Abstract
Although cities were given no role in the constitutional order of the United States, the new nation posed the same potential threats to the accumulation of capital and wealth as European monarchs posed to long-powerful urban centers. In mobilizing for self-protection and advancement, American business developed new practices and discourses of citizenship that sustained a central role for the community as the locus of social provision. The strategy combined opportunity-hoarding through restricted membership in civic groups and obligation-hoarding through the alignment of diverse networks of voluntarism with this civic core. The linkage of business interests to this hybrid charitable-civic configuration constituted a source of resistance to nationalizing tendencies driven by demands for social protection. This alternative model of social provision and civic organization sustained a distinctive pattern of political membership and state development. By fiercely defending the capacity of privately governed civic networks to provide substantial social support, this history of business influence through community organizations lives on in the partial and fragmented character of the American welfare state.
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Notes
Using the threshold of 2,500 residents, the United States could boast 24 “urban places” as of 1790. Only five topped 10,000, led by New York City at 33,000. At this time, the population of Paris had exceeded half a million while that of London was approaching one million.
Tilly (1990: 61) uses a sequence argument to explain how it was possible for a powerful English state to emerge despite the existence of London, specifically that London became a trading power after the consolidation of the monarchy and parliament.
For an extended discussion of the centrality of survival and insulation, as opposed to profit maximization, in economic sociology, see Fligstein (2001).
Charles, Service Clubs, p. 9. This same principle of patronizing the businesses of fellow members was well-established in the world of American voluntary associations, ranging from the Grange to the Ku Klux Klan, and was perpetuated in service clubs such as Rotary, Kiwanis, and the Lions. As Lloyd Warner observed (1949, p. 121), “Friendliness and informality are the keynotes, yet friendship is not an end in itself, but a device for giving the members a sense of community and an awareness of the common interests and common problems they face. The activities emphasize the need for cooperation and advancement in the business world and charge the members with their collective responsibility, creating a sense of group solidarity among the businessmen of the community.”
But see Isaac, “To Counter ‘The Very Devil’ and More.”
Tilly argues that “at a scale larger than a single organization completely bounded categories are rare and difficult to maintain, that most categorical inequality relies on establishment of a partial frontier and defined social relations across that frontier,” Tilly, Durable Inequality, p. 7. So the puzzle is how the identities that stabilize the partially closed network articulate with those used to mobilize cross-frontier relationships.
Charles, Service Clubs.
Zorbaugh ([1929] 1976, p. 61). Participation in service-oriented civic organizations could also serve as a vehicle for the displacement of older elites by an ascendant upper middle class (Davis et al. 1941).
As many of the classic community studies noted, the old elites—W. Lloyd Warner’s “upper uppers”—did not usually engage in this sort of activity.
Tilly, Durable Inequality, p. 7.
Elisabeth Clemens, “Nationalizing Reciprocity: Alignments of Charity and Citizenship in American Governance,” under review.
Cutlip. Fund raising, p. 26. Pierce (1938).
These included religious groups, such as the Young Men’s Christian Association, that were understood as civic rather than denominational.
“Community Chest Corollaries,” The Survey (June 15, 1925), p. 344. With this expansion, community chests partially transformed from vehicles for the provision of those in need to a means of the self-provisioning of the middle class. As one commentator noted, “Many large gifts in practically every chest are predicated pretty directly upon the inclusion of the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A., and the Boy Scouts in the campaign, to say nothing of health agencies and hospitals” (Borst 1930).
“Ten Years of Federation in Cincinnati,” The Survey (February 15, 1925), p. 591.
This method involved sending a gift—typically a token such as a pencil—to a potential donor with the request to return the item or to make a contribution.
Robert Bremner 1960, p. 141.
Lee (1928); see also Kelso (1932). Not surprisingly, a part of the backlash involved a call for—and in some places a turn to—new public agencies to control relief. “What Happened in Columbus,” The Survey (May 15, 1926), pp. 261–263. In other cities, including Cincinnati, the community chests had “refused to organize the factories and workshops of our city for solicitation,” preferring to solicit house-to-house until the development of a system of industrial solicitation that eliminated undue pressure (Bookman 1932).
Floyd Hunter’s classic community study, (1953) identifies “obligation” as the currency that makes the municipal bureaucracy function.
A 1929 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research documented that “charitable organizations in non-chest cities fared less well at the hands of corporations” (Todd 1930).
“Big City Roll Call Conference,” 11th National Convention, April 11–14, 1932. Records of the American National Red Cross, 1917–1934, American Red Cross, RG II, Box 90, Folder 104.507, National Archives and Records Administration.
McFadden 1929. Records of the American National Red Cross, 1917–1934, RG II, Box 87, Folder 104.502, National Archives and Records Administration.
Sprague 1933. Records of the American National Red Cross, 1917–1934, RG II, Box 90, Folder 104.502, National Archives and Records Administration.
Rockefeller Archive Center, OMR, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Personal Speeches, “Cooperation and Stewardship,” 02/24/1938 111 2 Z, B4, F166. “Address introducing the Mayor at the opening rally of The Greater New York Fund in the Center Theater, Thursday evening, February 24, 1938.”
An amendment to the federal revenue law of 1935 codified the deduction of corporate contributions to charity up to five percent of total corporate income.
These included the Committee to Celebrate the President’s Birthday, now known as the March of Dimes. Fewer efforts could signal more strongly the challenge that national fund-raising posed to the dominance of local elite networks over the definition of good citizenship (Sills 1957).
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Clemens, E.S. From city club to nation state: business networks in American political development. Theor Soc 39, 377–396 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9108-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-010-9108-2