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In the late 1930s, New Dealers, industrial unionists, and business groups led by the National Association of Manufacturers seized on the language of Americanism and launched public efforts to define the nation in ways that furthered their own political and social agendas. All addressed Americans’ desire to be free of want, and all attempted to connect economic and political concerns. Beyond that, however, they framed issues in profoundly different ways. President Roosevelt, CIO leaders, and others in the New Deal coalition stressed the majoritarian overtones of the word “democracy,” and called for an activist government to ensure Americans’ economic security. Industrialists and their allies, by contrast, emphasized individual rights and the libertarian dimensions of American “freedom.” The ensuing battle—pitting “democracy” against “freedom,” mutualism against individualism, and a progressive ethos against interclass unity—presaged contests that would continue into the postwar era.

This chapter focuses on the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) as an explicitly anti-union organization with the stated goal of maintaining the “open shop”—or union-free workplaces. NAM's chief target was the American Federation of Labor (AFL), which, like NAM, sought to bring order and standardization to the field of labor, but on workers' terms. NAM fought the AFL using many of the same tactics the AFL deployed against employers: disciplined organization, injunctions, lobbying, and what it variously called “propaganda” or “education.” The battle between NAM and the AFL was epic, conceived by both as a struggle for control of the American workplace. Unions and industrialists—both wary of the state—fought one another for control. Neither the AFL nor NAM were truly representative of their alleged constituency (“workers” and “industry,” respectively), but they were the organizations most fully engaged in this battle, each vilifying the other as “the enemy,” both claiming to uphold American individualism.

This chapter shows how the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) reorganized and slowly emerged as the first line of resistance to the new New Deal state—thus conforming perfectly to New Dealers' view of capitalists as class-bound reactionaries. Much has been written about the reactionary anti-New Deal National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The chapter reviews that history to demonstrate its significance in terms of the organization's identity, the struggle for workplace control, and US history in general. But some New Deal policies—such as the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, and the establishment of the Export–Import Bank in 1934—furthered NAM's agendas in industrial rationalization and trade expansion. This highlights the tension between the conservative principles of its leaders and the progressive prerogatives of global capitalism.

This chapter discusses how the institutional developments at the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce grew directly from the political and economic upheaval of the late 1960s and early 1970s and paved the way for effective pan-business lobbying in the years ahead. The tumultuous 1960s had altered the landscape of Congress and party politics, particularly through the rise of public interest liberalism and its demands for greater federal intervention with regard to employment equality, consumer and worker protection, and environmental stewardship. In this new political context, business leaders at the NAM and the Chamber refashioned their public image, refined their approaches to lobbying, and broadened their policy prescriptions.

This chapter introduces industrial relations, which emphasizes reason over “emotion” in dealing with labor. Confronted with the failure of previous approaches, and facing a postwar strike wave and immigration restrictions, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) leaders adopted this more moderate, professional-industrial-relations approach to labor management in the 1920s. Still committed to a union-free workplace, NAM reconceived the open shop as good industrial relations. This paved the way for the employment of “nontraditional” workers, such as women, the disabled, and, later, people of color. While unions remained focused on skilled workers, this more modern approach to management was necessarily inclusive of all employees. Indeed, one of its hallmark features was attention to the social demographics of workforces in order to understand how employees might work better together.

This chapter considers the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) revival in the 1990s. Indeed, NAM celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary in 1995 amid vastly improved conditions. Blasting premature claims about manufacturing's death, NAM president Jerry Jasinowski declared that American industry was back on track. Manufacturing had transformed itself to meet the global future. Granted, it did so through downsizing, automating, and relocating production abroad. But, Jasinowski insisted, it was still a generator of jobs—better jobs, smarter jobs, and jobs in which workers' input and empowerment were crucial to success. Like past NAM leaders, Jasinowski placed enormous importance on “getting out the story,” but the story was no longer about “free enterprise.” It was about the manufacturing sector's contribution to economic growth and global competitiveness.

This chapter considers the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) most stunning achievement—the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. Condemned by labor, liberals, and most historians, the Taft-Hartley Act curbed union gains and allegedly marked a turn to the right. But it also represented NAM's acceptance of collective bargaining with industry-wide unions. It was a peace of sorts, a settlement, in NAM's long-running war against big unions. It was NAM “moderates” who advocated for what became the Taft-Hartley Act, not the conservative hardliners. Taft-Hartley required businesses to accept the legitimacy of unions and collective bargaining. In exchange, the act put limitations on unions' right to strike, while expanding management's right to manage. Hard-line conservatives rejected this compromise, while NAM's more moderate and pragmatic conservatives were able to unite all of the major business groups around it, a rare moment of real leadership for NAM at a time when the direction of the US economy was up for grabs.

This chapter highlights the fissures among and between corporate capitalists and conservatives in the mid-twentieth century. By the 1950s, businessmen and journalists alike regarded the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) ideological “backwardness” as a hindrance to business's interests and unrepresentative of the business community. Partly, this was about corporate liberals criticizing NAM to highlight their own enlightened and reasonable moderation. But mostly, this criticism was fairly earned by a group of “ultraconservatives,” whose control of the purse strings and ties to far-right groups like the John Birch Society were increasingly at odds with NAM's internationalism, professional goals, and membership quandaries—areas overseen by NAM staff. It would be wrong to call the NAM staff “liberal,” but its outlook was more pragmatic, more influenced by business and management schools, and less committed to “rugged individualism” than that of NAM's conservative leaders. The tensions created by ultraconservatives would lead to a restructuring of NAM that sidelined the “old guard” and gave NAM its first full-time paid president and a more pragmatic, issues-based approach to its work.

This chapter turns to the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) activities during the Cold War. The Cold War impeded full global economic integration, but it also provided an opportunity for free enterprise to show its superiority to state-directed economic systems. Hence, NAM and other international organizations had to conduct a high degree of coordination, standard-setting, and information exchange in order to globalize capitalism. But that work fostered tensions, especially with regard to tariffs. Tariff reduction was key to the postwar trade agenda. Here, NAM was, as usual, divided. But times were changing. The Cold War fight against communism required a commitment to international capitalism and freer trade. State-instigated tariffs were antithetical to postwar, free-market conservatives, a movement influenced by Austrian émigrés and enthusiastically embraced by NAM leaders.

This concluding chapter discusses the National Association of Manufacturers' (NAM) relevance in contemporary times. It shows that NAM is still a going concern. It has survived and adapted to new circumstances, and it has a purported membership of 14,000. It also keeps a lower profile. NAM is no longer the go-to “voice of business,” but it still partners up with the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable. In other ways, however, the current NAM resembles its old historic self, despite the drastically different economic and political climate of the twenty-first century. It continues to promote development, offering seminars, data, and other resources to help new manufacturers navigate the new economy. But NAM also has to contend with new challenges in the twenty-first century, as it walks a fine line with regard to President Donald Trump.

This introductory chapter presents new understandings of manufacturing's main lobbyist and trade association, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). To understand how a conservative, anti-union organization can also be seen as progressive, the chapter first takes a look at its background as it considers how disorganized and chaotic US capitalism was at the end of the nineteenth century, when NAM was founded. In addition to examining NAM's role in organizing and globalizing capitalism, the chapter explores how it worked, who it represented, and how effective it was as a lobbyist. It also identifies NAM's many internal tensions. Furthermore, the chapter identifies the economic, ideological, and institutional concerns that drove NAM actors, as these offer insight into the evolving political taxonomies of our own day.

This book examines how the most powerful corporate lobbies are working to remake the American economy, society, and politics. It considers the legislative agenda of big business lobbies in all fifty states, including the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Federation of Independent Business, and industry-specific groups such as the National Grocers Association and National Restaurant Association. The book explores how an intentional policy agenda pursued by these lobbies contributes to growing inequality and increased hardship for American workers. It analyzes bills that were enacted with the support of one or more of these organizations across a wide range of labor, employment, and economic policy issues.

This chapter considers Philadelphia's transit workers: their daily work, their relations with the system's owners, and their early efforts at unionization. Transit workers faced harsh conditions on the job and for their efforts received low pay and little respect. To improve their lot, they turned to organized labor, first with the Knights of Labor and then the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees—“the Amalgamated,” a member of the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Overall, Philadelphia's transit workers found strong support among working-class residents of the city, but they lived in a difficult era marked by widespread class conflict, state repression, and organized corporate power embodied most conspicuously by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).

Covering the period from 1945 to 1960, this chapter examines a series of clergy education initiatives that attempted to build support for libertarian economic ideas. Launched by conservative activists and organizations, these programs sought to undermine clerical support for the New Deal–era welfare state, but they mostly ended in failure. With financial support from the wealthy oil executive J. Howard Pew, organizations like Spiritual Mobilization and the Christian Freedom Foundation spread the gospel of free enterprise using newsletters, radio broadcasts, and sermon contests. But polls funded by Pew himself found they had little impact on the political or economic views of rank-and-file ministers. The National Association of Manufacturers’ (NAM) clergy-industry program was marginally more successful, though its organizers were similarly disappointed at their inability to stoke clerical opposition to the New Deal/Fair Deal agenda. The chapter concludes with a series of observations on why Christian Libertarianism gained little traction with either ministers or lay people during the 1950s.