Inside the Chamber > Action Program for the '70s
As the Chamber of Commerce approached its 200th anniversary at the start of 1968, it faced a crisis of relevance. In a ploy to remind the public of its existence, the institution opened the doors to its Great Hall to outsiders for the first time. Reporters, guided by an art historian, dutifully noted “one of New York’s most impressive portrait collections,” and were polite enough to acknowledge, “the overwhelming effect of power and opulence created by so many distinguished men in so grand a room.” But, the experiment did little - otherwise - to boost the profile of the flagging Chamber.
Two years later, the open-door policy was dramatically reversed. In the violence of radical protests against the Vietnam War, Chamber members saw themselves as a likely target for attack. A private guard was posted outside the Great Hall, once again to keep out strangers.
The members hoped their “Action Program for the ‘70’s” would succeed where the guided tours had failed. Despite the aggressive verbiage, stressing “forceful action,” “hard-hitting” programs, “maximum leverage,” and the confident assertion that “we can do the job that has to be done,” the program was most remarkable for the consistency it represented with agendas from previous decades.
In fact, the five “priority goals” – “business-government relations,” “economic development,” “transportation and port development,” “urban and environmental affairs,” and “administrative affairs” – were entirely commensurate with the objectives enumerated in the preamble sketched at the Chamber’s very first meeting, in 1768, which began:
“Whereas, mercantile societies have been found very usefull in tradeing cities for promoting and encouraging commerce, supporting industry, adjusting disputes relative to trade and navigation, and procuring such laws and regulations as may be found necessary for the benefit of trade in general ...”