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

A NATIONAL NEED . . . A NATIONAL HUMILIATION 45
Secretary Gage's letter was referred to the House Committee on
Coinage, Weights, and Measures on April 23, 1900. At the first hearing, on
May 3, several members of the committee wondered aloud at the willingness
of the superintendent of the Coast Survey to lose an office of his agency,
demurred at creating another bureau in the Federal Government, and, coming
to the heart of the matter, expressed the opinion that both the salaries and
construction costs for the new bureau seemed much too high.
Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, superintendent of the Coast Survey but soon
to become president of MIT, had been consulted by Stratton on the matter of
salaries. Pritchett told the committee that he himself received $5,000, a!.
though by law the position called for $6,000, the same salary proposed for
the director of the new bureau. There was apt to be considerable difference
between a $5,000 and a $6,000 a year man, he said, and if the right man was
found he should have the higher figtire. As for the salaries of the other scientists,
they were "about what they would get in college life"; a good, even a first
class, chemist or physicist such as the bureau must have could probably be
found for
When someone questioned whether the head of the proposed bureau
should receive a salary within $2,000 of that of the Secretary of the Treasury
himself, Lyman Gage briskly replied: "Almost anybody will do for the Secretary
of the Treasury * * * [but] it takes a very high.grade man to be chief
of a bureau like this. There are plenty of patriotic citizens who are willing
* * *
to be Secretary * * * at almost any salary they might get, but this
[man] must have and hold the esteem and confidence of all * * * scientific
men everywhere, and unless he is as good or a better man than is found in
private institutions and concerns he will not have the respect and confidence
of the community." 71
To objections that the amount asked for the laboratory seemed too
large, the committee was told that the structure would have to be erected
outside the city proper, in an isolated place free from vibration, traffic dis-
turbances, and interference from electric streetcar lines. It would have to
be solidly built with at least twice as much material as in an ordinary build-
ing of the same size, with twice as complex heating, piping, and plumbing
arrangements, and with four or five times more wiring. In addition, it
must have a heating plant, engines, dynamos, motors, pumps, and other heavy
machinery, as well as instrument shops, in a separate structure apart from
the main laboratory.72 It was an impressive structure Stratton described,
and he won his point.
70 Hearing before the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, May 3, 1900 (56th
Cong., 1st sess., H. Rept, no document or serial number), p. 14.
71 Ibid.
Congressional Record, 56th Cong., 2d sess., Mar. 2, 1901, P. 3475.