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

254 THE TIDE OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY (1920-30)
through greater electrification; (4) curtailment of the swing of business
cycles and of seasonal unemployment; (5) improvement of the distribution
of agricultural products; (6) reduction of waste arising from litigation and
from labor disputes, and two areas within the special province of the Bureau,
{ The] reduction of waste in manufacture and distribution
through the establishment of standards of quality, simplification
of grades, dimensions, and performance in non-style articles of
commerce; through the reduction of unnecessary varieties;
through more uniform business documents such as specifications,
bills of lading, warehouse receipts, etc.,
and through
Development of pure and applied scientific research as the founda-
tion of genuine labor-saving devices, better processes, and sounder
methods.95
Certain that industry and commerce succeeded best when acting in their own
interests, Hoover sought no enforcement legislation. The Commerce Depart-
ment would supply guidance, information, and assistance, but compliance
would be voluntary. Alarmed by the depression, industry expressed itself
eager to cooperate.
"Elimination of waste," as a phrase, did not lend itself to slogan-
making as did the word "standardization," but with some loss of clarity and
even objectives, they became synonymous. Long advocated by the Bureau,
made imperative during the war by the necessity for mass production, and
now elevated to something close to national policy, "the crusade for stand-
ardization," became a three-pronged attack on waste in commerce and
industry. It comprised standardization of business practices and of mate-
rials, machinery, and products; specifications to insure good quality of prod-
ucts; and simplification in variety of products.97 Where the wartime effort
had been to achieve mass production through standardization, the postwar
effort sought to achieve standardization by establishing mass production tech-
niques—as Henry Ford was doing in the automobile industry—in every field
of commerce and in the company office no less than in the shop or factory.
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, II, 29, 62—63. Hoover was to single out Dr.
Stratton for his assistance in organizing the program and Dr. Burgess for his contribu-
tions to its achievements (ibid., pp. 62, 185).
The phrase first appeared in Burgess' article, "Science and the after-war period,"
Sci. Mo. 8, 97 (1919). It is the title of Hoover's article in National Standards in a
Modern Economy (ed., Dickson Reck, New York: Harpers, 1956).
Norman F. Harriman, Standards and Standardization (New York: McGraw-Hill.
1928), pp. 78, 116—17, 129. NBS Annual Report 1922, p. 6, described the phases of
standardization as those of nomenclature, of variety or simplification, of dimension or
interchangeability, and of specifications.