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

HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 233
his own office. The necessary scientific, technical, and economical research,
simplification and standardization of building materials, and revision of
municipal and State building codes required by the program he made the
responsibility of the Bureau of Standards, where a division similarly named
was activated.
At the end of 1921, with the housing program well launched, Hoover
established a division of simplified practice at the Bureau, on the model of
Baruch's wartime Conservation Division, to work with and encourage the
technical committees then operating in most trade and industrial associations
to eliminate waste in industry. Like the former Conservation Division,
simplified practice aimed at reduction of varieties and sizes in commodities
and greater standardization of materials and products. Further extending
these aims, two more units, a specifications division and a trade standards
division, were set up at the Bureau to reinforce and promote the demand
anticipated for standardized and simplified products.
The new divisions insured the fullest exploitation of Bureau plans for
industrial research, but to Dr. Stratton's dismay, their direction was centered
in the Commerce building downtown. Although the whole of the scientific
and technical research required by the housing and standardization pro-
grams was to be financed out of Bureau appropriations, the administrative
staffs of the four divisions were under Secretary Hoover's personal direc-
tion.38 It may be guessed that the divided control and responsibility rankled.
Outwardly, relations between Dr. Stratton and Secretary Hoover were
cordial and even close, as correspondence between them and Stratton's letters
to members of Hoover's family make abundantly clear.39 Although Hoover
is said to have visited the Bureau rarely, he kept in close touch and consulted
Stratton frequently on Department matters; and as the senior administrator
in the Commerce Department, Stratton often spent afternoons downtown
when the Secretary was out of the city, signing Department correspondence as
Acting Secretary of Commerce.4°
Just when Dr. Stratton first thought of leaving the Bureau is uncertain.
It was doubtless an accumulation of events that occurred in that 20th year of
the Bureau's founding. On the afternoon of May 17, 1921, Dr. Rosa, not
quite 60, died suddenly at his desk in East building. Two months later
Stratton's long.time chief of weights and measures, Mr. Fischer, died at his
38 The roles of the divisions at Commerce and their counterparts at the Bureau are
distinguished in memo, Secretary of Commerce Hoover for GKB, May 23, 1923 (NBS
Box 40. AG)
See correspondence in NBS Box 10, IEW—1922; letter, Mrs. Hoover to SWS, Sept. 1,
1922, and other correspondence in Stratton Papers at MIT. See also Dr. Stratton's
speech at 25th Anniversary of the NBS, Dec. 4, 1926 (NBS Blue Box 3, APN—301c).
'° Interview with Dr. Lyman J. Briggs, Nov. 1, 1961; communication to the author from
the Hon. Herbert C. Hoover, Dec. 14, 1962 (NBS Historical File).