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

• and
THE POSTWAR WORLD
He rivetted attention on that 1 percent, representing little more than 50 cents
out of the approximately $50 per capita 18 collected by the Government from
all sources, for it was the key to industrial recovery and to reduction in
the high cost of living. Out of that 50 cents, agriculture received 62 percent;
• public health, and labor bureaus received 25.6 percent; the Bureau
qf Mines .and Geological Survey 5 percent; and the Bureau of Foreign and
Commerce, Bureau of Standards, Bureau of Fisheries, and Coast
Survey together 10.5° percent or little more than S cents per
capita. Considering these facts, said Rosa, the distribution of Government
income left little room for extravagance.
The charge of inefficiency in Government, on the other hand, was
more valid, 1a4-gely because Government pay, based as it was on a statutory
salary scale established prior to 1914, failed to attract and hold experienced
and competent people., Federal employees from scientists and administrators
to clerks and laborers shared the same scale proportionately. As the
Secretary of Commeróe was to point out to Congress, leading physicists
in universities and industrial laboratories were getting between $8,000 and
$25,000 a year, while tOp physicists at the Bureau of Standards could make
no more than $4,800.19. The ° consequence was an inordinate turnover of
personnel at every level.2° The remedy was revision of the civil service
system and its wage scale, to make Government employment more attractive;
and establishment of a budget bureau that would plan and coordinate
the work of the Government and its agencies, to assure the best use of its
employees.2'
Returning to the subject of Federal research, Rosa pointed out that
where the expenses of the Department of Agriculture amounted to about
$1.50 for every $1,000 of the national value of agricultural and animal
products, those of the Bureau of Standards came to $0.15 for every $1,000
of manufactured products, and less than half that amount was spent
by the Bureau for the development of manufactures. Agriculture might
still be "the most important industry in the Nation," but revival of the
economy depended on the recovery of manufactures, by more efficient
utilization of raw materials and labor and expansion of production.22
the years 1910-19. His adjusted figures for 1920 did not materially change the validity
of his conclusions and the earlier figures are therefore used here.
18 Based on a '1920 population of approximately 110 million.
19 Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), p. 14.
'° Address By Rosa before ASME, "The scientific and engineering work of the Govern-
ment," Dec. 2, 1920, P. 20 (NBS Historical File). It required at least a year
to train a laboratory assistant at the Bureau, yet almost everyone hired in the postwar
period left positions after 1 to 3 months. NBS Annual Report 1920, p. 30.
21 Ann. Am Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci., pp. 73, 88, 90, 94.
22J Wash. Acad. Sci., pp. 342, 350—352.
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