Once the story of modern America seemed relatively simple. On one side stood a business elite defending a market system to which it owed its power and position. On the other stood the “common man,” economically weak but politically capable of forging tools that could alter the workings of market discipline. And between them, waxing and waning in response to “reform” and “counter-reform,” stood the aggregation of political tools that the “common man” had been able to forge. Such was the story told in “liberal” history; and with reversed heroes and villains, the same story was told in “conservative” history. Both assumed a business-government dichotomy, and both ignored or slighted those aspects of modern America that could not be fitted into it.

Rapid changes in the relationship between business and government from 1890 onwards brought a growing desire for a better exchange of ideas and information and, particularly, for a national organization that would facilitate this exchange. While the United States Chamber of Commerce has been viewed almost universally as the outcome of efforts by businessmen, Professor Werking shows that it was a few government bureaucrats, notably in the relatively new and ambitious Department of Commerce and Labor, who, with the support of the Secretary and the White House, became the decisive factor in the birth of the Chamber in 1912.

Contrasting with the resentment of other power structures, especially corporate business, that democratic governments display is the obvious need of the powerful and the productive for each other in times of stress. Professor McQuaid follows the activities of a group of “corporate liberals” (i.e., big business leaders who believed that intelligent collaboration between business, government, and organized labor was an attainable goal) from World War I through the prosperous 1920s, the despondent 1930s, and the busy and prosperous years of World War II. He concludes that corporate liberal opinion grew more influential in both corporate and governmental circles during and after the period.

The bitter opposition of businessmen to the New Deal in its early stages is well known. Not so well known, however, are the efforts of a few business leaders to maintain constructive communication with the President and his advisers. Professor Collins traces these efforts, from the early stages during which both groups labored in mutual distrust, through the remarkable transformation in which such strong business personalities as Beardsley Ruml, William Benton, and Paul Hoffman helped persuade a deeply conservative Franklin D. Roosevelt to adopt compensatory deficit spending as a means to recovery. Finally, he shows that World War II marked not the end but a continuation of these positive efforts by businessmen to adapt to the new philosophy, and led directly to the founding of the Committee for Economic Development.