The aim of this chapter is to give an account of the origins and early development of the MMA both in its local context and as an illustration of the organizing process among American metal trades employers that was provoked by the labor relations crisis that began about a century ago. Just as Philadelphia metal manufacturers, for all their local peculiarities, were actually quite like their fellows in other industrial cities, so too the MMA that they created would take its place in the nationwide employers' anti-union movement that emerged. The MMA would have some exceptional features. It would also be unusually large and successful. But its beginnings, membership, structure, purposes, strategy, and tactics were very similar to those of the dozens of other local metal trades employers' associations, formed at about the same time, that made up the grass roots of the Open Shop movement for the next three decades. Addressing his members at their annual banquet in 1921 Staunton Bloodgood Peck, Link-Belt's Philadelphia manager and the MMA's newly elected president, spoke of “these associations, of which ours is typical.” Nobody contradicted him then. Nor should we now. None of the other associations has a history that is as thoroughly documented as the MMA's, but there is no reason to believe that Peck was wrong.

BONDS OF ASSOCIATION

As we have seen, Philadelphia metal manufacturers were an independent-minded, individualistic bunch, and most of their companies operated in quite competitive markets.