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

NEW' SOURCES, RESOURCES, AND SUBSTITUTES 177
As with so many of the wartime investigations, the war ended before
much of the research in substitutes could be translated into new products.
In the emergency, the quickest solution was often elimination, as in the case
of uppers on shoes. Wool simply disappeared from shops and stores and
went into uniforms. Felt, too, went off the market and into canteen cases
and helmets, splints, and shell packing. Silk went into powder bags. But
elimination alone was not enough. To continue to supply the Allies and at
the same time clothe, feed, and equip our military forces demanded an end
to traditionally wasteful practices and a hitherto unknown degree of stand-
ardization. Thus, perhaps the most important result of the search for new
sources or substitutes for materials in critical supply was not the substitutes
themselves but the fact that both Government and industry were forced to
establish specifications for materials and insist on greater standardization
of products.
The drive for standardization and elimination of waste in commercial
and industrial practices had its beginning in the Commercial Economy
Board, organized in the Council of National Defense in March 1917. Re-
named the Conservation Division, it was transferred in May 1918 to Bernard
Baruch's War Industries Board, soon to regulate the manufacture of some
30,000 articles of commerce.44
In the year and a half of the war the Conservation Division and its
predecessor effected enormous savings of manpower and materials in over
250 industries by reducing the number of styles, varieties, sizes, and colors,
by eliminating services and certain materials and products altogether, by
substituting plentiful for scarce materials, and by standardizing sizes, lengths,
widths, and weights. The clothing industry was revolutionized from the skin
out as steel for corsets, weighted silks, and heavy woolens disappeared from
the market. Fabric was saved by shortening men's coats, eliminating outside
pockets on suits, and restricting suit styles to 10 models. Shoe lasts were
reduced in number and shoe colors restricted to black, white, and one shade
of tan.
Newsprint for papers and magazines was cut as much as 20 percent.
Colors of typewriter ribbons shrank from 150 to 5 and were sold in heavy
paper instead of tinfoil and tin boxes. Buggy wheels were reduced from
232 sizes and varieties to 4, plows from 326 to 76 sizes and styles, and auto-
mobile tires from 287 types to 9. Brass pens were abolished, pocketknives
"At the same time, Herbert Hoover's Food Administration began fixing food prices, to
forestall hoarding and profiteering, inaugurated "meatless" and "wheatless" days, cam-
paigned for other food economies in the home, and acted to stimulate food production.
"Hooverizing" enabled the United States to export almost three times her normal amounts
of breadstuffs, meats, and sugar in 1918. Mark Sullivan, Our Times: The United States,
1900—1925. V. Over Here, 1914—1918 (New York: Scribner, 1933), pp. 383—384,
418—422.