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

THE BUREAU IN THE PUBLIC VIEW 307
as evidence that the Bureau was in direct competition with private research
laboratories such as the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research and Arthur
D. Little, Inc. There was no more warrant in the organic act of the Bureau
for this commercial research, Wiley declared, than there was for its "archi-
tectural excursions" in building pilot plants to manufacture dextrose and
levulose. The Bureau, he concluded, was badly in need of policing.25
The recurring charge that the Bureau interpreted its authority over
weights and measures as a license to investigate literally everything that
could be weighed or measured, appeared also in a pamphlet entitled "Why
not reorganize the Bureau of Standards?" published in 1929 by William E.
Bullock, secretary of the antimetric society, the American Institute of Weights
and Measures.26 If this was simply a random gadfly attack, a letter that
same year from Arthur D. Little, president of Arthur D Little, Inc., was
not. It was an ultimatum from industry. Many prominent chemists and
chemical engineers, he wrote, were convinced that "the Bureau has extended
its efforts far outside its legitimate field," and "threatened to take the whole
question before the House Committee on Appropriations." 27
Provoked by "the four-year furor" over its research in industry, Dr.
Burgess submitted the controversy and a statement of the Bureau position
and its program of research to the Department of Justice for a legal opinion.
Justice ruled that the extension of Bureau activities beyond the organic act,
as authorized by a succession of congressional acts, was completely valid.25
In the last months of the Hoover Administration, Congress finally held
its long-promised investigation of Government interference in industry. (It
paid no attention to the equally valid criticism of Federal apathy where the
taxpaying consumer was concerned.) Acting on complaints of the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the
Federation of American Business, Congress appointed a committee on May
31, 1932, to survey "the extensive commercial and manufacturing interests
of Government bureaus seriously competing with private industry." Despite
all the furor, the Bureau turned out to be the least of offenders.
Congress found that during World War I, owing to the reluctance of
private industry to risk short-term, unprofitable ventures, Government agen-
cies had organized a great number of manufacturing plants, factories,
foundries, and services, and with the "overreaching zeal of governmental
bureaus to retain authority and prestige," had continued to operate them
after the war. Heading a list of 17 specific areas of serious competition were
Many of Wiley's charges were longstanding. See 12-page letter, GKB to C, Bureau
of Efficiency, Aug. 31, 1923 (NBS Box 40, AG).
Pamphlet in Bureau of Budget records, NARG 51, file 86 (Bureau of Standards).
Letter to GKB, Dec. 30, 1929, and attached correspondence (NBS Box 263, AG).
Letter, Dr. Julius Klein, Assistant Secretary of Commerce. to R. 0. Bailey, Dec. 30,
1931 (NBS Box 339, AG-Conf. for Dir. only).