xxix Journal of Interdisciplinary History, :4 (Spring, 1999), 511–557. Gerald Gamm and Robert D. Putnam GERALDVOLUNTARY GAMM ASSOCIATIONS AND ROBERT IN D. AMERICAPUTNAM The Growth of Voluntary Associations in America, 1840–1940 Americans are a civic people. Next to the mass political party, probably no aspect of American democ- racy has been more celebrated than the long-standing proclivity of Americans to join voluntary associations. According to Schlesinger, we are “a nation of joiners.” The joining began in the middle of the eighteenth century, it ºourished in the revolu- tionary committees that undergirded the War of Independence, and it has continued ever since. “Considering the central impor- tance of the voluntary organization in American history there is no doubt it has provided the people with their greatest school of self-government,” Schlesinger writes. “Rubbing minds as well as elbows, they have been trained from youth to take common counsel, choose leaders, harmonize differences, and obey the expressed will of the majority. In mastering the associative way they have mastered the democratic way.”1 Gerald Gamm is James P. Wilmot Assistant Professor of Political Science and History, University of Rochester. He is the author of The Making of New Deal Democrats: Voting Behavior and Realignment in Boston, 1920–1940 (Chicago, 1989); Urban Exodus: Why the Jews Left Boston and the Catholics Stayed (Cambridge, Mass., 1999). Robert D. Putnam is Stanªeld Professor of International Peace, Harvard University. He is the author of Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, 1993); Bowling Alone: Civic Disengagement in America (New York, 1999). Earlier versions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Social Science History Association, New Orleans, 1996; the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, San Francisco, 1997; and the conference on “Civic Engagement in American Democracy,” Portland, Maine, 1997. The research for this article was funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a fellowship, for Gamm, from the Woodrow Wilson Inter- national Center for Scholars. The authors received particularly helpful comments from Nancy Cott, Marshall Ganz, Peter Dobkin Hall, Tom Sander, Theda Skocpol, Margaret Weir, and Robert Westbrook. For much of the research and data collection, the authors are indebted to Melissa Buis, Brad Clarke, Jay Goodliffe, Isa Helfgott, Tom Keating, Lisa Laskin, Jonathan Leeman, Martin Schulke, and Aaron Wicks. The authors would also like to thank Cindy Adams, Louise Hayes, Brian Roraff, Mario Salguero, and Chris Warren for additional research assistance. Special thanks go to Louise Kennedy and Tom Sander for their help in managing this project. © 1999 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. 1 Arthur M. Schlesinger, “Biography of a Nation of Joiners,” American Historical Review, L (1944), 24. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551804 by guest on 30 September 2021 512 | GERALD GAMM AND ROBERT D. PUTNAM Schlesinger understood that he was revisiting and updating Tocqueville’s famous argument. More than a century earlier, Toc- queville had contended that the abundance of American civil associations contributed to the stability of American democracy. Civil associations, he insisted, were more crucial than political associations to a democratic society. “If the inhabitants of demo- cratic countries had neither the right nor the taste for uniting for political objects, their independence would run great risks, but they could keep both their wealth and their knowledge for a long time,” Tocqueville argued. “But if they did not learn some habits of acting together in the affairs of daily life, civilization itself would be in peril.”2 Tocqueville did not intend his remarks to serve as a warning to Americans. Neither did he hesitate to acknowledge ways in which political activity nurtured civil activity. As Skocpol dem- onstrates, the nation’s dense network of associations ºourished alongside mass party organizations and depended in many ways on the activities of the state. “The early U.S. postal system both grew out of and furthered a congressional representative system that encompassed virtually all white men,” Skocpol writes. “It furthered ever-intensifying communications among citizens, pull- ing more and more Americans into passionate involvements in regional and national moral crusades and electoral campaigns.”3 Tocqueville was deeply impressed by the level of voluntary activity that he found in the United States, and he regarded the American case as an exemplar for the democratizing world. He observed a society where the commitment to voluntary associa- tions was constant and unyielding. Generations later, Schlesinger argued that American civil society was at least as strong and vibrant as it had been in Tocqueville’s day. In the years since Schlesinger wrote his essay, scholars have researched a vast array of associations and produced a substantial and impressive literature. One associa- tion and one community at a time, this scholarship has quietly undermined the textbook image of associations established by Tocqueville and Schlesinger. Modern research suggests that asso- ciational life is a variable, not a constant. Yet, Tocqueville’s claim 2 Alexis de Tocqueville (ed., J. P. Mayer; trans., George Lawrence), Democracy in America (Garden City, 1969; orig. pub. 1835–1840), 514. 3 Theda Skocpol, “The Tocqueville Problem: Civic Engagement in American Democracy,” Social Science History, XXI (1997), 463. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551804 by guest on 30 September 2021 VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS IN AMERICA | 513 that “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations” remains deªnitive.4 Understanding both the historical accuracy of this textbook image and the circumstances in which associations ºourish is an urgent task. During the last generation, according to Putnam, Americans have deserted the church pew, the union hall, the Parent–Teacher Association, the Elks lodge, and even the bowling league. By many measures—though not all—the level of civic engagement in the United States has declined since the 1960s. Americans are less connected with one another in voluntary associations (at least in the conventional forms to which their parents were accustomed), as well as in less formal settings. Levels of trust and political involvement have fallen sharply. Associations are, to be sure, not the only form of social capital, but as Toc- queville underscored, they have been a particularly signiªcant form in the United States.5 If the textbook image is correct—if the American attachment to voluntary organizations has remained consistent throughout the nation’s history—then the recent decline in civic engagement represents an unprecedented, and serious, event. If, however, the textbook image is not correct and periods of overall associational decline have alternated with periods of associational expansion, then the past not only gives context to the present but offers potential explanation for the current drift away from civic in- volvement. Reversing that drift requires understanding the re- gional, political, and institutional sources of associational vigor and the character of communities where association building has his- torically been most successful. That analysis is a large task. In virtually every city and town, Americans have built dense, complex networks of voluntary as- sociations: churches, clubs, lodges, choirs, mutual-aid societies, and sports teams. The institutional history of voluntary associations is the history of many hundreds of thousands of institutions that are obscure, scattered, and often small. A systematic analysis of association building throughout the United States means locating and analyzing many forms of associations, in many regions, in large cities and modest towns, over long periods of time. 4 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 513 (emphasis added). 5 Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal of Democracy, VI (1995), 65–78; idem, Bowling Alone: Civic Disengagement in America (New York, 1999). Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002219599551804 by guest on 30 September 2021 514 | GERALD GAMM AND ROBERT D. PUTNAM To conduct that analysis, we have gathered data, generally at ten-year intervals, from a sample of twenty-six cities and towns for the period 1840 to 1940 (not yet including 1930). The principal body of data is drawn from city directories, which include com- prehensive lists of a large variety of associations. We also gathered data from organizational directories compiled and published by associations themselves, to assess the validity of city directories as a source of data and to obtain membership statistics for local associations. Drawing on these various bodies of evidence, we analyze long-term trends in American associational development, regional patterns of associational strength, and the relationship of associational development to immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. Though rates of growth differed from association to associa- tion, we ªnd that most types of associations grew rapidly in number, relative to population, between 1850 and 1900, with slower growth through 1910. Between 1910 and 1940, the inci- dence of associations stagnated