A chamber of commerce (also referred to in some circles as a board of trade) is a form of business network, e.g., a local organization of businesses whose goal is to further the interests of businesses. Business owners in towns and cities form these local societies to advocate on behalf of the business community. Local businesses are members, and they elect a board of directors or executive council to set policy for the chamber. The board or council then hires a President, CEO or Executive Director, plus staffing appropriate to size, to run the organization.
The first chamber of commerce was founded in 1599 in Marseille, France. It would be followed 65 years later by another official chamber of commerce, probably in Brugge, then part of the Spanish Netherlands.
The world's oldest English-speaking chamber of commerce is that of New York City, which was established in 1768. The oldest known existing chamber in the English-speaking world with continuous records is the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, which was founded in 1783. However, Leeds Chamber of Commerce is the UK's oldest, followed by Belfast, Northern Ireland.
A chamber of commerce is not a governmental body or institution, and has no direct role in the writing and passage of laws and regulations that affect businesses. It may however, act as a lobby in an attempt to get laws passed that are favorable to businesses.
Read more about Chamber Of Commerce: Characteristics
Famous quotes containing the words Chamber Of Commerce, chamber of commerce, chamber of, chamber and/or commerce:
“That’s where Time magazine lives ... way out there on the puzzled, masturbating edge, peering through the keyhole and selling what they see to the big wide world of chamber of commerce voyeurs who support the public prints.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.”
—William Least Heat Moon [William Trogdon] (b. 1939)
“That’s where Time magazine lives ... way out there on the puzzled, masturbating edge, peering through the keyhole and selling what they see to the big wide world of chamber of commerce voyeurs who support the public prints.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“But it is the same thing we are all seeing,
Our world. Go after it,
Go get it boy, says the man holding the stick.
Eat, says the hunger, and we plunge blindly in again,
Into the chamber behind the thought.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Indeed, I believe that in the future, when we shall have seized again, as we will seize if we are true to ourselves, our own fair part of commerce upon the sea, and when we shall have again our appropriate share of South American trade, that these railroads from St. Louis, touching deep harbors on the gulf, and communicating there with lines of steamships, shall touch the ports of South America and bring their tribute to you.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)