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

REVISING THE ORGANIC ACT 155
and sometimes twice a week.114 Stratton would take him to the laboratories
he himself had been recently touring and where investigations that would
interest Redfield were in progress.
It was almost certainly as a result of Redfield's visits that in an effort
to increase Bureau usefulness as well as to settle an old area of interdepart-
mental bickering, Redfield sought by agreement with the Secretary of Agri-
culture to transfer the miscellaneous testing laboratory in the Bureau of
Chemistry to the Bureau of Standards. On July 1, 1914 that laboratory,
with funds of $26,000 for the testing of textiles, paper, leather, rubber, oils,
and paints, was officially transferred and within a week the new group,
headed by Dr. Percy H. Walker and F. W. Smither, with eight assistant
chemists and a clerk, was organized on the second floor of North building.115
Redfield seems to have been diligent in his search for ways to enhance
the prestige of his Department, and to have made the Bureau a prime bene-
ficiary of these efforts. By tradition, the executive departments of the Gov-
ernment hid their lights and good works, a fact he resented since it made "in-
forming Congress of one's needs * * * very difficult." Soon after taking
office he began making it a point to attend congressional committee hearings
with his bureau chiefs and personally brought key people with him to explain
their needs"° He took an active part in the proceedings, demonstrating a
fine talent in the use of the first person plural. His intense personal
identification with the Bureau was exhibited on one occasion when Stratton
was seeking a new special appropriation by his remark, "I can only say that
anything that Dr. Stratton wants I back up." 117
It was almost certainly Redfield who authorized' a maj or change in
format of the annual reports of his bureaus the year he came in. The Bureau
report for 1913, 38 pages in length, almost tripled in size to 99 pages in 1914
and continued to swell by nearly 50 percent each year thereafter.'18 Its
114 At Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 18, 1918), p. 893, Redfield said he finally bought an
automobile in 1916, because the trip to the Bureau was too far by carriage.
115 Letter, SWS to Redfield, June 5, 1914, and attached correspondence (NARG 16, Office
of the Secretary of Agriculture, sub: Duplication of Work, Department of Commerce,
1914).
Redfield, Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1924, p. 78; ibid., May 10, 1924, p. 19.
Results of these trips to the Hill were mixed. Stratton and his staff, Redfield found,
explained their scientific problems in terms which laymen could understand. On the
other hand, some like Dr. 0. H. Tittmann, chief of the Coast Survey, unfortunately
"resented the sharp questions that were often asked," an attitude that was reflected in
meager appropriations (Redfield, ibid., May 3, 1924, p. 81).
117 See Hearings * * * 1915 (Jan. 27, 1914), p. 664 et passim; [Senate] Hearings
* * *
on H.R. 15279 (Apr. 29, 1914), p. 61.
118 The report of the Bureau of Corporations in Commerce expanded from 8 to 48 pages
and all but three of the reports of the other nine bureaus of the Department showed
considerable increases in size. No such sudden expansion occurred in other Depart-
ment reports examined, i.e., Interior and Agriculture.