Contemporary newspaper accounts credit A. L. Osborne of the Scott and Howe Lumber Company, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with publicizing the idea of a state association of manufacturers in Wisconsin at a 1910 Milwaukee Manufacturers and Commerce Association conference on industrial insurance. Following that conference Wisconsin industrialists organized the Wisconsin Manufacturers' Association (WMA) at a series of meetings in the autumn and winter of 1910-1911. At a January 1911 meeting members ratified the Articles of Association and bylaws of the WMA and elected a fifteen-member board of directors, which in turn selected the officers of the organization. A. L. Osborne, H. W. Bolens, and Otto Falk composed the original WMA organizing committee. Officers of the new association were president, Thomas M. Blackstock, Phoenix Chair Company, Sheboygan; vice president, H. W. Bolens, Gilson Manufacturing Company, Port Washington; treasurer, Frank Sensenbrenner, Kimberly-Clark Company, Neenah; and secretary, William George Bruce, Johnson Service Company, Milwaukee. Founding directors of the WMA were the above officers and G. F. Steele, Nekoosa Paper Company, Port Edwards; A. Hirschheimer, La Crosse Plow Company, La Crosse; E. C. Thiers, Allen Tanning Company, Kenosha; D. P. Lamoureaux, Beaver Dam Malleable Iron Company, Beaver Dam; J. A. Vail, Fairbanks-Morse Manufacturing Company, Beloit; L. E. Geer, Manitowoc Boiler Works, Manitowoc; L. C. Tolles, Phoenix Manufacturing Company, Eau Claire; Otto Falk, Falk Manufacturing Company, Milwaukee; and A. L. Osborne.
Of the purposes of the WMA, F. J. Sensenbrenner stated that “the Association must not have as a premise opposition to every new proposal, but must support that which is sound, and oppose with equal vigor all that is detrimental to the general welfare.”
Like other state associations of manufacturers, WMA's primary activities consisted of monitoring legislative proposals, presenting facts at hearings, and otherwise representing its member firms in state and, to a lesser extent, federal, administrative, judicial, and legislative proceedings. Along with representatives of other state manufacturers' associations, WMA delegates participated in the National Industrial Conference, sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers.
Two early objects of WMA attention were the post-1907 depression movements for a Wisconsin income tax and for a state workmen's compensation law to replace the common law adjudication of occupational injury claims. The Wisconsin legislature enacted both an income tax and a workmen's compensation law in 1911. The WMA was influential in the drafting of the provisions of the workmen's compensation law which based the tax on individual employers on a rating of that firm's history of occupational injuries. WMA likewise successfully lobbied for the rating of individual firms for tax purposes when the passage of a Wisconsin unemployment compensation law became inevitable in 1934. Other longstanding concerns of the WMA have included legislation and administrative law on wages and hours, capital gains taxes, property taxes, freight tariffs, import duties, and the environment.
For its first eight years, WMA officers carried out its activities as unpaid volunteers. In 1919, with membership at about 200 firms, WMA selected as its first full-time manager and executive secretary George F. Kull, a Fox River Valley newspaperman. Among the activities initiated during Kull's 27-year tenure were publication of the WMA Weekly Bulletin and the annual Guide to Wisconsin Manufacturers. In 1946, with membership at about 600 firms, Robert A. Ewens, who since 1945 had been WMA's Chicago representative, succeeded Kull. Membership rose to about 1700 firms by the early 1970s. In 1976 WMA merged with the Wisconsin State Chamber of Commerce, an organization founded in January 1929. The new organization took the name Wisconsin Association of Manufacturers and Commerce, a title frequently shortened to Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.
