Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards

8a FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10)
andi work toward. adoption of uniform laws. Seventeen States were repre.
sented at the third conference in 1907, and as at the previous meetings the
discussion soon centered around "the question of honest weights and meas-
ures in all business transactions," the almost infinite variety of laws affect.
lug weight and measures, and the meager funds provided by the States for
their inspection. The conference began work on a model weights and meas-
ures law, to be offered for adoption by all the States, and recommended
unanimously that additional powers be given the Bureau of Standards to
make the State laws effective.67 Such enforcement, of course, the Bureau
could not undertake, but it offered its cooperation to State governments in
establishing effective inspection systems while it sought other means to
"police" weights and measures. The means was exposure.
Since 1901, as Stratton said, "a great reform [had been] going on
throughout the country," its principal target the commercial oligarchy that
ruled the Nation.68 It had been touched off by journalists such as Ida M.
Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, and Ray Stannard Baker through their exposure
in the periodical press of the knavery in big business, the roguery of politics
and politicians, of labor leaders and employers alike. Aroused by the
literature of exposure, a passion for change, for honesty, and for justice
swept the Nation. Among the consequences of the reform wave were
Roosevelt's indictment of the meat-packing trust in 1905 and passage of the
Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.
Before the wave receded, the whole Nation became aware of the
presence of the Bureau of Standards in the Federal Government. Beyond
anything its proponents could have contemplated, the coincidence of the
founding of the Bureau with the age of reform shaped its history for the
next 30 years. Weights and measures was to be the trigger.
The annual conferences of State sealers at the Bureau made it clear
that through ignorance and neglect of State responsibilities the American
public was being robbed of enormous sums daily in the marketplace. Since
the State governments showed little interest in weights and measures reforms,
said Stratton, the Bureau "must reach the public through State and city
officials by testing their standards." In December 1908 he asked Congress
for a special grant of $10,000 "to investigate what the States are doing with
their standards, and to encourage them to take up and supervise the local
work as they should." 69 It was the Bureau's first request for special funds,
and Congress approved it without question. What Stratton intended was an
investigation to reveal the extent of false and fraudulent weights and measures
in use throughout the Nation.
NBS Annual Report 1907, p. 6.
Hearings * * * 1908 (Nov. 30, 1906), p. 351.
°° Hearings * * * 1910 (Dec. 4, 1908), pp. 185—186.