INTRODUCTORY THE founders of the Chamber of Commerce and the founders of the American Union were one and the same body of men. When they met on April 5, 1768, to establish their commercial society they had been for three years in the forefront of the steadily rising tide of indignant opposition to British rule which was to culminate seven years later in the Revolution. They were engaged, some of them unconsciously, in the momentous task of founding a free and independent republic at the very moment when they came together to form a union of merchants in the interest of the peaceful pursuits of commerce. Clear perception of these facts is necessary for a just appreciation of the high historic value of the Chamber's records. Emerson said of Lincoln that he was the "true history of the American people of his time." In the records of the Chamber of Commerce for a century and a half there is to be found a chronicle of the acts and the spirit of the American people, not only since they became a nation but also during the epochmaking period which immediately preceded that event, for the birth of the society antedated the adoption of the Constitution by twenty-one years. The patriotic spirit of the society's founders was disclosed unmistakably at their first meeting. They chose for President John Cruger, the man who had drawn up in 1765, in the Stamp Act Congress of the Colonies assembled in New York City, the famous "Declaration of Rights and Grievances of the Colonies in America," which was sent to the British Parliament. When in the same year the stamps arrived and the Royalist Governor had declared his purpose to enforce the Act, there was a popular uprising against their reception, during which an effigy of the Governor was burned in Bowling Green. John Cruger, as Mayor of the city, attended by the aldermen, called upon the Governor and so impressed him with the danger which impended if he attempted to enforce the Act, that he promised to deliver the stamps to the city authorities. What next happened is thus recorded in the newspapers of the day: "They (the city authorities) accordingly soon after, accompanied with a Prodigious Concourse of People of all Ranks attended at the gate of the Fort, when the Governor ordered the Paper to be given up to them; and upon the Reception of it gave three cheers, carried it to the City Hall and dispersed. After which Tranquillity was restored to the City." That the members of the Chamber were in full sympathy with the patriotic views of their President was shown a year later when he was re-elected. He was at the same time Speaker of the last Colonial General Assembly ever gathered in the colony, and in the minutes of the session of the Chamber on May 2, 1769, it is recorded that "Mr. President reported that he had it in charge to give the Merchants of this city and colony the thanks of the House for their repeated, disinterested, public spirited and patriotic conduct in declining the importation of goods from Great Britain until such Acts of Parliament as the General Assembly had declared unconstitutional and subversive of the rights and liberties of the people of this colony should be repealed." They were men who knew their rights and dared maintain them, but there was a difference of opinion among them as to the extent to which defense of their rights should be carried. When the time arrived to defend them by taking up arms against the mother country, many of them proved not equal to the test. They favored conciliation by means of resistance and protest but not to the point of revolution and separation. It was inevitable that the activities of a society, founded at such a time and by such men, though nominally for "promoting and encouraging commerce," should be extended to a field with far wider boundaries than the words imply. From the very beginning, the Chamber took its place as an influence in national affairs whenever there appeared in those affairs issues affecting the national welfare and honor, and the successors of the founders have adhered to that interpretation of its functions down to the present day, not only in national but in state and municipal affairs as well. It is a noble tradition and nobly has it been maintained. Lord Morley cites in his "Recollections" a letter which somebody wrote to Mr. Gladstone near the close of his career: "You have so lived and wrought that you have kept the soul alive in England." No impartial reader of the records of the Chamber of Commerce for the past one hundred and fifty years can escape the conviction that it has so lived and wrought as to keep alive the patriotic spirit of its founders and thereby to aid in keeping alive the spirit of true patriotism in the land. In every crisis that has arisen since the foundation of the republic to the present time its voice, never hesitating, never doubtful, has been found on the side of right and justice and public honor. As primarily a commercial body, its history is interwoven with the commercial, financial, and industrial history of the whole country. As a body of public-spirited citizens, ready at all times to uphold and advance good government, to secure justice and fair dealing among men, to cultivate and maintain a sound public opinion and a true conception of patriotism,-as a genuine moral force in the land,-the Chamber of Commerce has throughout its career exerted a powerful influence in support of those agencies which make for progress and civilization. |