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

THE LEGACY LEFT TO US 215
research, unconnected, as it had been earlier, with Government testing. Back
of Stratton's arguments for this research was the realization, crystallized by
the wartime experience, that the recent alliance of science and industry was
certain to continue in the postwar years. Nor had it escaped notice that
most of the wartime triumphs in physics and chemistry were of European
In the coming years the great industrial organizations of this
country must, to remain competitive, increase their research activities, and in
doing so would make unparalleled demands upon the Nation's scientific
resources.
Foreseeing this, in 1918 the National Research Council and the Rocke.
feller Foundation had raised the question of establishing a permanent re-
search institution devoted to pure research, to which industry after the war
might look for leadership in the physical sciences. "Is the Federal Gov-
ernment," George E. Vincent, president of the Rockefeller Institute, wrote
to Robert A. Millikan of the Council, "in a position to create a separate insti-
tution on the analogy of certain research units in the Department of Agricul.
ture and in the Geological Survey? Is the Bureau of Standards capable of
extension into a national research institution?" 145 The questions remained,
but hope of implementing them ended with the armistice as Congress turned
its back on war and all its prerogatives and the wartime organization of
science and scientists melted away.
Although Stratton, as an executive member of the National Research
Council, certainly knew of the questions under consideration, no correspond.
ence has been found to indicate what part, if any, the Bureau took in them.
Quite apart from the interest they must have aroused, it is more than likely
that Stratton had already determined on the postwar course of the Bureau.
As nothing else could have, the war opened to the Bureau new vistas of its
role in the Nation's commerce and industry. When first called on to meet
the Nation's war needs, industry had shown itself both fearful and resentful
of Government interference.146 Within months, as the magnitude of the
task stood revealed, industry came to realize that only the Federal Govern-
ment could mobilize and marshal the Nation's resources and command the
scientific assistance that industry must have to produce the materials of
war. And it discovered in the Bureau not only technical assistance and
Letter of Feb. 5, 1918, quoted in The Autobiography of Robert A. Millikan, pp. 180-
181. See also Dupree, Science in the Federal Government, pp. 323—325.
Clarkson in Industrial America in the World War (pp. 318, 427, 449); speaking of
the early efforts of the War Industries Board to harness industry to the war needs of
the country, said the Board repeatedly found that "business and patriotism were confined
to separate compartments." Besides industry's foot-dragging in meeting specifications,
Government war purchases for a time were attended by "a saturnalia of high' prices."