The Cloak of Popular Will: Elite Networks and Progressive-Era Labor Legislation

This paper examines the relationship between the Republican Party and organized employers, particularly the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), in the early twentieth century.  It shows that organized employers, who in this period mounted their first serious anti-union campaign, were deeply embedded in the party hierarchy and possessed close social contacts with key legislators; indeed, the deliberate exploitation of such contacts formed a key part of the NAM's political strategy.  Yet organized employers also drew on a language of popular democracy, arguing that labor-backed legislative initiatives were doomed because the American people neither wanted such "socialistic" measures nor trusted labor unions.

Organized employers were keenly aware of the layered nature of the democratic process and the potential of money and class to influence politicians more effectively than the popular vote.  As the NAM's secretary put it, a sensible politician would hardly bother about the labor vote "when it might be another kind of people altogether who would have something to say about his nomination before such votes could be cast." The secretary had some cause for his confidence, as NAM members were to be found in party positions ranging from state-level party organizers to presidential cabinet members.  They were also often to be found in the social clubs or family trees of Congressmen.

For all the Progressive Era's seeming awareness of legislative corruption, the NAM successfully cast doubt on the legitimacy of labor's political objectives by the simple expedient of using its contacts to block them in Congress.  And this, indeed, is the problem of the power of the few in a system supposedly governed by the many: the few not only achieve their aims, but those aims become reinterpreted as the will of the people.