In the summer of 1976, the forces of American business announced a new supergroup, bent on political domination. Two long-established organizations, the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), would pool their strength to form the National Association for Commerce and Industry, following in the footsteps of the AFL-CIO, two previously quarrelsome labor federations that had merged twenty-one years earlier.

At long last, corporate leaders crowed, business could fight back against the supposed onslaught of anti-business policies that were destroying the nation.

If you’ve never heard of the National Association for Commerce and Industry, that’s because it never actually came into being. Although there was a raucous coming-out party invested with high hopes, irreconcilable differences between the two constituent organizations ultimately scuttled the merger. One problem was size: with a membership of one hundred thousand firms, local chambers of commerce, and affiliated trade associations, the US Chamber of Commerce dwarfed the thirteen-thousand-member NAM.