democratic challenge against which to organize. In addition, the single-member-district plurality
system meant that industrialists in many parts of the country were under-represented,
complicating the political expression of the collective interests of industrialists (citations).
The National Association of Manufacturers was created to fill this gap in representation.
NAM ardently advocated for the Republican party’s economic development projects, in
particular, NAM supported the creation of administrative state capacity in area of commerce and
industrial development (or what later became the Department of Commerce). NAM’s creators
viewed the business organization as necessary for political nationalization and centralization; it
was to be, in effect, a vehicle for organizing manufacturers across sectional divides. Finally
NAM was created for electoral purposes: the association was established at the behest of the
McKinley campaign and was, from the start, intimately linked to the dynamics of electoral
competition. Thus NAM was developed to overcome certain incapacities in the American state
and party system – to represent the emerging agents of industrial development where no political
actors existed to organize these interests.
Yet NAM faltered for precisely the reasons that gave rise to its existence. NAM was
organized to solve certain problems of economic development in the face of sectional conflicts,
limited state bureaucratic capacity and party representational gaps; however, paradoxically, the
organization’s evolution was hampered by these very same limits. It aimed to help with the
centralization of party systems and national level public policy goals, but the very limits of party
parochialism and localism undermined the emergence of this national business organization.
Motivated by political concerns, NAM made strategic choices that limited its capacities for
broader representation. It was hampered in its ability to engage politically by its need to appear
neutral; yet at the same time, it failed to grow because it was seen as so closely linked to the
political fortunes of William McKinley.
As an agent for McKinley’s campaign, NAM both
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