burgess: science and after- war period 6i 



This cooperation between Government and industry has been 

 made most effective by the enforced revival of the guild organiza- 

 tion in industry. The fact that an industry has been represented 

 successfully as a whole during the war by an elected committee 

 in treating with the Government and among themselves on 

 matters of common interest, is charged with great possibilities 

 for like action along voluntary lines during peace times. Al- 

 though of course many of the questions thus treated may be 

 considered as outside the realms of science, nevertheless the 

 scientific man cannot be separated from this development, which, 

 it is most urgently desired, may be continued, although along 

 less arbitrary lines than were necessary in time of war. 



SPECIFICATIONS 



A closely related matter is that of preparing satisfactory 

 specifications for materials and manufactured articles. Wash- 

 ington might almost have been called a specification factory 

 during the past eighteen months. This is economically one of 

 the most important of subjects and too great emphasis cannot be 

 given to the desirability, not merely for materials of military 

 interest but for all uses, of being able to define adequately and 

 sufficiently — not too loosely nor yet too rigorously— the ma- 

 terials and articles that form the basis for practically all pur- 

 chases. There have been, and still are in many fields, great con- 

 fusion, uncertainty, and differences of opinion as to facts, and 

 most of this is, in the last analysis, a result of ignorance 

 of the scientific data regarding properties and materials on which 

 the specifications are based. The nation has undoubtedly 

 suffered untold losses on account of this ignorance, and endeavors 

 should be made on a sufficiently comprehensive scale to eliminate 

 as much as possible the waste arising from this cause. 



Innumerable instances could be cited of the harmful and 

 costly effects of too rigid specifications and of course we all 

 know some of the dangers of too loosely drawn specifications. 

 I will cite two of the former in my own field of metallurgy. -A 

 foreign government had a limitation, dating some thirty years 

 back, of 0.05 per cent copper in a certain grade of munition steel 



