At the Annual Meeting of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce in the fall of 2018, Byron Champlin presented a history of the Chamber as it approaches it’s 100th birthday in 2019. Here is Byron’s presentation:
The Birth of the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce
© 2018 Byron O. Champlin
Nineteen-hundred and nineteen was an eventful year. It was a year of transition, as the world tried to find a path to normalcy in the wake of a great global war that cost millions of lives and reshaped the political landscape in Europe and the Middle East.
In the United States, Congress passed the 19th Amendment, gaining women the vote, Edsel Ford took the helm of Ford Motor Company from his father, Henry, and United Parcel Service—UPS to us today— was launched.
Manned flight, a novelty just 16 years before, saw rapid advances. In May 1919, a U.S. Navy flying boat made the first transatlantic flight, hopscotching to Europe in 11 days. The following month, British flyers Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic nonstop in less than 16 hours. The first scheduled airplane passenger service began in August between Paris and London and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines—today the oldest airline in the world—was founded in October.
Events that would loom large in coming decades unfolded in Europe. The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I and created the League of Nations, was signed in June, only to be rejected by the United States Senate. In Italy, a veteran of the World War named Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist Party, while another veteran named Adolf Hitler joined the obscure, seven-member German Worker’s Party, which he would transform into the National Socialist—or Nazi—Party.
It was also a year of disasters. In January, two million gallons of molasses from a burst storage tank swept through the streets of Boston. The Volstead Act, creating Prohibition, was passed by Congress in October. And in December the Red Sox came to an agreement on the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Dark days, indeed.
Concord in 1919 was experiencing the last throes of the great influenza epidemic. Local businesses were recovering from the effects of wartime rationing and government regulation of almost every aspect of industry, and the virtual cessation of new construction. The big news was that after years of effort the Boston & Maine Railroad—the major employer in town—had merged most of its leased lines, including the Concord & Montreal Railroad.
At this juncture, leaders of the Concord Board of Trade resolved to transform themselves into a Chamber of Commerce. The Board received its Certificate of Organization from the Chamber of Commerce of the United States on October 18th, 1919, and adopted a constitution and by-Laws at an organizational meeting on December 19th. George A. Foster a prominent local businessman, was elected the first president, equivalent to today’s chairman of the board.
Among the first orders of business on December 19th was to create a committee to review the plant, organization, finances, and the possibilities of the Abbot-Downing Truck & Body Company in order to help the financially troubled company make a fresh start. The Chamber also moved to bring the 1920 annual meeting of the State Grange to Concord and to attempt to get Sears Roebuck Company to move its Littleton, New Hampshire, factory to Concord. In the months to come, the Chamber would create a committee, which included former World War I combat pilot John Gilbert Winant, to explore building a municipal airfield and fielded a suggestion to put signs and pamphlets in hotels to “boom” Concord and show the points of interest. These are efforts that would not be alien to twenty-first century Chamber members.
At the Chamber’s founding, it had 434 individual members who paid dues of $10 per year, as well as 32 sustaining members—including future Governor Winant—whose annual dues were $100.
Four of those sustaining members were Swenson Granite Works, Page Belting Company, St. Paul’s School and Concord Electric Company (today part of Unitil), all of which have remained Chamber members to this day. That’s 99 years, for the math-impaired.
For more information on today’s Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce, see www.concordnhchamber.com. The Chamber’s office is now located on the ground floor of 49 South Main Street, Concord.
