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

THE BUREAU IN THE PUBLIC VIEW 303
lamps, on "gas-savers," "fuel-savers," reclaimed rubber, the care of auto-
mobile tires, on battery additives, antifreeze solutions, and the character-
istics of "good gasoline." Directed wholly to the consuming public too
were the Bureau circulars on household measurements, materials, and safety,
and on care and repair of the home.
If industry resented this kind of Government research, the consumer
protested it was not enough. The criticism came to a focus with the depres-
sion. In the considerable reorientation of Bureau research impelled by the
economies of the depression, neither side was pleased.
The criticism that began shortly after the war swelled to a storm in
1923 and lasted for a decade. The Bureau was accused of meddling with the
rights of private industry. It was said to be producing materials that should
be made by industry. It served industry at the expense of the small consumer.
It had become an adj unct of the Better Business Bureau. It was an engineer-
ing rather than a scientific research agency. It entertained too many interests
outside the scope of its organic act. Many of the charges were exaggerated
and, taken together, highly contradictory, but they possessed a common ele-
ment of truth. The empire building of Stratton and Rosa, bequeathed intact
to Burgess and maintained by him, made the Bureau vulnerable to the infer-
ence of expansionism.12
The censure of the Bureau began and, for all practical purposes, ended
with the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC), over whose
reorganization in 1919, in order to commit industry to standardization, the
Bureau had presided. Much concerned to define the role of the Bureau in
the standardization program, an AESC affiliate had pointedly observed that
the Bureau "originally dealt largely, if not exclusively, with scientific prob-
lems." Was it authorized "to include also engineering standards, that is,
problems of applied science"? Stratton's reply, that he "most emphatically
had no intention of limiting the activities of the Bureau of Standards exclu-
sively to what you call 'problems of pure science'," was not reassuring.13
Nor was the published remark of Russell McBride, Bureau gas engineer, cal-
culated to calm representatives of industry, that the Bureau had become
"now * * * what is in effect a 'Bureau of Technology,' closely interwoven
with, and in some measure superseding parts of, the original 'Bureau of
Physics'." 14
12
Dr. Burgess acknowledged the criticism in a speech on "Policies, problems, and practices
of the NBS," dated Nov. 4, 1923 (MS in NBS Box 42, ID).
18 Letter, SWS to president, Am. Soc. Mech. Eng., Sept. 12, 1919, and attached correspondence
(NBS Box 2, AG).
"McBride, "The National Bureau of Standards," Chem. & Met. Eng. 27, 1162 (1922).
Cf. letter, H. D. Hubbard for Acting Secretary of Commerce to Secretary of State,
Sept. 3, 1924: "The Bureau of Standards is primarily a laboratory for industrial research
and standardization" (NBS Box 71, AG).