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

330 THE TIME OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION (1931-40)
The Bureau acknowledged that consumer testing might well be a
function of the Federal Government and that it ought to be concentrated in
a single institution. Indeed, the Bureau frequently expressed itself as will-
ing to become that agency. It doubted, however, whether Congress was ever
likely to appropriate the estimated hundred million dollars annually that
a really comprehensive program of consumer testing would cost.93
Although oriented to research for industry by the nature of its or-
ganic act, the Bureau insisted that its ultimate beneficiary was the consumer,
whether represented by a public purchasing agency or private citizen. It
was therefore in sympathy with the consumer movement and did what it
could. Besides its assistance to the Consumers' Advisory Board it advised
consumer laboratories on test instruments and equipment and developed new
equipment, such as the standard abrasion machine for the American Home
Economics Association, to measure the durability of textiles. It revised its
directory of commercial laboratories that tested consumer products, issued
a letter circular on "the availability to the public of research and testing
facilities of the National Bureau of Standards," and issued periodically its
list of "publications of interest to household purchasers." Perhaps most
widely circulated was the illustrated brochure, "Services of the National
Bureau of Standards to the consumer," which went through five printings
totaling 15,000 copies between 1937 and 1940. Besides explaining the rela-
tion of Bureau testing to over-the-counter buying, the brochure informed
readers of the Bureau's useful mimeographed letter, "Aid for over the coun-
ter buyers," and of the range of letter circulars and published reports of
Letter, Crittenden for LJB to Prof. Robert S. Lynd, Nov. 15, 1933, and letter, Crit-
tenden to Executive Secretary, Peoples Lobby, Inc., June 16, 1949 (NBS Historical
File); Hearings * * * 1939 (Jan. 31, 1938), p. 138.
In a resurgence of interest in the consumer in 1938—39, several bills were proposed in
Congress to extend the services of the Bureau to consumer testing, one of them authoriz-
ing an initial sum of $250,000 to "provide performance standards in the public interest,"
and permit the Bureau to grant firms and factories the right to label tested goods as
"U.S. Consumer Standard," such standards to be policed by the Federal Trade Com-
mission. Letter, LJB to Secretary of Commerce, June 14, 1939 (NBS Blue Folder Box
19, 669c); letter, Assistant Secretary of Commerce to Gano Dunn, Visiting Committee,
Sept. 15, 1939 ("General Correspondence Files of the Director, 1945—1955"); LJB
correspondence in NBS Box 430, ID-Misc; letter, LJB to Wm. E. Ames, Jan. 3, 1940,
aid attached correspondence (NBS Box 445, IG).
M125 (1927), revised 1936; LC490 (February 1937); LC322 (1932), superseded by
LC416 (1934), LC586 (1940), LC696 (1942), LC849 (1946). See letter LJB to De-
partment of Agriculture, Aug. 6, 1927 (NBS Box 428, SPD), for a complete listing of
Bureau publications of consumer interest.