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

234 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
home, and 8 months after, Dr. Waidner, chief of the heat and thermometry
division, was gone. The deaths of three of his division chiefs within less
than a year affected him profoundly. They had been with the Bureau since
its establishment, had been his most intimate associates, and understood
his ways. Other division chiefs, coming later and without the bond of the
early years, sometimes found Stratton's autocratic ways difficult and his
concern with the minutiae of every laboratory and Bureau operation
With the loss of his closest associates and amid a faint undercurrent of unrest,
of which he could not be unaware, Dr. Stratton may have felt that the Bureau
might never again be the same.41
There were considerations, too. In the 20 years that he had
been Director, Dr. Stratton's salary had risen from $4,000 to $6,000, the
maximum permitted for the position under civil service rules, even though
the staff he directed had increased more than sixtyfold. As Secretary Hoover
told an appropriations committee, it was a ridiculous sum by comparison with
salaries paid outside the Government. The work and responsibilities of the
position, said Hoover, were fully equivalent to those of a university president
receiving $25,000.42
Although a bachelor, Dr. Stratton had heavy expenses. In an age
more sedulously social than our own, he delighted in entertaining members
of the staff and his circle of friends in Washington. His elaborate Christmas
and summer parties for the children of the staff became festive traditions.43
Entertainment of visiting scientists and businessmen and his colleagues from
the national laboratories abroad he had long met out of his own pocket, as he
had the expenses of membership in the social and scientific clubs required
by his position.
Besides his lifelong interest in his private workshop at the Bureau,
which entailed some personal expense, Stratton as a result of his frequent
official trips to Europe developed a collector's interest in tapestries, fine
crystal, polished glassware, instruments, and ingenious mechanical devices
which he found in the shops abroad. The interest was constrained, for
many of these things were far beyond his means and likely to continue so.
He was in his 60th year, had no private income or other prospect but his
41A brief rebellion of some of the staff several years earlier against certain Bureau
administrative policies is recorded in letters from six Bureau members to Stratton,
Mar. 29, 1917, and letters from 19 members to Secretary Redfield, Jan. 25 and Feb. 7,
1918, with attached correspondence (NARG 40, Secretary of Commerce file 76694).
The Secretary recommended appointment of an assistant director at the Bureau to lighten
the Director's administrative burden, and this was done (letter, Redfield to SWS, Mar. 19,
1918, and attached correspondence, NARG 40, file 67009/66).
42 Hearings * * * 1923 (Feb. 1, 1922), p. 14.
A good characterization of Stratton and of life at the Bureau at that time appears in
G. K. Burgess, "Dr. Samuel Wesley Stratton," Tech. Eng. News (MIT) 3, 146 (1922).