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

THE POSTWAR WORLD 225
agreed that these "research associates" would be paid by industry, and since
their work was for the industry at large, rather than for any single company.
the results would be published by the Bureau and so made available to all.12
Two years later, in 1921, six associates in metallurgy were appointed
by the Director. By 1923, 21 associates, representing 18 industries, were at
the Bureau, and by 1925 a total of 61 associates, maintained by 36 organiza-
tions, were at work, most of them sponsored by trade associations but also
among them a number from private research firms, science foundations, and
Government agencies.'3
At the heels of the staffing crisis came the brief but severe depression
of 1920—21. Overnight at the end of the war, President Wilson's War In-
dustries Board and other emergency regulatory agencies had been dissolved,
ending nationwide Government control of the economy. For a time unfet-
tered business boomed, but as prices soared out of sight, production and em-
ployment fell off and thousands of new companies, notably in the automobile
industry, collapsed. Soon there was widespread criticism of the high cost
of living, which since 1916 had seen the dollar reduced in purchasing value
to 45 cents; of the new income tax and surtaxes, seriously felt for the first
time since their imposition in 1913; and charges of inefficiency, extravagance,
and overdevelopment throughout the Government.'4
Reacting to "the avalanche of disapproval" aimed at the Wilson ad-
ministration, Congress lashed out at "the army of clerks * * * and cro-
cheting stenographers" said to be infesting every department of the Govern-
ment, and at appropriations hearings hacked away funds, research and
operating alike. The cuts that could not be compromised were annoying but
not deep. The Bureau closed several of its branch offices and began saving
its cinders to make cinder-concrete paths between the buildings. As Stratton
12 Hearings * * * 1919 (Jan. 25, 1918), p. 984; letter, SWS to Managing Director, Na-
tional Industrial Conference Board, June 26, 1919 (NBS Box 10, IG). Most responsive
were industries which had small research laboratories or none at all, and had less to
fear from patentable discoveries, as in dental materials, terra cotta, tile, and other
building materials, pottery, textiles, and color research.
"NBS Annual Report 1921, p. 240; Annual Report 1923, pp. 4—5; NBS C296, "Research
associates at the Bureau of Standards" (1925). The plan further solved staffing diffi-
culties when a number of the research associates subsequently left industry and came to
work for the Bureau, among them Dr. Paul D. Merica, Dr. John R. Cain, R. G. Walten-
berg, Dr. I. G. Pr:est, N. S. Osborne, Dr. H. F. Stimson, N. D. Booth, J. A. Dickinson,
Dr. Deane B. Judd, Dr. F. G. Brickwedde, T. S. Sligh, Jr., and Dr. A. V. Astin (see list
of associates in C296).
14 The top rate of tax on personal income, set at 7 percent in 1913, was slightly reduced
during the 1920's. By 1932 it was up to 25 percent, and during the depression years it
reached a high of 63 percent.