16 PHENOMENA, ATOMS, AND MOLECULES 



Although such a measure may have had some justification during war 

 time, it is now pretty generally recognized that it would be very harmful 

 to the public interest to continue it in peace time. 



Civil Service Laws. Although the public interest is well served by the 

 application of the Civil Service laws to perhaps 90 percent of the govern- 

 ment employees now acting under them, such laws produce an almost 

 disastrous effect on certain kinds of government projects which require 

 men of the highly specialized training which is needed among the leaders 

 in government scientific research laboratories. Some important Army and 

 Navy post-war research projects must be assigned to private industrial 

 laboratories almost solely because of the known impossibility of carrying 

 on this work in Government laboratories under Civil Service restrictions. 



Veteran Preference. It is usually fair and in the public interest to give 

 veterans preference over others when giving employment. It must be 

 recognized, however, that this is a type of class legislation which, in other 

 cases, is thought to be undesirable. In the research institutes, which we are 

 now considering in these science bills, the granting of a preference to 

 veterans may frequently lead to serious loss of efficiency and so prevent a 

 research organization from attaining its objectives. There should be spe- 

 cial provisions for excluding key men engaged in work of this kind from 

 the provisions of laws that put veterans in a special class. The criterion 

 should be whether such action is in the public interest. 



Social Security Laws. Old age pensions, unemployment compensation, 

 the "right to a job" often tend to remove incentives which would be in the 

 public interest. 



Moratoriums on Mortgages, etc. 



Labor Unions frequently take a strong stand against piece work rates. 

 In some cases they have insisted that both skilled and unskilled workers 

 receive the same pay even when it means a reduction of pay of the more 

 skilled workers. Such practices, I believe, are decidedly not in the public 

 interest for they lead to inefficiency and the loss of incentives and freedom 

 of opportunity to individual workers. 



Attacks on the Patent System. These attacks, if successful, would 

 destroy, as I have said before, the greatest single incentive which has 

 underlaid the great industrial progress in America. 



The many attempts at regimentation of labor, industry, agriculture, 

 etc., are against public interest largely because they would remove incen- 

 tives. War time secrecy regulations, if carried over into peace time, would 

 have a similar effect. When scientists are not able to publish the results of 

 their researches, their opportunities and recognition are so reduced that 

 laboratories under such regulations will find it difficult to maintain a high 

 class of scientific personnel. 



