Levering’s co-organizer of the Chamber was John M. Switzer, a young Stanford drop-out (a classmate of Herbert Hoover, later US President, 1929-1933) who joined the California US Volunteers as an Army Corporal in 1898 and demobilized as US Army Captain in 1901. Switzer came to the Philippine Islands together with 51 officers and 986 enlisted men who left the Port of San Francisco on May 25, 1898 and arrived in the Philippines on June 30, 1898 (from a published document by The Patriotic Publishing Co., of San Francisco, Nov & Dec. 1898).

At the end of his tour of duty, he stayed on, becoming a successful Cebu businessman whose company Switzer & Company (1901) imported US goods and distributed them through Chinese and Filipino retailers using the Cebu Port throughout Visayas and Northern Mindanao (Cullinane 1989: 224-225).

It was a business model that proved widely successful and brought his company and his leadership to the attention of Pacific Commercial Company, which acquired Switzer Company, and his services as Vice President, in 1911. Pacific Commercial Company (PCC), also a CCC member, was engaged in marketing general types of products needed in the fledgling Philippine economy under the Americans, products consisting of all types of machineries (general, electrical, agricultural), cement, steel products, general hardware, drugs and chemicals, textiles, groceries, sundries and home furnishings). PCC was also the biggest food supplier to the US military during that time.

Aside from serving as President of the Chamber that he had co-founded with Levering, Switzer also served in the executive board of Cebu Province as Vice-President. He was a true-blooded Republican and represented the Philippine Islands in the Republican Party Convention in mainland US.