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

322 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
Frank B. Jewett—were on the Visiting Committee to the Bureau. As it
happened, the Visiting Committee was already engaged in a study of Bu.
reau problems. The same four men were also members of the Business
Advisory and Planning Council, which had recently been appointed by
Secretary of Commerce Roper to survey the program of research of the
Bureau and other Commerce agencies in the light of the economies forced
on them. Thus, the Bureau entertained simultaneously three investigative
groups in 1933—34. Except for details in the reports of the two Commerce
committees, the essential findings of all three groups were by agreement
embodied in the comprehensive report of the President's Science Advisory
Board.
Perceptibly waiving the purpose for which it had been created,
at least so far as the Bureau of Standards was concerned, the Board declared
that the drastic reductions in its funds "prompted a critical examination pf
the Bureau's situation and program." The slashes in Bureau appropria.
tions for 1933 and 1934, together with the impounding of funds, amounted
to a reduction of 50 percent since 1932. But Bureau testing of materials for
Government departments and State institutions, an essential service not
specified in the organic act or explicitly provided for in appropriations,
represented a fixed charge of 45 percent against Bureau funds. The actual
reduction in Bureau funds since 1932 therefore amounted not to 50 percent
hut to about 70 percent [italicized in the Report] 68 In the same period the
Bureau staff had been reduced by 200 to 300 members through separation
or indefinite furlough.eo This much the three investigating groups agreed
upon, and noted with concern the necessary but serious drain on Bureau
time and energies involved in its representation on 825 committees in scien-
tific, engineering, testing, standardizing, interdepartmental, and interna-
tional organizations.7°
In its separate study, the Business Advisory group acknowledged
the validity of much of the late criticism of the Bureau 'by industry and
urged that the greatest economies be made in some of the more recently
acquired functions giving offense. Somewhat more specifically, the Joint
Committee recommended curtailment of those projects which were in a
67 Science Advisory Board, Report, 1933—34, P. 23.
"Dr. Briggs described the actual working funds even of the full 1932 appropriation
as "only the equivalent of one 3-cent postage stamp during the year for each inhabitant
of this country" (Ann. Am. Acad. Pol. Sci. 173, 153, 1934).
"The total was 348, out of a staff of 979, according to memo, C. J. Humphreys for
LJB, July 31, 1933 (NBS Box 358, ID).
Science Advisory Board, Report, 1933—34, pp. 23, 62—63, 65. By February 1934,
with 613 members, the Bureau had the smallest staff since 1917 (letter, LJB to F. J.
Schlink, Feb. 3, 1934, NBS Historical File) -