This chapter examines the internal sources of the association's strength and success – patterns of membership and recruitment, leadership and cohesion, revenue and expenditure – particularly during its first two decades, when it was a classic local employers' organization (see Table 5.1). Following the money trail will lead to a consideration of what the MMA did, year in and year out, to serve its members' interests and retain their loyalty – in particular, of its Labor Bureau's role in assisting them with the management of their everyday employment relations during times of industrial peace.

“COMPACT LOYAL BODY OF MANUFACTURERS” WITH “NO STRANGERS AMONG US”

The MMA grew rapidly during its first two years and thereafter its membership stabilized at about fifty-five firms (plus or minus a handful) until the war, their numbers fluctuating in response to the ebb and flow of prosperity, although more slowly and less dramatically than their total employment (see Figure 5.1). Nor was there much change in their character. Qualitative and quantitative evidence demonstrates that, throughout its first two decades, the MMA continued to recruit best among the middling sort of locally owned and controlled metal-working firms, drawn from the same few industries. They were generally the bigger enterprises within those industries, but none of them employed more than some hundreds of workers, and most of them far fewer. Chronic concerns about the threat posed by the same few craft unions welded this group together.