When I was president of the New York Board of Trade and Transportation I was impressed with the importance of establishing a closer relationship between the commercial bodies of the country and the Government. Shortly after I became Secretary of Commerce and Labor, therefore, I sought to accomplish that end. I had a study made by Nahum I. Stone, tariff expert of the Bureau of Manufactures, of the relations between the European governments and their commercial bodies, especially in such countries as Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Belgium. I sent invitations to about forty of the leading chambers of commerce, boards of trade, and other commercial organizations throughout the country to send delegates to Washington for a two days' conference, with a view to bringing about an organization of these bodies for the purpose of coöperation between them and the departments of the Government having to do with commerce and manufactures.
Accordingly on December 5th a representative gathering of over one hundred delegates met in my Department, and I put before them a plan for organization. I invited Secretary Root, who took a deep interest in the scheme, and he made a thoughtful address, in which he impressed upon the gathering the things that ought to be done, and could be done only through organization and the power of concerted effort. Andrew D. White, our experienced ambassador at Berlin, had sent to the President a letter containing the proposal that a method of instruction in commerce be applied at the instance of our Government as had been done in agriculture; this interesting proposal I read to the meeting.
I then went with the delegates in a body to the White House where the President addressed them. In the afternoon Gustav H. Schwab, of the New York Chamber of Commerce, was elected temporary chairman and the organization of the council proceeded. A committee on organization and a committee on rules were appointed, and it was decided that an advisory committee of fifteen members was to have headquarters in Washington. The number of meetings to be held per year was fixed, as well as the annual dues. On December 5, 1907, the National Council of Commerce came into being.
A year later the first annual meeting was held in my Department. The Council now had permanent offices in the Adams Building, with William R. Corwine in charge. In my address to the delegates I stressed the importance of the development of our commercial relations with the South American republics, particularly in view of the rapidly approaching completion of the Panama Canal. At that time we had only twenty-three per cent of the foreign trade of South America, and one of the main requirements for increasing our share was the establishment of better shipping and postal facilities. To that end I recommended in my annual report that the Postal Subsidy Act of 1891 be extended to include ships of sixteen knots and over, and my colleagues, the Secretary of State and the Attorney-General, made similar recommendations.
A month after the change of Administration the executive committee of the Council held a meeting, again in the Department of Commerce and Labor, at which they passed the following resolution:
Resolved, by the members of the Executive Committee of the National Council of Commerce in meeting assembled in the office of the Hon. Charles Nagel, the present Secretary of Commerce and Labor, That they tender their heartiest thanks to the Hon. Oscar S. Straus, the former Secretary of Commerce and Labor, for his constant and well-directed efforts in forming and promoting the National Council of Commerce, expressing their appreciation of his far-sightedness, his patriotism, his energy, his fairness, and his friendship, assuring him of the high personal esteem in which he is held by all of them, and asserting that in their judgment he has laid the foundation for a movement which will redound not only to his credit as a Cabinet officer, but one which will ultimately be productive of incalculable benefit to the business interests of our country, the development of which he has so deeply at heart.
Later that year the Council was reorganized and called the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, which to-day is an important institution in the commercial life of our country.
To bring about a similar relationship between the Department and the labor bodies, I called another conference in February, 1909, to which I invited the leading labor representatives throughout the country, and about fifty attended. Unfortunately my term of office was drawing to an end and there was not time to organize this wing, but I urged the men to insist upon the continuance of the conferences and the coöperation with the Department thus established.
The matters discussed at this meeting were mainly how best to lessen unemployment, how the Division of Information under the Bureau of Immigration might be administered for the greater benefit of labor in general, and how the Nobel Peace Prize, which President Roosevelt had set aside for a foundation for the promotion of industrial peace, could be made most effective. There were addresses by Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor; Warren S. Stone, grand chief of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers; William F. Yates, president of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association; and Terence V. Powderly, chief of the Division of Information in the Bureau of Immigration. The presiding officer was Daniel J. Keefe, Commissioner-General of Immigration and Naturalization.