¹ US Federal Trade Commission (USFTC), Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1924 (Washington, D.C., 1924), 88Google Scholar. Blaisdell, Thomas C. Jr., The Federal Trade Commission: An Experiment in the Control of Business (New York, 1932), ch. 6, situates this investigation (summarized at 166–68) among many other attempts by the Commission to combat price-gouging through targeted research and publicityGoogle Scholar; Himmelberg, Robert F., The Origins of the National Recovery Administration: Business, Government, and the Trade Association Issue, 1921–1933 (New York, 1976), 7–9, 12, 18–20, 36, remains the best guide to the tangled evolution of antitrust policy during the Harding administrationGoogle Scholar.

² USFTC, Report on the House Furnishings Industries, vol. 2: Household Stoves, 1 Oct. 1923 (Washington, D.C., 1924), 3Google Scholar.

³ The inquiry cost $69,000, about $4.4 million at current prices, using the nominal GDP per capita method: USFTC Annual Reports, 1923–1925, Administrative Division, “Detailed Statement of Costs,” 1923, 23; 1924, 7; 1925, 6.

⁴ Sources underpinning its 187-page report are in Records of the Federal Trade Commission, Economic Division, Economic Investigations Files 1915–1938, RG122, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md. (hereafter, National Archives). Key materials, including interviews with the National Association of Stove Manufacturers' secretary and documents from his office, are in Box 2337 (hereafter, FTC Investigative File).

⁵ USFTC, Household Stoves, 45 (industry divisions), 89 (stand-alone firms), 52–53 (scale diseconomies)Google Scholar. According to the industry's own count, in 1922 there were about 240 solidfuel and gas appliance makers, the constituency among which its trade associations recruited: “Lists of Stove Manufacturers” [1922], FTC Investigative File, National Archives.

⁶ USFTC, Household Stoves, 1 (price levels), 53, 74–76 (sales and inventories)Google Scholar.

⁷ Ibid., 10–16.

⁸ Ibid., 47, 49–53.

⁹ “Lists of Stove Manufacturers” [1922], FTC Investigative File, National Archives; attendance at conventions in NASM Proceedings 49–53 (1920–1924)Google Scholar. The printed Proceedings—near-verbatim stenographic transcripts of biannual or, after 1890, annual meetings, a c.10,000-page treasure trove of information—are the key sources for the rest of this article.

¹⁰ USFTC, Household Stoves, 82–83 [quote]Google Scholar; USFTC, Annual Reports, 1924, 89; 1925, 236–37; 1926, 20, 104, 119Google Scholar; Carrott, M. Browning, “The Supreme Court and American Trade Associations, 1921–1925,” Business History Review 44 (1970): 320–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, G. Cullom, “The Transformation of the Federal Trade Commission, 1914–1929,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 49 (1962): 437–55 at 448–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Berk, Gerald, Louis D. Brandeis and the Making of Regulated Competition, 1900–1932 (Cambridge, 2009), esp. ch. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is less persuasive about the evolution and impact of the FTC than Himmelberg, Origins of the NRA, chs. 1–4; Keller, Morton, “The Pluralist State: American Economic Regulation in Comparative Perspective, 1900–1930,” in Regulation in Perspective: Historical Essays, ed. McCraw, Thomas K. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 56–94, at 77–81Google Scholar; or McCraw's, own Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), ch. 4, esp. 146–52Google Scholar.

¹¹ Becker, William H., “American Wholesale Hardware Trade Associations, 1870–1900,” Business History Review 45 (1971): 179–200, at 182–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for manufacturers' behavior in other metal-products industries.

¹² “Obituary: Giles F. Filley,” NASM Proceedings 29 (May 1900), 191–92Google Scholar; Adler, Jeffrey S., Yankee Merchants and the Making of the Urban West: The Rise and Fall of Antebellum St. Louis (New York, 1991), 67–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christensen, Lawrence O.et al., eds., Dictionary of Missouri Biography (Columbia, Mo., 1999), 296–98Google Scholar; and Southerton, Donald G., The Filleys: 350 Years of American Entrepreneurial Spirit (Lincoln, Neb., 2005), esp. 63, 69–70, 72, 83–86, 97–101, 121, 133Google Scholar. Filley, and labor: Gyory, Andrew, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill, 1998), 20–21Google Scholar; Oak, Charter trademark: “Supreme Court of Missouri. Giles F. Filley, Respondent v. A. D. Fassett et al., Appellants [Filley v. Fassett],” American Law Register 17, no. 7 (July 1869): 402–11Google Scholar.

¹³ Dwyer, Jeremiah, “Stoves and Heating Apparatus,” in 100 Years of American Commerce, ed. Depew, Chauncey (New York, 1895), vol. 2: 357–63 at 361Google Scholar, citing John S. Perry's report to the first meeting of the NASM; Harris, Howell J., “Inventing the US Stove Industry, c.1815–1875: Making and Selling the First Universal Consumer Durable,” Business History Review 82 (2008): 701–33, esp. 731–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “‘The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually’: Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, ca. 1810–1930,” Winterthur Portfolio 43 (2009): 365–406, esp. 392–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on this phase of the industry's history.

¹⁴ Market share calculated from Dunlap, Thomas, comp. & ed., Wiley's American Iron Trade: Manual of the Leading Iron Industries of the United States (New York, 1874), 333–50Google Scholar; “Notes from the Newspapers,” in Collections on the History of Albany, ed. Munsell, Joel (Albany, 1871), vol. 3: 298–300Google Scholar, for the 1866 convention.

¹⁵ Giles Filley to Marcus Filley (his older brother, a stove maker in Troy, New York) and others, 18 Dec. 1871, Box 1, “Targets” folder, Filley Papers, New York State Library, Albany, NY (hereafter, NYSL).

¹⁶ Ibid.

¹⁷ Albert Lyman (New York) to Marcus Filley, 30 Jan. 1872, Box 15, Folder A, Filley Papers, NYSL.

¹⁸ Perry, John S., “The National Association of Stove Manufacturers: Its History and Usefulness, and the Processes for Maintaining Its Profitable Perpetuity,” NASM Proceedings 15 (June 1886): 23Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Perry & Co. Stove Works, Albany, NY (1872), broadside, NYSL; Stone, William L., “Stoves and Heating Apparatus: Perry & Co., Albany, N.Y.,” in Industrial America; or, Manufacturers and Inventions of the United States (New York, 1876), 450–56Google Scholar; Hazelton, George H., “Reminiscences of Seventeen Years Residence in Michigan, 1836–1853,” Michigan Historical Collections 21 (1894): 370–417, at 385–86Google Scholar.

²⁰ Quoted in Boal, Stanhope, “President's Report,” NASM Proceedings 29 (May 1900): 19Google Scholar.

²¹ Quoted in James A. Lansing, “President's Address,” and Elliott, Percival W., “Secretary's Report,” NASM Proceedings 43 (May 1914): 14, 26Google Scholar.

²² “John S. Perry,” Stoves & Hardware 9, no. 5 (16 Aug. 1886): 3Google Scholar; Perry, John S., “President's Address,” NASM Proceedings 2 (Feb. 1873): 9Google Scholar.

²³ Perry, , “The NASM: Its History and Usefulness,” 24Google Scholar; Hill, Uriah Jr., NASM Proceedings 3 (Feb. 1874): 46–47Google Scholar. Perry's cost estimates were reproduced as 155–66 of the Proceedings, in response to demand.

²⁴ Perry, , “President's Address,” (1873): 7Google Scholar.

²⁵ Perry, John S., “President's Address,” reported in The Metal Worker 3, no. 8 (20 Feb. 1875): 1Google Scholar.

²⁶ The classic statement of this argument is Stigler, George, “A Theory of Oligopoly,” Journal of Political Economy 72 (1964): 44–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar, critiqued in Levenstein, Margaret C. and Suslow, Valerie Y., “What Determines Cartel Success?” Journal of Economic Literature 44 (2006): 43–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Mr. Copp, , “Canadian Stove Industry,” NASM Proceedings 3 (Feb. 1874): 24Google Scholar; Bowditch, Edward W., “The Canadian Iron Founders' Association,” NASM Proceedings 17 (Feb. 1888): 248–54Google Scholar. Sklar, Martin J., The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890–1916: The Market, the Law, and Politics (Cambridge, 1988), 95–98 esp.Google Scholar, disputes this conclusion about state and federal law on cartels and cartel-like behavior before the Sherman Act, but Freyer, Tony, Regulating Big Business: Antitrust in Great Britain and America, 1880–1990 (Cambridge, 1992), esp. 3–4, 77–80, 85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is more persuasive; see Himmelberg's, Robert F. discussion of both arguments, “Does Antitrust Matter? A Comparative History of Antitrust Policy and the Evolving Corporation in Britain and the United States,” Reviews in American History 21 (1993): 273–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Dunlap, , ed., Wiley's American Iron Trade, 333–50Google Scholar.

²⁹ NASM Proceedings 4 (Feb. 1875)Google Scholar, reported in The Metal Worker 3, no. 8 (20 Feb. 1875): 2–3Google Scholar; “Fashions Even in Stoves,” The Sun [New York] 27 July 1884, 6Google Scholar, for the anticlinker suit; NASM Proceedings 7 (Jan. 1878): 39–41, 46–51 [quotation at 49], 53–55Google Scholar; and 8 (Jan. 1879): 73–89; and Perry, John S., Prison Labor; Showing the Proportion of Convict to Citizen Labor in the Prisons of the State of New York, and of the United States (Albany, 1885)Google Scholar for the prison labor issue; “From Albany to Chattanooga,” Atlanta Constitution, 8 Dec. 1886, 4Google Scholar, “The New South: Transfer of the Albany Stove Works to Tennessee,” Atlanta Constitution, 22 Dec. 1886, 4Google Scholar, and Kelley, William D., The Old South and the New (New York, 1888), 9, 78–81Google Scholar.

³⁰ Chandler, Alfred D. Jr., The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), esp. 141–48 (railroad cartels), 316–18 (industrial cartels)Google Scholar.

³¹ Tefft, William H., NASM Proceedings 8 (Jan. 1879): 52Google Scholar. The NASM fits comfortably into the class of organizations, common at the time, that Galambos, Louis called “dinner-club associations” in Competition and Cooperation: The Emergence of a National Trade Association (Baltimore, 1966), ch. 2, esp. 21, 25, 33–36Google Scholar: low dues, no office, no staff, and entirely dependent on membership participation.

³² Jewett, , NASM Proceedings 3 (Feb. 1874): 56Google Scholar; Rathbone, , NASM Proceedings 7 (Jan. 1878): 28Google Scholar. Aron, Cindy S., Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States (New York, 1999), 66Google Scholar, for this new sort of “convention-vacation.”

³³ Kahn, Lazard, NASM Proceedings 34 (May 1905): 164–68, 174Google Scholar.

³⁴ Grossman, Jonathan, “Co-Operative Foundries,” New York History 24 (1943): 196–210, at 206Google Scholar, and William Sylvis: Pioneer of American Labor (New York, 1945), ch. 9Google Scholar.

³⁵ Youker, J. Clayton, ed., The Military Memoirs of Captain Henry Cribben of the 140th New York Volunteers (Chicago, 1911), iiiGoogle Scholar; “Henry Cribben,” NASM Proceedings 40 (May 1911): 284–86 [obituary]Google Scholar. Cribben gave an account of his early working life in “Labor Organization,” NASM Proceedings 21 (May 1892): 67–69Google Scholar; and 23 (May 1894): 154–61.

³⁶ NASM Proceedings 12 (Feb. 1883): 56; 14 (24 June 1885): 49–50; 15 (2 June 1886): 74Google Scholar; “Address by the President of the Stove Founders' National Defense Association at the First Semi-Annual Meeting, Held at New York, Feb. 1, 1887,” in Stove Founders' National Defense Association (SFNDA), Addresses by the President and Others (Chicago, 1887), 3–16, quotation 16Google Scholar.

³⁷ NASM Proceedings 17 (Feb. 1888): 68–69Google Scholar—Cribben's report after the great Bridge & Beach strike.

³⁸ “Big Strikes on Hand: The Illinois Iron Molders Demand More Wages,” New York Times, 10 Apr. 1887, 10Google Scholar; “The Molders' Strike: Indications that the Manufacturers Will Win,” New York Times, 30 Apr. 1887, 1Google Scholar.

³⁹ Cribben, , “Address by the President of the Stove Founders' National Defense Association at the First Annual Meeting, Detroit, June 21, 1887,” in SFNDA, Addresses by the President and Others, 17–45 at 45Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ See esp. Frey, John P. and Commons, John R., “Conciliation in the Stove Industry,” Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 12, no. 62 (Jan. 1906): 124–96Google Scholar; Barnett, George E., “Report on the Agreement Between the Molders' International Union and the Stove Founders National Defense Association” (21 Dec. 1914) in Research Collections in Labor Studies: The Wilson Administration and American Workers: The US Commission on Industrial Relations, 1912–1915, Unpublished Records, ed. Dubofsky, Melvyn (Frederick, Md., 1985), Reel 9Google Scholar; Bonnett, Clarence E., Employers' Associations in the United States: A Study of Typical Associations (New York, 1922), ch. 2Google Scholar; and Bauder, Russell S., “National Collective Bargaining in the Foundry Industry,” American Economic Review 24 (1934): 462–76Google Scholar.

⁴¹ In Galambos's terms, the NASM began to evolve into a service association; Competition and Cooperation, ch. 3.

⁴² Stecker, Margaret L., “The Founders, the Molders, and the Molding Machine,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 32 (1918): 278–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar; SFNDA, Report of Committee on Machinery (25 Sept. 1908)Google Scholar; National Founders' Association, Stove Founders Pray for Relief (Detroit, 1909)Google Scholar; and “Stove Founders Again Succumb,” The [Open Shop] Review 6, no. 2 (Feb. 1909): 7–12Google Scholar. Harris, Howell J., “The Rocky Road to Mass Production: Change and Continuity in the US Foundry Industry, 1890–1940,” Enterprise & Society 1 (June 2000): 391–437, esp. 413CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “‘The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually,’” explain why the stove trade was in any case resistant to mechanization. Open shop sentiment among stove founders also led to the cause célèbre of Buck's Stove and Range Co. v. Samuel Gompers et al., 1907–14, brought by Buck's chief executive James W. Van Cleave, NASM vice president and president of the anti-labor National Association of Manufacturers. This went all the way to the US Supreme Court twice. See Ernst, Daniel R., Lawyers Against Labor: From Individual Rights to Corporate Liberalism (Urbana, 1995), esp. 126–32Google Scholar.

⁴³ Merriam, J. O., NASM Proceedings 6 (Jan. 1877): 63Google Scholar; Spear, James, NASM Proceedings 6 (June 1877): 40Google Scholar; discussion, NASM Proceedings 16 (Feb. 1887): 128Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Smyser, , presidential address, NASM Proceedings 17 (Feb. 1888), 39, 41Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 39, 44.

⁴⁶ Ibid., 38; NASM Proceedings 20 (7 May 1891): 118, 124Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ Discussion on consolidation, NASM Proceedings 20 (7 May 1891): 123–24, 125Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Kahn in ibid., 132–33. Kahn published his views as a widely circulated pamphlet, The Stove Industry and the Ethics of Consolidation (Lancaster, Penn., 1893)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Smyser's, and Cribben's, Henry accounts of this meeting are in NASM Proceedings 20 (May 1891): 121–22, 129–32,Google Scholar and NASM Proceedings 32 (May 1903): 47–48Google Scholar, reviewing a dozen years' repeatedly unsuccessful consolidation attempts.

⁵⁰ These produced the Pittsburg Stove & Range Co. and the American Stove Co., a combination of Chicago and St. Louis firms and the most likely original for the fictional Consolidated Stove & Range Co. of North America, the evil protagonist in the only novel about the stove industry, Updegraff's, RobertCaptains in Conflict: The Story of the Struggle of a Business Generation (Chicago, 1927)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ NASM Proceedings 12 (Feb. 1883): 46–49, quotation 48Google Scholar.

⁵² NASM Proceedings 15 (Feb. 1886): 49–50, 93–94Google Scholar.

⁵³ NASM Proceedings 16 (Feb. 1887): 113–29Google Scholar, “Central Bureau” plan at 130–31.

⁵⁴ NASM Proceedings 18 (Feb. 1889): 197–98Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ This increasingly common strategy's rationale is explained well by Bowman, John R., “The Politics of the Market: Economic Competition and the Organization of Capitalists,” Political Power and Social Theory 5 (1985): 35–88, at 51Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Metcalfe, , NASM Proceedings 15 (Feb. 1886): 98–118Google Scholar; he had just published The Cost of Manufactures and the Administration of Workshops, Public and Private (New York, 1885)Google Scholar, and went on to use the stove industry data supplied to him, probably by Perry, in his celebrated American Society of Mechanical Engineers address “The Shop Order System of Accounts,” reprinted as 333–43 of the 3rd (1894) edition.

⁵⁷ NASM Proceedings 20 (May 1891): 108–13, quotation 109Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ NASM Proceedings 24 (May 1895): 73–77Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ Myers, W. J., “Equalization of Prices: Cannot a Uniform Rule Be Established That Will Be Fair and Equitable?” NASM Proceedings 29 (May 1900): 117–23Google Scholar and discussion, 123–43; Moore, , “Equalization—What is the Fairest Method for Determining the Relative Value of Different Goods? Is it Advantageous and Beneficial to the Stove Manufacturers?” NASM Proceedings 32 (May 1903): 95–97Google Scholar, quotation 95 and in discussion of “Equalization of Prices,” NASM Proceedings 34 (May 1905): 157Google Scholar; Sheppard in same discussion, 156.

⁶⁰ Mitchell, , “The Value of Local Associations,” NASM Proceedings 34 (May 1905): 181–86, quotations 182, 186Google Scholar.

⁶¹ Mitchell, , “How to Bring about Co-operation between Local Associations Where Their Members Sell Goods Outside the Territory of Their Own Local Association,” NASM Proceedings 35 (May 1906): 159–63Google Scholar. Changes in share of industry output from NASM Secretaries' Reports in Proceedings 1896–1914; movement of capital, Davis, Donald F., Conspicuous Production: Automobiles and Elites in Detroit, 1899–1939 (Philadelphia, 1988), 46, 49–50, 67–68Google Scholar.

⁶² Civic Federation of Chicago, Chicago Conference on Trusts: Speeches, Debates, Resolutions, List of the Delegates, Committees, Etc. Held September 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 18th, 1899 (Chicago, 1900), 530Google Scholar.

⁶³ Myers, , presidential address, NASM Proceedings 39 (May 1910): 22–23Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ Boal, Stanhope, NASM Proceedings 39 (May 1910): 246–27Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ Burt, N. H., “Systematic Ascertainment of Stove Values vs. Haphazard Comparisons,” NASM Proceedings 39 (May 1910): 123–29 at 125Google Scholar; Myers, presidential address, 18.

⁶⁶ Lansing, , “President's Address,” NASM Proceedings 44 (May 1915): 78Google Scholar.

⁶⁷ NASM Proceedings 44 (May 1915): 111Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Secretary's report on trade association activities, NASM Proceedings 51 (May 1922): 22–24Google Scholar; on statistics, NASM Proceedings 53 (May 1924): 39, and costs, 41Google Scholar; Report of the Executive Committee on constitutional revision, NASM Proceedings 54 (May 1925): 77Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ Proceedings of the National Association of Manufacturers of Heating and Cooking Apparatus 58 (May 1929): 10Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Berk, and Schneiberg, , “Varieties in Capitalism, Varieties of Association: Collaborative Learning in American Industry, 1900 to 1925,” Politics & Society 33 (2005): 46–87 at 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also in Berk, Brandeis, ch. 6.

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⁷² Bowman, John R., Capitalist Collective Action: Competition, Cooperation, and Conflict in the Coal Industry (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar; Brody, David, “Market Unionism in America: The Case of Coal,” ch. 4 in his In Labor's Cause: Main Theme on the History of the American Worker (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar; Graebner, William, “Great Expectations: The Search for Order in Bituminous Coal, 1890–1917,” Business History Review 48 (1974): 49–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jackson, Robert Max, The Formation of Craft Labor Markets (Orlando, FL, 1984)Google Scholar, for construction and printing; Cohen, Andrew Wender, The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900–1940 (Cambridge, 2004)Google Scholar, on regulatory unionism in local-market industries.

⁷³ Ripley, William Z., ed. and intro., Trusts, Pools, and Corporations (Boston, 1905)Google Scholar, still the best case-study collection; Jenks, Jeremiah W., The Trust Problem (New York, 1907), esp. ch. 2Google Scholar, “The Wastes of Competition,” summarizes the conventional wisdom.

⁷⁴ Meade, , Trust Finance: A Study of the Genesis, Organization, and Finance of Industrial Combinations (New York, 1903), 84–85, 106Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ McCraw, Thomas K. and Reinhardt, Forrest, “Losing to Win: US Steel's Pricing, Investment Decisions, and Market Share, 1901–1938,” Journal of Economic History 49 (1989): 593–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The NASM's decline in the 1920s was neither fatal nor final. The industry's pursuit of “fair competition” resumed in June 1933, when its successor organization, the Institute of Cooking and Heating Appliance Manufacturers, took advantage of the National Industrial Recovery Act in order to rebuild itself and enshrine sixty years' experience of what it took to make price and nonprice competition tolerable in a body of rules with statutory backing—see National Recovery Administration, Code of Fair Competition for the Cooking and Heating Appliance Manufacturing Industry [Approved Code No. 236] (Washington, DC, 1934), esp. 258–60Google Scholar.