II. SCIENCE AND THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PRIOR TO 



1940 



The Federal Government had been a continuous patron of sci- 

 ence since the Constitutional Convention of 1787. x This support of 

 science came largely through the individual programs of the many 

 Federal bureaus and departments created during the nineteenth 

 and early twentieth centuries. It was not until World War I, how- 

 ever, that large organizational mechanisms were created within 

 the Government in an attempt to coordinate these diverse research 

 and development activities. The wartime organizations were dis- 

 banded with the general demobilization in 1919. Other Federal sci- 

 ence policymaking mechanisms were experimented with during the 

 New Deal, but it was World War II that saw the vast and perma- 

 nent expansion in the Government's planning and support of sci- 

 ence. 2 



The Federal Government was by no means the only major patron 

 of scientific research prior to World War II. Industry, universities, 

 and private foundations were also substantial supporters of re- 

 search, and, together with the Federal Government, they formed 

 the four principal sectors of the American scientific establishment. 

 The relative size and proportion of their contributions varied over 

 time, with the Federal Government providing the largest share of 

 funding during the nineteenth century and industry assuming that 

 role in the 1930s. Although their contributions were usually small- 

 er, State Governments were also consistent and important funders 

 of science before 1940. 3 



1 The best survey of the Federal Government's support of science before World War II re- 

 mains A. Hunter Dupree's classic study, Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies 

 and Activities to 1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957). See also, Howard S. Miller, 

 Dollars for Research: Science and Its Patrons in Nineteenth-Century America (Seattle: University 

 of Washington Press, 1970). 



2 Jean-Jacques Salomon has argued that science policy was a "new field of government re- 

 sponsibility — new in the sense that it was only just after World War II that this field was given 

 institutional recognition through bodies, mechanisms, procedures and a bureaucratic and politi- 

 cal staff specifically concerned with these questions." See Jean-Jacques Salomon, "Science 

 Policy Studies and the Development of Science Policy," in Ina Spiegel-Rosing and Derek de Solla 

 Price (eds.), Science, Technology and Society: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective (Beverly Hills: 

 Sage Publications, 1977), p. 43. See also, Kent C. Redmond, "World War II, a Watershed in the 

 Role of the National Government in the Advancement of Science and Technology," in Charles 

 Angoff (ed.), The Humanities in the Age of Science (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University 

 Press, 1968), pp. 166-180. 



3 State Governments have supported science in a number of ways. For examples, see Frederic 

 N. Cleaveland, Science and State Government: A Study of the Scientific Activities of State Gov- 

 ernment Agencies in Six States (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959): Walter 

 B. Hendrickson, "Nineteenth-Century State Geological Surveys: Early Government Support of 

 Science," Isis, 52 (1961), 357-371; and Michele L. Aldrich, "American State Geological Surveys, 

 1820-1845," in Cecil J. Schneer (ed.), Two Hundred Years of Geology in America: Proceedings of 

 the New Hampshire Bicentennial Conference on the History of Geology (Hanover: University 

 Press of New England, 1979), pp. 133-143. See also, Wesley H. Long and Irwin Feller, "State 

 Support of Research and Development: An Uncertain Path to Economic Growth," Land Econom- 

 ics (August 1972), 220-227. 



(5) 



