Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Iron Masters
- 3 Laying the Foundations: Peace and War in the Metal Trades, c. 1890–1904
- 4 Combat, Crisis, and Consolidation, 1904–1915
- 5 “The Largest, Strongest, and Most Valuable Association of Metal Manufacturers in Any City”
- 6 Riding the Storm, 1915–1918
- 7 The War After the War, 1918–1923
- 8 Pacific Passage: Quaker Employers and Welfare Capitalism, c. 1905–1924
- 9 A Liberal Interlude: The Modernization of the MMA, c. 1924–1931
- 10 The Deluge: The Great Depression and the End of the Open Shop
- 11 The New World: Accommodation and Adjustment, 1936–1939
- 12 Afterword: “We'll Still Be There. We're Not Going Away”
- Appendix: Databases Referred to in Text: Nature, Sources, Use
- Index
5 - “The Largest, Strongest, and Most Valuable Association of Metal Manufacturers in Any City”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The Iron Masters
- 3 Laying the Foundations: Peace and War in the Metal Trades, c. 1890–1904
- 4 Combat, Crisis, and Consolidation, 1904–1915
- 5 “The Largest, Strongest, and Most Valuable Association of Metal Manufacturers in Any City”
- 6 Riding the Storm, 1915–1918
- 7 The War After the War, 1918–1923
- 8 Pacific Passage: Quaker Employers and Welfare Capitalism, c. 1905–1924
- 9 A Liberal Interlude: The Modernization of the MMA, c. 1924–1931
- 10 The Deluge: The Great Depression and the End of the Open Shop
- 11 The New World: Accommodation and Adjustment, 1936–1939
- 12 Afterword: “We'll Still Be There. We're Not Going Away”
- Appendix: Databases Referred to in Text: Nature, Sources, Use
- Index
Summary
This chapter examines the internal sources of the association's strength and success – patterns of membership and recruitment, leadership and cohesion, revenue and expenditure – particularly during its first two decades, when it was a classic local employers' organization (see Table 5.1). Following the money trail will lead to a consideration of what the MMA did, year in and year out, to serve its members' interests and retain their loyalty – in particular, of its Labor Bureau's role in assisting them with the management of their everyday employment relations during times of industrial peace.
“COMPACT LOYAL BODY OF MANUFACTURERS” WITH “NO STRANGERS AMONG US”
The MMA grew rapidly during its first two years and thereafter its membership stabilized at about fifty-five firms (plus or minus a handful) until the war, their numbers fluctuating in response to the ebb and flow of prosperity, although more slowly and less dramatically than their total employment (see Figure 5.1). Nor was there much change in their character. Qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrates that, throughout its first two decades, the MMA continued to recruit best among the middling sort of locally owned and controlled metal-working firms, drawn from the same few industries. They were generally the bigger enterprises within those industries, but none of them employed more than some hundreds of workers, and most of them far fewer. Chronic concerns about the threat posed by the same few craft unions welded this group together.
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- Information
- Bloodless VictoriesThe Rise and Fall of the Open Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890–1940, pp. 161 - 197Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000