[1][2] By the latter decades of the 19th century, the momentum behind the creation of such a department grew, its advocates pointing to the existence of various U.S. agencies to promote and regulate agriculture, fisheries, forestry, labor, mining, and transportation and noting that the United States was virtually alone among the countries of the world in lacking a government agency to perform the same function for commerce and industry.

[5][6] The department was given "the province and duty to ... foster, promote, and develop the foreign and domestic commerce, the mining, manufacturing, shipping, and fishing industries, the labor interests, and the transportation facilities of the United States.

[8] California congressman Victor H. Metcalf succeeded him as secretary and described Cortelyou's work in setting up the department during his short tenure as having been "as thorough and complete" as possible.

[18] New York businessman and former U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire Oscar S. Straus and Missouri politician and lawyer Charles Nagel served as the final two secretaries of commerce and labor.

[18] During their tenures, the department increasingly became a focal point for requests for many kinds of scientific, sociological, statistical, and commercial information.

The Bureau of Corporations became part of the Department of Commerce in 1913, but was spun off as an independent agency, the Federal Trade Commission, in 1915.