F. of L. discussed above, increased the N.A.M.'s involvement in government. The federated aspect of the N.A.M. was in part an outgrowth of this preoccupation with political activity. Although its primary membership included only individual firms, to facilitate its activities in labor relations it set up a series of satellite, though nominally independent, groups made up of trade associations concerned with labor matters. The first of these, the Citizens' Industrial Association of America, was formed in 1903 on base of local employers' groups. It was succeeded in 1907 by the national Council of Industrial Defense (later called the National Industrial Council), which included national groups as well, in the hope that the more inclusive organization would produce better protection against a constantly increasing demand for . . . legislation" on the part of labor unions.³⁶ This political activity, paralleled by various state organizations,³⁷ was so direct as to involve unpublished participation in election campaigns prior to 19l3. Publicity on these zealous performances was a by-product of a series of congressional investigations initiated in 1913 by a statement from President Wilson criticizing lobbying activities in opposition to the Underwood tariff that year.³⁸ Although some of these methods have perforce fallen into the discard, the organization has not deviated from its early interest in the processes of government.

The N.A.M. continued to expand during the second decade of the century, fluctuating somewhat with shifts in the business cycle and the aggressiveness of labor unions. During the post-World War I decade, however, the organization did not grow appreciably. After 1926 its financial position declined, and its memberships soon followed. By 1933 the number of members had dropped about 75 per cent from peak of 5350 established in l922.³⁹ The reasons for this shift are of particular interest. In the first place, active membership-and presumably the entire roll, though this cannot be ascertained, since the organization does not release membership lists even to those who pay dues-was limited almost entirely to relatively small firms. The officials represented only those firms presumably not large enough alone to oppose the union organizations as were then constituted. For the big, mass-production industries, especially those that developed after World War I, were, as we have beyond the grasp of organized labor in the 1920's. Neither the possibility that their workers would become organized nor the threat of labor activity through legislation was enough to bring these corporations into an organization like the N.A.M. Consequently, when the depression hit in l929 and a number of the small firm members withdrew for reasons of economy the association suffered acutely. This situation was dramatically altered after 1933. With the upturn labor union membership and the organization after 1935 of the mass-production workers along industrial lines, and with the passage of national legislation favorable to labor consequent upon a shifting in the relative influence of major political groups, the association began again to grow. The new recruits, moreover, included increasing numbers of large corporations in automobile and electrical goods manufacture, chemical products, and similar industries. The "independence" that these firms had easily maintained in the 1920'5 had been sufficiently threatened to bring them into the fold, and they led in building the membership, especially after passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, up to a claimed sixteen thousand in 1948.⁴⁰ The entire association was reorganized in 1933, and since then it has been led primarily by representatives of "big business. Its political activities, moreover, have shown no diminution, but rather a considerable increase.

The second of the major national federations, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, resembles the trade association more than does the N.A.M., since, with exceptions to be mentioned later, its formal structure is built upon trade associations and State and local chambers of commerce. The circumstances surrounding the formation of the Chamber in 1912 will be sufficiently clear from what has gone before, and a brief review of the interrelated influences to suffice. The increasingly insistent assertion of interests in opposition to those of many business groups, especially the larger ones, symbolized in the passage of the Sherman Act of 1890 and the fulminations of Theodore Roosevelt, was one influence. The threat implied by the growth and increased political activity of organized labor was a second and closely related influence. Finally, those instabilities of the market that produced the trade associations and the State and local chambers of commerce invited interaction among the economic groups so organized. As these problems increasingly involved nation-wide action and as other groups effectively pressed their demands through the national Government, there emerged both aggressive and defensive reasons for a federation of trade groups based on interests broader than those stemming from the employment relation.^4l

The chamber was not the first attempt at a response of this sort. The National Board of Trade, to whose functions the chamber succeeded, had been established in 1868. Those who prepared its constitution had revealed the nature of the precipitating disturbances when they included the following among the objectives of an organization of commercial associations: "to secure unity and harmony of action in reference to commercial usages, customs, and laws; and especially . . . to secure the proper consideration of questions pertaining to the financial, commercial, and industrial interests of the country ...."⁴² Inadequacies in its organization, probably including its failure to affiliate trade associations as well as chambers of commerce, led to its replacement by the chamber. It is frequently asserted that the Chamber of Commerce was founded as a result of the encouragement of the Government and that it was sponsored by the N.A.M.⁴³ Such accounts say both too much and too little, because so narrow a set of sources is insufficient to account for an association of the chamber's scope. As in most major inventive developments, social as well as technological, the stimulating circumstances were so general as to produce initiating actions from a number of sources. Prior to 1912 several preliminary efforts had been made by such organizations as the Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Chicago Association of Commerce either to reorganize the National Board of Trade into a more representative body or to supplant it. Among the obstacles to these efforts was the problem of securing appropriate sponsorship. Childs indicates that this problem was solved by a decision to have an organizing meeting called by the President of the United States.⁴⁴ Thus the Government's role was a reflection of efforts on the part of a small, initiating group. Persuasion of the President undoubtedly was made easier by his previously expressed desire for an organization that could regularize the relations between the Government and business associations in the field of foreign commerce. In his message to Congress on the subject of foreign affairs, delivered on December 7, 19ll, President Taft observed:

At a preliminary meeting in the Department of Commerce and Labor in February, 1912, the National Association of Manufacuturers was represented, along with the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, the Southern Commercial Congress, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and the District of Columbia Board of Commerce. The meeting resulted in issuance by the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of an invitation to the organizing meeting in April, attended by about seven hundred delegates. The entire course of this development not only illustrates the circumstances under which such groups emerge but indicates as well the involvement of the association, from its inception, with governmental affairs. Membership in the chamber is of two general kinds: first, organization members, such as state and local chambers of commerce and trade associations; second, individual and associate members (differentiated on the basis of the amount of dues paid), that is, persons or firms who are also members of an organization that belongs to the chamber. The group was organized at an appropriate moment, for, as in the case of the trade associations, the World War I period gave a considerable boost to its membership. Because the number of organization members has generally fluctuated with the fortunes of the business cycle and these members have thus provided an unreliable financial base, the chamber has from the beginning exerted great effort in build up the other category of membership. Since this policy inevitably means concentration upon obtaining the membership of those best able to pay individual as well as organization dues, it has certain implications for the operations of the chamber. These will be examined at a later point. Despite the sources of its financial strength and the variations in the number of its affiliates, the chamber can make formal claim to representing a considerable proportion of the commercial organizations of the country.⁴⁰

Turning to associations among farmers, we are confronted with a bewildering array of interdependent movements, an array fully as complicated as that presented by the trade unions and trade associations. The latter developed more or less simultaneously in response to similar conditions and may be reliably discussed collectively, but the history of farm organizations is rather that of a succession of movements of national scope. It is true, of course, that agricultural associations organized around common interests in particular commodities–fruits, vegetables, peanuts, milk, cotton, and the like–are virtually indistinguishable from trade associations. Some of these, such as the National Council of Farmer Co-operatives, the National Co-operative Milk Producers' Federation, and the National Beet Growers Association, either function much like trade associations or are closely affiliated with such business groups.⁴⁷ The best over-all picture of farm associations, however, can be drawn from the successive development of three national organizations that are still operating, the National Grange Order of the Patrons of Husbandry, the Farmers' Educational and Co-operative Union, and the American Farm Bureau Federation. All three emerged out of the increased interactions of farmers in response to intense disturbances of their accustomed behavior. All three sooner or later had recourse to the institutions of government as a major means of establishing the desired degree of stability in both intergroup and intragroup relations.

Although agricultural societies are of ancient vintage in the United States and although agricultural interests, especially in the early years of the Republic, have consistently been important in party politics, no differentiated national organization of farmers emerged until after the Civil War. The appearance of such associations at that time is further evidence of the way in which the same general set of rapid changes in traditional relationships may produce proliferation in the forms of group life. Genuine associations of farmers, as distinct from the rather genteel and literary agricultural societies that developed after the Revolution, came with the spread of commercial farming in the North and West after the Civil War. The accompanying specialization exposed farmers to the unpredictable insecurities stemming from changes in the market, accentuated by the discriminatory practices of the railroads and by various speculative activities. By the 1870's the farmers of both East and West found themselves dependent upon the vagaries of marketing institutions, transportation facilities, and prices.48 It is no accident that the militancy of farmers associations has generally varied inversely with the prosperity of agriculture.

The Grange, as it is usually known, was started in 1867 by seven men, six of whom were government employees, as an educational society for farmers on the pattern of the Masonic order. Although looked on with suspicion by farmers in its early years, it experienced rapid growth during the agricultural difficulties of the 1870's, particularly after the panic of 1873, which had affected farmers in the West as early as 1870. Between 1873 and late 1874 the number of local Granges increased in number from about three thousand to over twenty thousand, paralleling an increase in mortgage foreclosures. At one time, it is reported, Indiana had an average of two Granges for each township in the State.49 The Grange in its constitution formally eschewed political activity, but in many States the pressure for action was so strong that these groups participated, under another name, in the various farmers' political parties of thc middle 1870's. In any case, by 1876 the Grange had restricted the meaning of the term "political" to purely electoral and partisan activity, which it continued formally to avoid. It engaged in other governmental activities, as is indicated by its setting up in 1876 a detailed plan for securing legislation favorable to farmers. It has participated in the governmental process in similar fashion ever since. The Grange reached the peak of its strength of nearly 900,000 in 1875, from which point it declined to a low of 100,000 by the turn of the century. In recent years it has built up to a level of about 800,000. Although nominally national in scope, its principal strength is New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio,50 a concentration that may help to explain the fact that the organization at present assumes a policy position far different from that of its radical youth.

The second of these farm organizations in point of age and the third in size at the present time is the Farmers' Union. It was founded in Texas in 1902 among low-income farmers, a segment of the farm population from which it has drawn a considerable portion of its membership ever since, a fact that has permitted it almost alone among farm organizations to co-operate politically with organized labor. The Union was aimed at the same kind of stability sought by its predecessors. Among the purposes enunciated by its constitution are the following: "To discourage the credit mortgage system. To eliminate gambling in farm products. To secure and maintain profitable and uniform prices for cotton, grain, livestock, and other products of the farm."51 The Union early emphasized co-operative buying and selling, and many of its enterprises, such as the Farmers' Union Grain Terminal Association, have been conspicuously successful. By 1914 the Union had expanded out of the South into the Middle West and North West, with units in twenty-two States. Although it is organized in about three quarters of the States, its principal strength has been concentrated in the Great Plains from the Dakotas south, where frequent deficiency of rainfall has made farming peculiarly hazardous. In no small measure this concentration may account for the Union's consistently "radical" position on most issues since its inception.52 By 1920 the Union found that the promotion of co-operatives was an insufficient means of achieving the stability its members sought, and it turned to the promotion of Federal legislation favorable to its program. These efforts were originally directed primarily at securing a government guarantee of the farmer's "cost of production." The Union has been much concerned also with the problems of tenancy and subsistence farming, in which connection it was the sole champion among national farm organizations of the early program of the Farm Security Administration. In the early 1930'5 several of the State Farmers' Unions, notably in Iowa, sponsored the direct-action Farmers' Holiday Organization, which attempted to strike against low farm prices by forcibly preventing products such as milk from reaching the market. During the early 1920's, probably as a consequence of its political orientation, the Farmers' Union membership reached a peak of over one million. It has declined since then and by now probably includes approximately 450,000 families.52

The third of the national farm associations, the American Farm Bureau Federation, is on all counts the largest and most important. It has had an extraordinarily curious history, in large part because of its close relation to government from its beginnings. Although it conforms to the general pattern of association development, unlike those of other such movements its immediate origins apparently were in the disturbances associated with a sharp deterioration of agricultural markets. They lay rather in the obstacles to increased farm production and efforts to promote more effective control of plant diseases. In l903 the Department of Agriculture embarked on a demonstration project in Texas designed to teach farmers that cotton could be grown profitably despite the boll weevil, whose ravages had demoralized both farm and business groups in the South. Beginning in 1906 in the South, counties and States began appropriating funds for the support of "demonstrators," or, as they later were known, county agents. In 19l4 this development was recognized and regularized nationally by the passage of the Smith-Lever Act establishing a system of grants-in-aid to the State colleges of agriculture in support of a program of extension education in improved farming methods. With this encouragement the county agent system spread rapidly, covering approximately one third of the nation's counties by the beginning of 1915.54

Around these county agents there had developed, prior to the inauguration of the national program, a series of local organizations designed both to provide additional funds for the work and to facilitate contacts with the local farmers. On occasion these were sponsored by mail-order houses, railroads, and chambers of commerce as well as by local farm groups. The Smith-Lever Act specifically recognized these groups as a proper source of a portion of the State matching funds necessary to secure the maximum Federal grant. In setting the conditions under which extension work could be organized in a county, most State legislatures required the establishment of an organized group of farmers as a co-operating body. Some of these specified that such groups should be known as a farm bureau. By 19l6 these local groups were generally called county farm bureaus.

The entire movement received a strong stimulus during World War I in the form of additional Federal funds and encouragement for the formation of farm bureaus in order to maximize agricultural production. The exigencies of the war also provided the occasion for rapid federation of the county bureaus, first at the State level and then nationally.66 With the aid of officials of the United States Department of Agriculture, the American Farm Bureau Federation was launched in 1919-20. Thus when the agricultural boom broke sharply in the fall of 1920, the new federation was a ready vehicle through which farmers might attempt to restore a measure of stability. In no small measure its advantage lay in the established governmental relationships involved in its founding. In many States the county bureaus had a semiofficial status, which, incidentally, they have maintained in a number of instances despite the protests of competing farm groups. In recent years there have been seven States that still require a county farm bureau as a local sponsoring body, although in two of these, Maine and Rhode Island, the farm bureau organization is unaffiliated with the American Farm Bureau Federation. Other State laws require a local sponsoring organization but do not name any specific one. Among the latter are Illinois and Iowa, where formal relationships between the Farm Bureau and the extension services have existed from the beginning; in recent years from one fifth to one third of the funds expended for extension work in these States has come from Farm Bureau contributions. In addition to these two, there are only four States in which nongovernmental contributions to extension work have been in significant amounts in recent years: Connecticut, New York, Kansas, and Missouri. In many others, however, the Farm Bureau has retained the advantages of a semiofficial status even after formal connections with the State and county governments were severed. As a consequence, in part, of these developments, the emphasis in the Farm Bureau program shifted from education to governmental activities, particularly the promotion of favorable legislation, a preoccupation that it has retained ever since. This shift was dramatically symbolized by the formation and operation of the first "farm bloc" in the 67th Congress (1920-22), in which the Farm Bureau was a major factor.56

Thus each of the major farm organizations has found recourse to the institutions of government a natural outgrowth of its formation, the more so as the overrepresentation of rural areas in both State and national legislatures has given such interests a special bargaining advantage.

Although the Federation is organized in more than three fourths of the States, the great majority of its members are in the Corn Belt, and the organization tends to reflect the interests of its membership in that section. It has fluctuated somewhat in size, declining rather consistently during the lean years of the 1920's and early 1930's from the high of nearly half a million to which it had climbed in 1921. After 1933 it was able to utilize the agricultural adjustment legislation and the later programs in World War II, as its constituent groups had those of 1917-l9, to build its numbers up to one a one-quarter million families, according to recent claims.

Before turning to other types of association it may be appropriate to note that the Federal agricultural extension work mentioned in connection with the Farm Bureau, as well as a number of similar farm programs, has given rise to a whole series of interest groups aside from those of active farmers. A prominent example is the Association of Land-Grant Colleges and Universities, which is made up of the principal officials of the educational institutions benefiting from the series of Federal statutes, beginning with the Morrill Act of 1862 granting aid to agricultural research and education. Interaction among such officials as a result of similar relations with the national government led to the establishment of the association in 1887 as a means of regularizing their tangent relations. Beginning with the second Morrill Act of l890, the association has undertaken the active promotion of favorable legislative and administrative policies. It has worked closely with the Farm Bureau, especially on matters affecting the extension services, and with other such groups. Some indication of the intimacy of the connection between the association and the Department of Agriculture is provided by the large number of department of officials who have served as its officers or as administrators of land-grant colleges. Similar in origin, and in a sense tributary to the Association of Land-Grant Colleges, is the National Association of County Agricultural Agents, formed in 1915, which was one of the groups instrumental in the formation of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Such groups have almost invariably developed following the passage of grant-in-aid legislation by the Federal government.

These major occupational groups show the expected patterns of development and readily come to mind as examples, since their origins and history are relatively well documented. Although the evidence is less complete on such groups as the organized professions, it points to the same sort of pattern, with differences only in various particulars of largely minor importance. In the case of the ancient and honorable professions of medicine and the law, of course, the picture is complicated by the fact that these go back to an early and strong guild organization whose traditions have been carried forward through the centuries. These occupations, moreover, have in all ages been close to the institutions of government in the sense that almost invariably they have been subject to a considerable measure of regulation to insure effective and scrupulous discharge of their public trust. The number and importance of the group interests affected by the fashion in which these professional functions are performed have been sufficient to force their regulation by government from an early date. Such regulation usually, if not invariably, has been established at the instance of subgroups in the profession who have utilized the powers of government to chastise their wayward bethren [sic] or to prevent those deemed unqualified from gaining access to the professional ranks.

In the United States the oldest continuing groups of this sort are the medical associations. Emerging in the late eighteenth century, they formalized tangent relations dependent in part upon the seedling growth of hospitals and medical schools, and their major concern was with the closely related matters of the quality of professional training and licensing. Typical of these is the Medical Society of the State of New York, established by a law of 1806 that sanctioned the establishment of county societies to examine and license aspiring practitioners and that approved their federation into a State society. Among the primary purposes of this society was the improvement of medical practice through passage of State legislation contributing to that end.58

The development of a national organization did not occur until the mid-nineteenth century, when, as in the case of so many national groups, the improved means of transportation and communication permitted a great frequency of contact. Starting as an annual meeting of doctors, the American Medical Association did not achieve a thoroughgoing formal organization until 1901. Among the reasons for this delay undoubtedly is the fact, stemming from the federal character of our political institutions, that the governmental means of carrying out the objectives of professional groups were in the hands of the State legislatures rather than in the domain of the national Government. Despite such handicaps, the American Medical Association included in its membership by 1912 approximately half the doctors in the United States, which proportion has now risen to something over two-thirds, a remarkably complete coverage for any widespread group.59 Moreover, with the increase in Federal appropriations for public health purposes since World War I and with the efforts of various groups largely made up of laymen to use the powers of the national government to foster changes in the organization and financing of medical practice through some form of social insurance, the A. M. A. has become increasingly active in trying to influence national governmental policy.

The legal profession inherited from its English origins a tradition of organization. Despite this fact there were few important associations of lawyers in America until after the Civil War. In the 1870’s such groups began to develop, at first locally and then on a State basis. Typical of the latter is the New York State Bar Association, the first such organization to be formed. Set up in 1876, it was primarily concerned, like the medical societies, with professional standards, though it has also become involved in the organization of the judiciary and other matters closely affecting legal practice. Other State groups were formed rapidly, and by 1888 bar associations existed in three fourths of the States. The American Bar Association was set in operation in 1878 by a group of seventy-three men among whose first official acts, it is significant to note, was the establishment of a committee on legal education and admission to the bar.60 Although efforts were made as early as 1887 to make the national association a federated organization representative of the entire American bar, these have never been entirely successful. An approximation to such an arrangement was achieved in 1936, but the relations between the bar associations at the local, State, and national levels are still slight. Moreover, the American Bar Association has never numbered among its members more than one fifth of the country’s lawyers, although the coverage of many of the State and local groups I smore nearly complete.61

One may well ask a number of questions concerning the peculiarities of lawyers’ associations. Why did a national organization emerge so late? Why has it remained relatively weak in its leadership of the State and local groups? Why has the American Bar Association included in its membership so small a segment of the country’s lawyers? Not all these questions are immediately answerable, but suggestions concerning some of them will illuminate our discussion of the origins of associations and their orientation toward government.

Despite the predominant role that members of the bar have played in the political affairs of the country since the late eighteenth century, it is apparent that their continuing experiences as lawyers have not been such as to produce interests strong enough to unify them in an effective and inclusive group. As Bryce observed a half century ago, legal practice in America was for long "virtually an open profession like stockbroking or engineering" and consequently has not been marked by "a distinctive character and corporate feeling."62 This fact may be noted without attempting at this point to explain it.

Probably the delay in establishing a national lawyers’ organization is first of all in part a result of the fact that, as in the case of medicine, the matters of training and admission to the profession are the concern of the State governments rather than the national government. Secondly, disturbances of the accustomed habits of the legal profession as such, in the form of legislative efforts to modify common-law rules and to introduce through expert commissions alternatives to the traditional judicial means of settling disputes, are largely a product of the rapid changes in American society since the Civil War. Moreover, these were first felt in the States and not until comparatively recently at the Federal level. Bryce in the 1880's felt it proper to characterize the legislative product of Congress as "scanty," though he noted "an increasing tendency to invoke congressional legislation" in fields in which State action was proving inadequate.63 The great expansion in the area of affairs covered by congressional consideration, however, dates from the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Such changes affected the practice of law not only directly but also indirectly through the widened jurisdiction and increased work load of the Federal courts.64

Although these disturbances were enough to stimulate and sustain a small national bar association, their effect was by no means uniform. A large proportion of most practices remained at the State and local level. Moreover, as the road to success in the law increasingly lay in the direction of specialized corporation practice, those men concerned about changes in the legal profession were likely also to be those primarily engaged in defending large economic groups from attack through legislative and judicial channels. Thus the American Bar Association's self-appointed role as "trustees and guardians of American institutions" was likely to involve the inextricable mixture of these substantive matters with those of a procedural or ethical nature. For those men who have no such practices and for those large numbers for whom the law provides only the most modest means of livelihood, such trusteeship activites [sic] are likely to hold no interest. The same situation apparently prevails frequently in the State associations, judging from occasional suggestions that membership is likely to increase only with efforts by the legal profession to improve the economic position of a large proportion of its members.65 Thus the centrifugal effects of specialized practice and wide income differentials have placed limits on the effectiveness with which bar associations stabilize the relationships of their potential membership and upon the completeness of association among lawyers. However, limited membership has not prevented the organized segments from becoming deeply involved in the processes of government.

One might go through an almost interminable list of associations in the recognized and self-styled professions further to illustrate the fundamental pattern. People with similar skills that produce similar interests may at any time become an active group. Their interaction is increased in frequency as a consequence of sufficiently prolonged and intense disturbances: changes in techniques, shifts or threatened shifts in economic status, altered relationships or the probability of such alteration resulting from the formation or expansion of other groups, and the like. Development of organized associations follows in order to regularize such interaction and to facilitate stabilization of the group's internal and external relations. In the process of attempting to establish and protect an equilibrium of this sort, the association usually, if not invariably, resorts to the institutions of government. Such resort may be close and continuing or peripheral and intermittent. Teachers, especially public school teachers, are an obvious instance of a group who are a segment of the total government institution, but who have found themselves so poorly articulated with the central decision-making parts of the institution that they have formed associations to compensate for this situation.66 In recent years, particularly, with the disturbances and maladjustments following upon rapid changes in the business cycle, people engaged in such occupations have , found the institutions of government–through licensing agencies and statutory training requirements–a primary means of strengthening the occupation by limiting the number of those who enter it and of controlling unfair or destructive practices invited by economic insecurity and frustration. The statute books of almost any State include provisions for licensing not only the professions already discussed but also public accountants, librarians, nurses, barbers, chiropodists, dentists, embalmers, pharmacists, optometrists, veterinarians, beauty-shop operators, real-estate agents, cleaners and dyers, land surveyors, and many others. McKean reports that in one session of the New Jersey legislature there were efforts to set up licensing laws for bait-fishing boats, beauty shops, chain stores, florists, insurance adjusters, photographers, master painters, and cleaners and dyers. The last-named bill was passed, providing for a board of three members, of which one was to be the secretary of the New Jersey Dyers and Cleaners Association.67

It would be highly misleading if this examination of the origins of representative associations were to include only those of an economic or occupational character. It is true that associations have formed with startling rapidity in the past eighty years upon the tangent relations between institutionalized economic groups. As the preceding pages indicate, the disturbances of established patterns of behavior in that area have been intense and continuing. The very rate at which such associations have been formed testifies to the cleavages and instability concentrated in the economic groups of the society, as well as to the likelihood that for an extended period the struggle for a more stable equilibrium in economic relationships will be a major focus of attention.

Economic groups, however, are not isolated, discrete phenomena, though we may treat them as such for convenience in analysis. Changes directly affecting them will also influence interactions, throughout the social web, as scientific discoveries concerning the nature of matter and energy may affect not only relationships involved in the production of energy from conventional sources but also, and equally, the patterns of interaction in religious groups and even in college faculties. Other types of disturbances, moreover, may have their primary focus in other institutionalized groups, only secondarily or insignificantly affecting economic groups. The processes of group politics are not an aspect of economic determinism. As Herring points out in his study of Congress, a large number of noneconomic, nonoccupational groups "have their spokesmen who often equal and sometimes exceed in power the agents of vocations and industries."68

As an example of this sort one readily thinks of one of the most powerful associations in recent American history, the Anti-Saloon League, whose activities were a major factor in the country's politics for two decades. The temperance "movement" in the United States did not begin, of course, with this league. The Prohibition Party; nominated its first candidate for president in 1872, two years before the kernel unit of the league was formed. The growth and influence of the latter, however, particularly in contrast to other groups in the temperance movement, reflected in part the strength of the institutionalized groups around whose tangent relations the league was formed. These were primarily the Protestant churches. (The Catholic Church never had a very strong role in the league, though it, as well as other religious groups, has been a source of other associations that have participated in governmental activity.) The circumstances from which the league emerged, moreover, fit the familiar patterns, as did its later activities. The Oberlin (Ohio) Temperance Alliance, out of which the league grew, was formed in 1874 "to deal with a crisis in the local temperance situation." A State-wide organization was set up in 1893, and two years later a number of such groups were merged into the Anti-Saloon League of America, which grew steadily. From the beginning the strategy of the "Ohio idea" was not to secure abstinence pledges from individuals, but to operate through political institutions toward the objective of abolishing all traffic in liquor. It was a political interest group from the start.69

Associations of veterans are of a similar sort, the prime contemporary example being the American Legion. Formed at the close of World War I, the Legion was based on tangent relations stemming from service in the armed forces. The small group of men who founded it, themselves concerned about "radicalism" in the United States, might have remained small but for the fact that the chaotic conditions under which the soldiers were demobilized made it difficult for many of them to find jobs and increased the strains inevitably involved in a readjustment to civilian life. Consequently, the association spread with remarkable rapidity. After World War II it took a new lease on life from the similar, though less acute, circumstances of the new veterans, this time aided by its resources as a going organization. Its large membership, reported as over three million, makes it by all odds the most important association of veterans.

Almost from its inception, of course, the Legion has operated as a political interest group. Those familiar with these operations may be astonished to learn that its constitution provides that the Legion "shall be absolutely non-political." Whatever may be said of the rationalization necessary to reconcile this limitation with the Legion's performance, it should be obvious that the circumstances of its growth made it inevitable that the Legion, like many other associations, should work in part through the institutions of government in order to per form its functions. The financial insecurity of many of its members made Legion sponsorship of government financial aid, first in the form of increased pensions for disabled veterans and finally as a bonus for all veterans, unavoidable. Similar conditions also explain its activity in support of medical care legislation, preference for veterans in government employment, and the like. Regardless of the self-denying phrases in its formal charter, the dynamics of the Legion's existence as an association forced it to become a political interest group.70

Women’s associations should also be mentioned in this set of groups, since they are both influential and numerous. Herring noted at the time of his study of Congress that women's organizations were second in number only to trade associations.7l These groups, whose number has certainly not declined, are of three general types. First, there are the women's occupational groups, such as the nurses home economists, policewomen, and physicians. This category should include also such generalized organizations as the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs. These are so similar in origin to the equivalent men's or mixed groups that they need not be examined separately.

The second type is the woman's auxiliary to an organization of men, of which examples are the American Legion Auxiliary, the Associated Women of the American Farm Bureau Federation, and the auxiliaries of the various fraternal orders. These groups, which need not be discussed in detail, since their political activity and influence are largely supplementary to those of the male organizations, are of interest primarily owing to the circumstances of their origin. When a men s association is formed, it often has the effect, particularly for its more active members, of reducing the husbands' participation in the family group. In order to compensate for the resulting disturbance the wives and mothers of the members establish tangent relations with one another that may be formalized eventually in an association which is auxiliary in this sense to the men's association. Thus there was discussion of the desirability of setting up such an auxiliary very soon after the formation of the American Farm Bureau Federation, further stimulated in this case by the development of home demonstration work through the extension services.72 Interestingly enough, these auxiliary associations usually draw most of their active membership from among middle-aged women whose children are grown, who are childless, or who are single. That is, they draw upon women whose family responsibilities are not sufficiently heavy to provide compensation for reduced interaction with the principal male member of the family. Basic to these groups, moreover, are the fundamental conditions that have fostered the development of women's associations of all sorts.73

These fundamental conditions are well illustrated in the third type of women's association, the nonoccupational, nonauxiliary group or women only. These are of such widely varying types–ranging from local bridge and reading clubs to national charitable, educational and political societies–that it is perhaps hazardous to group them under the same heading. All, however, have their source in the changes in family functions within the past three generations. Under modern conditions, particularly in urban areas, the family no longer operates as an economic unit to the degree that once was the case. Furthermore, the time consumed in the rearing of children has been considerably reduced by the full establishment of public schools. At the same time a series of labor-saving devices for the housekeeper have lightened the tasks of the middle-class housewife. These changes have reduced the need for patriarchal dominance, have made it inevitable that women of all income classes could engage in full- or part-time activities outside the home, have permitted the development of educational facilities for women fully equal to those of men, and have made it possible for unmarried women to live and work apart from their families without losing status. Such changes lie at the base of a wide number of legal and political reforms, such as the enactment of woman s suffrage. They have also stimulated the development of associations among women similarly affected by the changed circumstances.

Although a large proportion of these groups are purely sociable in character, an impressive number have engaged in community activities necessitating recourse to government action. Obviously, the various movements for removing the legal disabilities of women illustrate these activities; to an equal degree so do the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the League of Women Voters of the United States, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom,74 and many others. The League of Women Voters may be taken as an illustration. Formed in 1920, it was the offspring of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which was dissolved following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment; it included originally the same group of women. Its new objectives were primarily those involved in the political education of the newly enfranchised voters. These purely educational activities, however, have necessarily included efforts of the league to influence public policy as a political interest group. As we shall have frequent occasion to note, a simple increase in knowledge often has the effect of defining and activating an interest group. In this case the transition was easier because of the habits of political activity established in the struggle for the franchise. The activities of the league have covered a wide range, including such dissimilar policies as civil service reform and international organization for world peace. Although it has never become a very large organization or succeeded in appreciably broadening the class base of its membership to include other than middle-class women, its influence through its educational efforts often is wider than these limitations would suggest.75

Finally, among these nonoccupational associations, from which we have selected examples more or less at random, should be included those made up primarily of racial and national minorities. For the many immigrant peoples who have come to American shores, association has been inevitable, particularly for those whose acceptance into the society has been handicapped by their lack of education and their low economic status, and by language differences. Disturbances to their equilibrium have come not only from the fact of migration into a strange country and from the hostility of their reception but as well from such shattering changes in accustomed patterns of behavior as were experienced by most Italians in their sudden shift from an agricultural existence in one country to an urban life in another. To compensate for these shifts by perpetuating as many as possible d the familiar patterns of interaction and to offset or mitigate the effects of nonacceptance by the remainder of the community, both local and national associations have developed. In the latter connection, particularly, these associations of national minorities have become involved in political activities, since through such channels their members have found a means of making a place for themselves in the institutions of the dominant segment of the society, of securing opportunities for advancement in status, and of gaining a measure of stability. That such groups have sometimes carried on activities that other groups in the community have regarded as improper or illegal is merely symptomatic of the incomplete articulation of the patterns of these groups with those of the "accepted" segments of the population.76

Similar disturbances of equal or greater intensity are a part of the continuing experience of racial minorities, especially the Negro. No good purpose will be served here by attempting to detail any of these, since they have been set forth definitively elsewhere, but it is worth noting that, largely in compensation for the disturbances consequent upon discrimination, there are relatively more "voluntary associations" among Negroes than among whites.77 By no means all of these involve recourse to political institutions, but many of them must; for, as in the case of unassimilated nationality groups, political activity for the Negro, in Myrdal's words, is primarily a means of securing "legal justice–justice in the courts; police protection and protection against the persecution of the police; ability to get administrative jobs through civil service; and a fair share in such public facilities as schools, hospitals, public housing, playgrounds, libraries, sewers and street lights."78

Although, for a variety of reasons that need not be examined here, these efforts of the Negro to obtain justice have largely been confined to local areas, they have also operated to some extent at the natioonal level. An interesting, though perhaps minor, example is the March-on-Washington Committee. This remarkable association, led A. Philip Randolph, the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, emerged in 1941 and became a mass movement among Negroes, particularly in the North. The disturbances leading to its formation were primarily those stemming from the continued discrimination against Negroes in the mushrooming defense activities. In addition there was the vivid memory of the consequences for Negroes of the migrations and rapid shifts in employment that had attended and followed World War I. The March-on-Washington Committee was intended to organize a mass march on the nation's capital to express Negro determination that the continued discrimination, in particular, should be stopped. Although the march never took place, the movement resulted in the establishment by the President in June, 1941, of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice.79 Such dramatic examples are rare, but they illustrate both the originating circumstances of such groups and their efforts at working through the institutions of government.

Throughout this chapter it has been stated repeatedly that at various stages in their development, interest groups have become political. In each instance we have noted that they "inevitably" began to make claims through or upon the institutions of government. Why should this be so? We can observe in fact that such groups do operate in this fashion, but why is it justifiable to say that this was "inevitable?"

In the first place, it will be apparent that such a statement implies some special characteristic of interest groups, especially in their contemporary forms. We have seen that many of these groups, the associations, come into being or are activated as a consequence of disturbances–prolonged or intense or both–in the expected patterns of interaction. The associations function to restore a previous equilibrium or to facilitate the establishment of a new one. To a certain ex tent, depending upon the circumstances, groups can accomplish these goals without recourse to government action–that is, by the successful imposition of claims directly upon another group. An example can be seen in the operations of the early craft unions, which for many years were able to protect their members exclusively by direct claims upon employers. As we have seen, the situation grows somewhat complicated as the sources and effects of the disturbances giving birth to such associations are distributed over wider and wider areas. In response to this development have occurred the amalgamation and federation of local and regional groups into organizations of national and even international scope. In many instances, moreover, the new group still imposes its claims directly without important resort to a mediating institution such as the government.

As our society has become increasingly complex, however, these disturbances have affected not merely the relationships of widely distributed individuals; they have also created a new problem, by placing the means of adjustment beyond the resources of direct action by the groups involved. Thus, for example, disturbances growing out of the market cannot all be settled directly by trade associations or monopolistic economic groups. These groups must supplement direct action by making claims through or upon some mediating institutionalized group whose primary characteristic is its wider powers. In general, of course, the weaker the means of direct action available to an affected group, the more ready has it been to work through such mediating institutions. For example, farm groups have early resorted to political action, in some cases despite an announced intention to eschew political activity. The early years of the Grange are an illustration. The special characteristic of contemporary interest groups that has inevitably" forced them to operate in the political sphere is this: unaided by the wider powers of some more inclusive institutionalized group, they cannot achieve their objectives; interest groups of the association type cannot, without such mediation, perform their basic function, namely, the establishment and maintenance of an equilibrium in the relationships of their members.

But why must this institution be the government? Obviously, a second implication of the statement that the political action of interest groups is inevitable concerns some unique feature of modern government. Why should not interest groups seek the mediation of the church or some such institutionalized group other than government? If we go back far enough, of course, we find that the church has generally performed just this function, though in simpler fashion than government does today. The clergy in the New England colonies of the seventeenth century functioned in much this fashion; an even better example is supplied by the medieval Church. It was the primary mediating device of the medieval period, because it comprehended within its jurisdiction all groups in the society, including the state itself. Moreover, interest groups still attempt to gain the aid of the churches, the press, and similar institutionalized groups. What labor union will not try to secure the support of both the church and the press in a dispute with employers? In some enclaves of our society, indeed, where a single church enjoys the support of all or a major portion of the population–for example, Quebec and certain metropolitan cities of the United States–it is still the principal mediator, exercising its control not only over interest groups but even over local governments.

Herein lies the clue to the universal tendency of interest groups to resort to government action in the present day. Such groups will supplement their own resources by operating upon or through that institutionalized group whose powers are most inclusive in that time and place. With such local exceptions as those just noted, that institution today is government. Governments, since the Renaissance, especially national governments, have become the most inclusive power concentrations in Western society, virtually unrivaled by any others. The reasons for this development are beyond the concern of these pages, but the fact is of pre-eminent importance.

The effects of such reliance upon government are cumulative. Just as the direct and indirect efforts of an interest group may disturb the equilibriums of related groups, so its operations through and upon government are likely to force the related groups also to assert their claims upon governmental institutions in order to achieve some measure of adjustment. For example, as we have noted above, the labor movement was drawn into politics in no small measure because of the use of governmental injunctive powers by employers. Both types o groups then attempted to assert their claims through the government.

Government is not simply a neutral force, however, moved this way and that solely by the relative vigor with which competing organized groups are able to assert themselves. Such an explanation is much too simple- the functions of government cannot be described in such narrow terms without ignoring significant aspects of its operations. Elucidation of this point must be delayed for later chapters. It must be mentioned here, however, in order to guard against the too literal reading of Madison's sage observation in essay number l0 of The Federalist: "The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation...."

The major lines of discussion in this chapter may be drawn together in summary form. We have noted that any groups, including institutionalized groups, may function as political interest groups. At t s same time, the increasing complexity of our society and the rapidity with which changes have occurred-creating greater intensity as well as frequency of disturbances–have made the association the–most characteristic and pervasive sort of political interest group.

These associations have sprung from disruption of the established patterns of behavior, but these disturbances show wide variety. For example, labor unions and their federations have been the product of the increasing division of labor within industry, the growing differentiation between employer and worker, and the consequent major changes in the status and rewards of both workers and managers. These disturbances have been aggravated by rapid developments in transportation and communication and by the shifts in economic organization that have removed policy-makers in institutionalized economic groups from direct and intimate contact with workers. The disturbances resulting from these changes have produced the alterations in attitudes (interests) necessary for cohesive associations among workers. Finally, the tactics of opposing interest groups and the ineffectiveness of such traditional weapons as a monopoly of skill have led labor unions to make vigorous claims upon and through the institutions of government. Once made, such claims have been continued and expanded in order to strengthen and protect the measure of stability previously achieved.

Trade associations and their federations, on the other hand, have been formed to deal with the disturbances stemming from numerous technological changes and from the accompanying increased effects of market fluctuations. Supplementary causes have been the revolution in communications and the short-run need during war, depression, or other emergencies for organized groups that could supplement the work of government agencies in economic planning. The activities of competing groups and the ineffectiveness of the weapons available to the associations when working alone have led these groups, like the labor unions, to make increasing demands upon and through the government.

The growth of labor and trade associations, and of most others as well, exhibits a wavelike pattern; for the very success of one group in stabilizing its relationships creates new problems for others and makes necessary either new organizations or the extension and strengthening of existing ones.

The farmers groups examined are in many ways similar to the trade associations (although there are differences in the specific character of the disturbances that stimulate their growth). The relative weakness of the farmer's bargaining position in the market and the relative strength resulting from the overrepresentation of rural areas in State and national legislatures combine to explain the readiness of these groups to resort to the government in order to achieve their objectives. The wide variety of groups that may be labeled agricultural illustrates how many are the segmental interests at may grow up around the activities of government. Various professional and quasi-professional associations follow a pattern similar to that of other associations; they are founded in common attitudes (interests) that are created, in turn, by the special skills and preoccupations of their members, and they reach formal organization as the result of disturbances in the relationships of their members to one another and to other groups. The extent to which these associations are concerned with legislation or other government action in part reflects the extent to which disturbances have been produced by the political activity of competing groups and in part indicates the stake of these groups, especially lawyers and doctors, in the effective discharge of their professional functions. Such associations usually try to control (stabilize) their membership and their relationships with the rest of society by seeking legislation defining standards of practice and requirements for admission to the profession.

These broad patterns can be seen equally clearly among a wide variety of nonoccupational interest groups. For fundamental changes in society affect not only the stability of economic relationships but also the interests of almost infinitely many segments of society.

Many of the examples discussed in this chapter, especially the bar associations and the labor unions, suggest that a group’s relation to governmental institutions is partly determined by its own internal relationships. It will therefore be appropriate to turn to an examination of the internal relationships of the groups.

Chapter 4 Footnotes