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

432 THE NEW WORLD OF SCIENCE (1946-51)
overshadow the Bureau's position of final arbiter on scientific and
technical standards.8
Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones was inclined to agree with his
Visiting Committee. The Bureau involvement in both commercial and in-
dustrial interests seemed excessive. A survey made at his request in 1943
recommended that such purely commercial activities of the Bureau as its
simplified practices and trade standards divisions should probably be trans-
ferred to Commerce. Industrial standards, not development, was its role, and
the survey urged "stronger legislative authorization for contributing [the
Bureau's] measurement skills to the anticipated new [industrial] develop-
ments." 0 As Under Secretaiy Wayne C. Taylor wrote:
The Department of Commerce proposes to ask for funds to enlarge
the basic research work of the National Bureau of Standards dur-
ing the transition period. If our country is to maintain its eco-
nomic research in physics, chemistry, and metallurgy
must be sturdily supported to provide the foundation for new in-
dustries and greater industrial development'°
That burning issue of the thirties, consumer standards, also flared
again, and briefly involved the Bureau, in the efforts of Jones and Taylor (and
endorsed by Henry A. Wallace when he became Secretary) to expand the
Department's interest in the field of standards for commerce, "particularly
[in] the development of performance standards for goods sold to the ulti-
mate consumer."
8 Report of the Visiting Committee to Secretary Jesse H. Jones, July 11, 1942, p. 9 (NARG
40, Secretary of Commerce, Box 114, file 67009/5).
Report, Carroll L. Wilson, consultant to Secretary of Commerce, "Standards in Com-
merce—A Basis for Action," Dec. 8, 1943, revised Sept. 15, 1944, p. 7 (NBS Box 490,
TDS—ASA). The report agreed with the view of the Visiting Committee "that the
true function of the NBS lay in that domain of standarization that rested upon exact
physical measurement, and not on such standardization as involved negotiations, opinion,
judgment, and compromise."
Letter, Taylor to Executive Secretary, Committee on Economic Demobilization, OPA,
Mar. 10, 1944 (NBS Box 489, AG). The same intention appears in two studies made
for Senator Kilgore's Subcommittee on War Mobilization to the Senate Committee on
Military Affairs: the 326-page report, "The Government's Wartime Research and De-
velopment, 1940—44" (Senate Subcommittee Report No. 5, GPO, 1945), and the 418-page
report, "Wartime Technological Developments" (Senate Subcommittee Monograph No.
2, GPO, 1945), the latter prepared as a working basis for the postwar development of
new industries and cheaper and improved products. The two studies were represented
as sequels to the report, "Research—A National Resource," issued in 1940.
Letter, Acting Secretary of Commerce Taylor to Gano Dunn, Jan. 6, 1944 (NARG 40,
Box 114, file 67009/5) - For plans proposed by Jones and, later, Wallace to reorganize
the Department to make "Washington the home of business," see Bus. Week, Mar. 30,
1945, p. 82, and Feb. 8, 1947, p. 52; also Hearings * * H.R., 79th Cong., 1st Sess.,
on first deficiency appropriation bill for 1946, Pt. I, Oct. 29, 1945, p. 319.