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

46 AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY
On May 5, 1900, after defeat of a motion to reduce the director's
salary to $5,000, James H. Southard, Chairman of the Committee on Coin.
age, Weights, and Measures, introduced the bill (H.R. 11350), essentially
identical with that proposed in Gage's letter, in the House. His final argu-
ment, insuring the unanimous endorsement of his committee, was that under
proper administration the expenses of the new agency would be "largely
repaid by fees resulting from its work." On May 14, Jonathan Rose of
Vermont introduced the bill in the Senate (S. 4680). Further hearings were
delayed until after the summer recess of Congress.
The hearing before the Senate Subcommittee of the Committee on
Commerce opened on December 28, 1900. Once again the proposed salaries
of the scientists came under fire. Secretary Gage admitted that they were
"relatively high as compared with * * * the salaries the Government pays
in a good many other directions," but in the new bureau the United States
had to have "the best in the world." Stratton added that they were no higher
than those for corresponding positions in the leading universities, and
further,that an academic career was apt to be preferred as less likely subject
to political weather changes. Moreover, bureau personnel would not have
the 3 or 4 months of annual vacation available to academic faculty for study
or travel. As for the salary proposed for the director, said Stratton, scientific
directors in some of the large industrial corporations were able to command
as much as $10,000 a year.74
The Senate subcommittee nevertheless cut back the salary schedule
from $34,900 to $27,140 by reducing the director's salary to $5,000 and
eliminating 8 of the 21 positions, including 2 laboratory assistants, the sec-
retary, a clerk, the fireman, 2 mechanicians, and a laborer. Other modifica-
tions in the Senate bill saw the sum for equipping the main laboratory re-
duced from $25,000 to $10,000 and "the general expenses of said bureau,
including books and periodicals, furniture, office expenses, stationery and
printing, heating and lighting, expenses of the visiting committee, and con-
tingencies of all kinds" reduced from $10,000 to $5,000.
Returned to the House for full debate on March 2, 1901, the bill
met with predictable mixed reactions. Upon its reading, Mr. John W.
Although by the 1960's fees from calibrations, testing, and other services exceeded
$6 million annually, the Bureau was never to be, as Congress seemed to think it should
be, self-supporting. See Hearings before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on
Appropriations * * * for 1906 (Dec. 2, 1904), p. 230 (L/C:HJ10.B33 and HF1O5.C55).
* *
House appropriations hearings will hereafter be cited as Hearings
Hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce, Dec. 28, 1900 (56th
Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. 70, serial No. 4033), pp. 4—7. $10,000 was the salary of Albert
Ladd Colby, chief metallurgical engineer of the Bethlehem Iron & Steel Co. and member
of the first Visiting Committee, whose physical and chemical laboratory employed 36
people. See also Congressional Record, March 2, 1901, p. 3476.