The National Academy of Sciences The First Hundred Years, 1863-1963 (1978) / Chapter Skim
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12. The New Deal and the Science Advisory Board
12. The New Deal and the Science Advisory Board
Pages 347-381
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From page 347... ...
. involved to a greater or less extent" in scientific research, and the scientific agencies so entrenched in their departments that any real consolidation had become impractical, if not impossible.
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From page 348... ...
Less than a decade later, with postwar advances in science and technology, industrial demands on the government, and the consequent expansion of its scientific agencies, federal research funds were slightly over ~ percent of the total budget, amounting almost to $40 million.5 With the onset of the Depression in ~93~, President Hoover decreed economies at all levels of the federal establishment, including its research agencies. The Economy Act of June ~932 called for further cuts, as well as reduction of all government salaries by more than 8 percent.6 A year later the new Roosevelt Administration, promising rigid economy in federal expenditures in order to fight mounting unemployment, cut bureau budgets by 25 percent and made the 2 NAS, Annual Report for ~ 9Of9, pp.
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From page 349... ...
He felt that in a time of such emergency the Research Council should not sit back and leave the governmental science program to the economists, sociologists, and political scientists. What seemed to be needed was a flexible instrument of cooperation in scientific matters that would have the confidence and support of the Administration.8 Creation of the Science Advisory Board On June ~6, ~933, Congress passed the National Industrial Recovery Act (NTRA)
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From page 350... ...
Bowman, seizing the opportunity, stated that recommendations on the Weather Bureau would be an ideal task for his proposed science advisory board and presented the plan in detail the next morning. Wallace was enthusiastic over the possibilities, saying with much satisfaction "that he had a similar idea in mind," and forwarded the plan to President Roosevelt that afternoon with the recommendation that the board be appointed.
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From page 351... ...
The telegram arrived too late, and efforts to offer a substitute order were turned down then and again a year later. The Presidential order, conferring on the Research Council authority that belonged to the Academy, created an underlying conflict in their relations for the duration of the Science Advisory Board, but in no way vitiated the efforts and accomplishments of the Board.~4 It was to succumb instead to the attitude of the New Deal toward the natural sciences and to the weightier influence of the social scientists, represented by the President's National Resources Board.
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From page 352... ...
As the session ended, another committee was named, on Cooperation with Social Science Groups, to study and plan a program for integration of the natural sciences with the social sciences.~5 At the autumn meeting of the Academy that year, Compton remarked on the extraordinary circumstances of the creation of the Board, its unique nature, and its potentialities: Whatever may have been the arguments pro or con for setting up an organization of this type (and I can speak of this quite objectively, because I had no knowledge that any such step was even contemplated until the executive order had been published) , the fact remains that the situation has developed in such a way that through this board the Academy and the National Research Council are being given an opportunity to assist the government to an extent which has never before been equalled in the history of the Academy, with the exception of the critical period during the last wards ~5"Minutes of First Meeting of the Science Advisory Board, August 21 and 23, ~933" (NAS Archives: SAB Series: EX Bd: SAB: Meetings)
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From page 353... ...
Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York; copy in NAS Archives: SAB Series: EX Bd: SAB: Establishment)
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Its work was financed, when adequate federal funds were not forthcoming, by an emergency grant of $50,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation.20 To enable them to take advantage of new advances in their fields, many of the federal agencies proved as much in need of better organization and direction of effort as of larger appropriations. The failure of the Weather Bureau to institute improved methods of forecasting recently developed in Scandinavia had been cited as a factor in the loss of the dirigible Akron in April ~933.
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From page 355... ...
The Science Advisory Board committee found that Bureau testing of materials for government departments and state institutions, a valuable and expensive service not provided for in the organic act of the Bureau nor in its appropriations, represented a fixed charge of 45 percent against Bureau funds. The actual loss through reductions and impounding of funds for ~933 and ~934, amounting not to so percent "but to about 70%," had resulted in the dismissal of almost a third of the staff and in serious curtailment of almost every one of its research programs.23 A joint committee, which included the Bureau's Visiting Committee and members of Secretary Roper's Planning Council and the Science Advisory Board, urged with some success an end to projects that did not bear on the Bureau's basic functions, such as its commercial standards work and much of its industrial research.
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From page 356... ...
No agency would relinquish control of its own special interests.27 The transfer of the Minerals Division in Commerce to Interior's Bureau of Mines was one in a series of recommendations of the Board that included policy, an extensive program of mineral research, and utilization of resources, which were subsequently put into effect in conjunction with the President's National Planning Board.28 Another joint project with the Planning Board (which became in lone ~934 the National Resources Board) provided much needed scientific basis for 24 SAB, Report, 1933—1934, pp.
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From page 357... ...
Before the year was out the hopes of John C Merriam, chairman of the two relevant Science Advisory Board committees, had considerably diminished.32 "Recovery Program of Science Progress" More in the spirit of the New Deal was the Science Advisory Board's "Recovery Program of Science Progress," offered to the Administration in the fall of ~933.
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From page 358... ...
Five years later he was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was to be for many years a powerful figure in Academy affairs.34 Implicit in Compton's "Recovery Program" was the conviction, repeatedly voiced over the previous decade, that the ~9~8 war had used up the nation's basic science resources, and no purposeful effort had been made to replenish them.
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From page 359... ...
over a six-year period for the employment in federal relief programs of scientists, engineers, mechanics, laboratory assistants, and apparatus and instrument makers, whose efforts were to be directed to the "quick success of the National Industrial Recovery Program" and to the advancement of scientific knowledge essential to "further progress in industry, agriculture and public health."37 The proposal envisioned scientific and technical investigations on behalf of current public works programs in transportation, communications, sanitation, and building construction; in conservation programs and surveys of national resources; in the determination of physical and chemical properties of industrial and engineering materials; research in biology, medicine, and food in the public health program; and research aimed at the creation of new industries. Ickes acknowledged the value of the program, but the National Industrial Recovery Act, which governed his public works appropriations, specifically allocated them for emergency measures involving construction projects; and he had orders to put as many unemployed as possible to work before the coming winter.
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Merriam, his fellow member on the Board and Chairman of the Academy's Committee on Government Relations, as well as by Arthur L Day, Vice-President of the Academy, and Fred E
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A year later, its scope enlarged, the Planning Board became the National Resources Board, an independent agency charged with planning the development of the nation's resou, ces, including science. In June ~ 935, the National Resources Board was abolished and succeeded by the National Resources Committee, with the same personnel and functions but with 40 Campbell to E
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But Campbell considered the Planning Board an important new organization in the federal structure and saw in the request great potentiality for raising the estate of science in government. He made the Academy's Committee on Government Relations, under John C
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We guaranteed to present to the Science Advisory Board the proposal that the Board should not continue after July 3~, ~935, and that we would advocate this to the Board, and that we would arrange between now and July 3~, ~935, that consideration be given to ways and means existing in the National Academy of Sciences and the National Research Council for doing what the Science Advisory Board is now doing under some modified conditions.48 Compton explained that "certain of the reasons for this were that the National Academy of Sciences was created to do and might have done precisely what the Science Advisory Board has done and it is undesirable to multiply agencies for accomplishing the same purposes."49 ~3, ~934 (NAS Archives: SAB Series: EX Bd: SAB: Projects: National Program for Putting Science to Work for National Welfare) , quoted in part in SAB, Report, 1934-1935, p.
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From page 364... ...
.50 Failure of Compton's "Nations! Program" At that same meeting the Board discussed Compton's latest draft of his plan, now titled "Proposal of a National Research Administration." The Board authorized Compton to present a further proposal to President Roosevelt, but only after expressing strong misgivings over the prospect of scientists administering large appropriations, as well as over the controls inevitably attached to federal funds, their subjection to political influence, and their dependence on congressional pleasure.5~ Compton submitted a revised plan to the President on December ~5, asking an appropriation of $~5 million a year for five years to be allocated "only on advice of a Board of distinguished American scientists." And, the Director of the Bureau of the Budget was to be required to consult with this or a similar board concerning the research budgets of all federal agencies except the Departments of War and Navy.52 Roosevelt sent it for comment to Ickes, who delegated its evaluation to Delano's National Resources Board.
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From page 365... ...
6, ~2, 27—30; NAs Archives: sAs Series: AG&Depts: National Resources Board: Science Committee: NAS Representatives: Age. Academy members attached to the Science Committee until mid-~g43, when the parent body was dissolved by congressional action, were John C
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From page 366... ...
It would meet the reed of federal agencies for disinterested advice and continuity of effort, independent of changes of administrations.58 The proposed advisory body would require an appropriation of no more than $~oo,ooo annually for the administrative expenses of its advisory committees to the principal scientific agencies of the government. Another appropriation of $~,7so,ooo would be made to the National Academy to enable the Research Council to distribute grants-in-aid to competent young scientists and engineers whose services to universities and other Institutions might otherwise be lost for lack of funds.
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From page 367... ...
I think you will get something, but I don't know whether it will be exactly along the lines of your recommendation." Hopkins later showed Compton a plan, drawn up in his own organization, that would provide $300 million for white collar relief artists, teachers, and other groups. On this Compton commented: In the program that Hopkins showed me he had some eighty odd million dollars set aside for scientific work in that white collar program, and of that, if I remember correctly, twenty million for scientific research and sixty million for surveys.
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From page 368... ...
He predicted that President Roosevelt himself would abolish the Science Advisory Board before December. Isaiah Bowman agreed, and concurred with Jewett that the Academy must keep science clear of any political entanglement in a government so experimental, in case "the Administration ended in chaos."62 Pointedly, the second report of the Science Advisory Board made clear that science in.the service of the national welfare did not lend itself to immediate results, and as "an absolute prerequisite" it had to be "independent of political theories" in any sound attempt at national planning.
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FRANK RATTRAY LILLIE (1935—1939) The offices of both the presidency of the Academy and the chairmanship of the Research Council became vacant in July ~ 935, and, mindful of the friction between Campbell and Bowman engendered by the Science Advisory Board, the nominating committees of both organizations agreed to merge the two offices.
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Whitman, to pursue graduate study under him at Clark University. Lillie returned to Woods Hole every summer for the next fifty-five years, from ~8 to ~946 In ~89z, he left Clark University with Whitman for the new University of Chicago.
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From page 371... ...
It was at Woods Hole that Lillie's absorbing interest in embryology led him in egos to his discovery of the degree of independence in the events of cell differentiation and growth, observed in his studies of the eggs and larvae of the tubiculous polychaete annelid.67 That research and his continuing inquiry into the mechanism of egg fertilization resulted in his election to the Academy in ~9 ~5. Probably his most significant discovery, however, was made two years later when, questioning the accepted chromosome theory of sex determination, he demonstrated in cattle embryos the important role of the little-known sex hormones in the embryonic differentiation of sex characteristics.68 When the Research Council, ahead of the times in the year ~9~, appointed a Committee for Research in Problems of Sex (see Chapter 9, p.
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Their report, as amended by the Executive Committee of the Academy Council in May, called for a broadly representative group headed by a small Executive Committee under the President of the Academy.7~ In order to allow time for an orderly transition, President Roosevelt was asked to issue an Executive Order extending the life of the Board until December ~ .72 In a letter to Lillie on July ~ 5, Roosevelt agreed to do so and, referring to the advisory activities of the Academy, the Board, and the Research Council, asked that the Academy "provide some single agency, board or committee which can carry on the work of the Science Advisory Board and related activities" after the Board's expiration. Upon activation of such an agency, he would "request the Government departments and scientific bureaus to utilize and cooperate with that agency."73 70 Ross G
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From page 373... ...
Sincerely bob, -- / ,~/~'Q~/ President Roosevelt's letter to Frank R Lillie, extending the life of the Science Advisory Board to December 1, 1935 (From the archives of the Academy)
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From page 374... ...
Lillie wrote Compton early in November that reten74 Compton to Lillie, two letters dated October 7, ~935; Compton to George E Hale, November 4, ~935 (NAS Archives: SAB Series: EX Bd: SAB: Report: Second: Comments & Criticisms)
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From page 375... ...
.77 Later that month, however, Compton obtained a majority vote in the Council of the Academy to rename the committee the Government Relations and Science Advisory Committee.78 Over the next several years, the Government Relations and Science Advisory Committee continued the Science Advisory Board's studies on dirigible construction, naval signaling, Biological Abstracts, the National Bureau of Standards, the Weather Bureau, the War and Navy Departments, and the patent system. Other requests arrived as well, among them those on soil conservation and the toxicity of food additives and agricultural sprays (Department of Agriculture)
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376 .bD ~ ~ _ o — ,.,_- i,, so ~ o I
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I say this because of a feeling that if my training, experience and judgment are of any value to the scientific departments of the Government that value lies rather in the field of matters of scientific policies which may or may not embrace research, than in the narrower field of research alone.82 On January 20, ~936, following a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Government Relations and Science Advisory Committee, Lillie wrote Delano at the National Resources Committee that it was the Academy's understanding that "the wording of the President's memorandum .
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Day, September ~8, ~939 (NAS Archives: SAB Series: ORG: NAS: Government Relations and Science Advisory Committee: General)
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Science has turned scarcity into plenty. Merely because it has served us well is no reason why we should charge science with the responsibility of our failure to apportion production to need and to distribute the fruits of plenty equitably." Nevertheless, he agreed with those asserting that the physicists, chemists, and engineers had "turned loose upon the world new productive power without regard to the social implications." Science had not, nor could it, provide "the means of plenty until it has solved the economic and social as well as the technical difficulties involved." Or until, through social science, there was a "better controlled use of science and eng~neering."89 Although the Science Advisory Board had maintained liaison with the Social Science Research Council and the Academy had provided members for the National Planning Board, there had been no true rapprochement.
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From page 380... ...
Merriam, "The National Resources Planning Board: A Chapter in American Planning Experience," The American Political Science Review 38:1075-1088 (December ~944)
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93 See Carroll W Pursell, Jr., "A Preface to Government Support of Research and Development: Research Legislation and the National Bureau of Standards, ~935-4~," Technology and Culture 9: 15~160 (April ~ 968)
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