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

THE CRUSADE FOR STANDARDIZATiON 255
The machinery for committing industry to standardization had been
set up in 1919 upon the reorganization of the American Engineering Stand-
ards Committee. Associated with the Bureau since its establishment in 1909,
the AESC learned during the war how vital standardization was to produc-
tion and how little had been accomplished up to that time. The War In-
dustries Board, dealing with businessmen through their trade associations
to simplify enforcement of its rules, had also demonstrated the need for
greater cooperation between Government and industry.98
In the spring of 1919, therefore, Stratton, Rosa, and Burgess proposed
to the AESC that it become the central agency required to "provide a better
connection * * * between the agencies of Federal, State and municipal gov-
ernment and the technical and commercial organizations concerned with en-
gineering and industrial standards." Securing the agreement of the tech.
nical societies, trade and business organizations, and professional organiza-
tions it spoke for, the AESC that fall adopted a new constitutior, broadened
to include representation of government agencies and other national orga-
nizations.99
As its executive secretary the AESC chose Dr. Paul G. Agnew, a
member of the electrical division of the Bureau since 1906, and as assistant
secretary, Frederick J. Schlink, former technical assistant to Dr. Stratton.
Dr. Agnew had been the Bureau representative at the meetings of manufac-
turers and industrialists that had wrestled with the technical aspects of Gov-
o' Beginning with the formation of the National Association of Manufacturers in 1895,
trade organizations by the thousands arose throughout industry. Each acted for the
mutual benefit of its particular industry by collecting and distributing information on
prices, methods of production, standardization, shipping problems, credit ratings, public
and employee relations and the like, by setting up codes of fair practices, and by lobby-
ing on behalf of State and National legislation affecting its industry.
Although frequently charged with monopoly and restraint of trade in the age of reform,
when war came the trade associations proved indispensable to the war effort, providing
central agencies through which whole industries could be reached. Thefavorable climate
of the l920's saw over 400 new associations formed, so that by the end of the decade
there were almost 7,000 in the country. See Paxson, American Democracy and the
World War, II, 123—24; John D. Hicks, The Republican Ascendancy, 1921—1933 (New
York: Harper, 1960), p. 50; Bining, The Rise of American Economic Life, p. 586.
Rosa, "Reorganization of the Engineering Standards Committee," Eng. News-Record,
82, 917 (1919); and the symposium on the new AESC in Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci.
82 (1919).
Among the organizations then associated with the AESC were the American Society for
Testing Materials, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the Society of Auto-
motive Engineers, the Illuminating Engineering Society, the Institute of Radio Engineers,
the Electric Power Club, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American
Society of Chemical Engineers, the American Society of Mining and Metallurgy, the
American Chemical Society, and the American Railroad Association.