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

HERBERT HOOVER AND THE BUREAU OF STANDARDS 235
meager retirement pay. Nor, in 1922, did it seem likely that Congress would
remedy the salary scale anytime in the foreseeable future.
Dr. Stratton may well have voiced these feelings to his friends at the
Department of Commerce, and when Secretary Hoover told him that the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Cambridge, which had been without
a President for more than 2 years, had approached him to recommend a
candidate, Dr. Stratton consented to the recommendation.44
Stratton had had similar offers before, but he had been building the
Bureau then and could not be tempted. In 1913 the Russian Imperial College
at St. Petersburg had sought him for an executive post at a large salary and
under his own conditions. And in 1916 he was offered an administrative
position at Columbia University at $10,000 a year. He had turned both
down.45 This time he accepted the invitation, and on September 19, 1922,
the Executive Committee of MIT appointed Dr. Stratton as its ninth president.
He took office on January 1, 1923.
in his notice to the press of Dr. Stratton's departure, Secretary
Hoover sounded a recurring complaint of Government department heads:
While the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is to be con-
gratulated on securing Dr. Stratton, one cannot overlook the fact
that the desperately poor pay which our Government gives to great
experts makes it impossible for us to retain men capable of per-
forming the great responsibilities which are placed upon them.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an educational insti-
tution, finds no difficulty in paying a man of Dr. Stratton's calibre
three times the salary the Government is able to pay him.
Dr. Stratton has repeatedly refused large offers before, but the
inability of the scientific men in the Government to properly sup-
port themselves and their families under the living conditions in
Washington, and to make any provision for old age makes it
impossible for any responsible department •head to secure such
men for public service at Government salaries.46
The severance was softened by Secretary Hoover's appointment of Dr.
Stratton to the Visiting Committee to the Bureau, succeeding Dr. Joseph S.
"Communication from the Hon. Herbert C. Hoover, Dec. 14, 1962.
On the death of President McLaurin of MIT in 1920, Hoover himself was sought for
the position. See "New York Times," Feb. 1, 1920 (letter to editor), sec. III, p. 1, and
May 27, 1920, p. 2.
The Imperial College offer is referred to in a pencil notation on letter, Frederic A.
Delano, Smithsonian Institution, to SWS, Jan. 10, 1928 (offering Stratton the secretary-
ship of the Smithsonian) ; and the Columbia offer is in letter, Treasurer, Columbia Uni-
versity, to SWS, May 5, 1916, both letters in Stratton Papers at MIT.
'° "Boston Herald," Oct. 12, 1922, p. 1; "New York Times," Oct. 12, 1922, p. 14.