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

98 FOUNDING THE NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS (1901-10)
the universities offered lures hard to resist, as Dr. Stratton demonstrated
graphically at a congressional hearing in 1906: 86
Harvard University Bureau of Standards
Instructor $1,200—$1,500 Laboratory assistant $ 900—$1,200
Assistant professor 2,500— 3,000 Assistant physicist 1,400— 1,800
Associate professor 3,500— 4,500 Associate physicist 2,000— 2,200
Professor 4,000— 5,500 Physicist 3,500— 4,000
The Bureau, said Dr. Stratton, had lost a number of its staff that
year, and some of its most valuable members were strongly tempted to leave.
One was Dr. Noyes, the Bureau's chief chemist, who between 1904 and 1907
had won international fame for his development of standard methods of
analysis and standard specifications for chemicals while at the Bureau. He
had had university offers as high as $4,750, although the Bureau could not
pay him more than $3,500. Two years later Dr. Noyes went to the Univer-
sity of Illinois as head of its chemistry department. Dr. Rosa refused an
invitation to go to MIT, but Dr. Edward Hyde, in charge of Bureau research
in photometry, left his $2,000 position for similar research in the Edison
lamp laboratories at $5,000 a year.
Congress was not inclined to be sympathetic about such losses. "Is
not that thing likely to occur with any reasonable salary that the Government
can pay?" asked Washington Gardner, Republican representative from Mich-
igan and member of the House Subcommittee on Appropriations. It was,
Dr. Stratton replied, but the nature of the work at the Bureau made its staff
particularly vulnerable to good offers outside, especially since "nearly every
great manufactuing concern in this country is establishing a research lab-
oratory" and looking for trained men. "I think it [is] a good thing for
the country to have them go out into the world," answered Mr. Gardner, and
suggested that the Bureau continue to hire men at its lower grades and pro-
mote them as vacancies occurred.87
Despite the low salaries, employment with the Bureau of Standards
had many compensations, not least the prestige of working for a new, im-
portant, and rapidly growing scientific agency of the Federal Government.
Status and tenure were apt to be mere certain than in a university or in
industry since all positions, then as now, were filled through competitive
civil service examinations, thus guarding against personal whim or
favoritism, with permanency and promotion determined by civil service law.
Except for division chiefs, whom he selected on the basis of demon-
strated productivity and promise, Stratton, hampered by the competition
in salaries, adopted the policy of bringing in talented graduates of first-
class scientific or technical colleges, appointing them to the lower grades of
Hearings * * * 1907 (Feb. 23, 1906), p. 602.
Hearings * * * 1911 (Jan. 27, 1910), pp. 332—336.