While I have called attention to only a very few of the activities of the Bureau of Standards, and chiefly those that belong by all right and custom to the Department of Agriculture, at least I have shown the ground work of the indictment against this Bureau. It has attempted to repeal some of the most important features of the Food and Drugs Act. It has claimed as its own the inventions of others. It has broken deeply into the activities already started by the Bureau of Chemistry and some of the other Bureaus of the Department of Agriculture, violating the fundamental principle of ethical standards. The Bureau of Standards should violate no standards. It has undertaken collaboration with great industries in such a way that the extent of its activities have not been disclosed, nor do we know, from any reports that have come to my notice, just how great a contribution is made by these industries in the way of paying the salaries of the scientific associates. In this respect it is in competition with the Mellon Institute and other organizations of a similar character specifically intended to conduct this research work in an open and proper manner. The Mellon Institute has given information of the amount contributed by those industries. I have not been able to discover any such information in the reports of the Bureau of Standards.
No kind of investigation seems to be foreign to the Bureau of Standards. It has departed so widely from its fundamental conception as to be no longer recognized chiefly for the purpose for which it was specifically designed, namely, the determination and preservation of all standards of measures of all deseriptions for all legal and technical purposes. Either the original act establishing the department of Agriculture should be repealed, or any further incursions of the Bureau of Standards into the domain of Agriculture "in the most general and comprehensive sense of that word," should cease.
