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

328 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
unions; and a Consumers' Advisory Board, to represent consumer interests.84
A brief account of the latter agency as it impinged on the Bureau of Stand-
ards is of interest.
The Consumers' Advisory Board was charged with promoting greater
use of specifications and labeling in consumer products by recommending
such provisions in NRA codes. It was assumed that the necessary consumer
standards could be promulgated in existing Government and Government-
connected agencies. A committee of the Board, headed by Dr. Robert S.
Lynd, professor of sociology at Columbia University, disagreed. In a report
made public on December 1, 1933, the committee declared that the American
Standards Association, the Bureau of Standards and other available agencies
were so strongly oriented to the point of view of industry that they could
not be entrusted with the task.85
The Lynd report aroused wide interest, but its proposal for an mdc.
pendent consumers' research laboratory wholly within the Government was
turned down.86 During its brief career, the Consumers' Advisory Board,
without facilities of its own, had to rely on the Bureau and the ASA for its
research and testing. The Bureau reviewed almost 500 of some 830 NRA
codes of fair competition involving consumer standards that the Board
submitted.87 ASA, asked to aid in quality labeling of consumer goods, set
up its Committee. on Ultimate Consumer Goods, on which the Bureau was
also represented. But neither agency, nor NRA itself, satisfied the requisites
of the Board, and with the death of the NRA in 1935 went its hopes for some
kind of Federal department of the consumer.88
84 More than 2.5 million firms enrolled under the Blue Eagle and nearly 800 trade
associations came to Washington for their codes before enthusiasm for the NRA waned
and cynical violations began to vitiate its promise. On May 27, 1935, the Supreme
Court declared invalid the NRA as an attempt to control the national economy through
regulation of intrastate commerce.
See Paul C. Agnew, "The movement for standards for consumer goods," Ann. Am.
Acad. Pol. Soc. Sci. 173, 60 (1934).
80 Persia Campbell, Consumer Representation in the New Deal (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1940), p.49.
Bolder than Lynd's laboratory was •Schlink's proposal for a Federal Department of the
Consumer, to be comprised of the oil, gas, coke, and fuel laboratories of the Bureau of
Mines, all of the Bureau of Standards, the Office of Education, and the Bureaus of
Home Economics, Chemistry, and Entomology in the Department of Agriculture. Schlink,
"What the Government does and might do for the consumer," Ann. Am. Acad. Pol.
Soc. Sci. 173, 125 (1934).
NBS Annual Report 1934, p. 74; correspondence in NBS Blue Folder Box 19,
669c-CAB.
Helen Sorenson, The Consumer Movement (New York: Harper, 1941), pp. 183—184.
Campbell, pp. 54, 172, reported that the influence of CAB recommendations on NRA
codes was negligible.