l88 ORGANIZING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FOR WAR 



tions and its decisions as to positions and as to the qualifications of tech- 

 nical personnel necessarily varied. Many appointments went through with- 

 out question, while others were delayed for the length of time necessary 

 for Commission personnel to become conversant with the intricacies of a 

 unique job and the peculiar fitness for it of a particular individual. The 

 tendency to judge the importance of a man's job by the number of persons 

 reporting to him had to be overcome also, as the essence of many OSRD 

 positions was the ability of the incumbent to work, with little supervision 

 or assistance, on terms of equality with scientists in the employ of OSRD 

 contractors. At the top levels of the Civil Service Commission there was 

 unfailing appreciation of both the importance and the unique character of 

 OSRD; the occasional difficulty which arose was always with the lower 

 echelons of the Commission which were inconsistent in rulings on techni- 

 cal qualifications and found it hard to avoid comparing OSRD positions 

 with peacetime scientific positions in permanent Government agencies, with 

 which, in fact, they had almost nothing in common. 



In the matter of clerical and stenographic personnel, the Commission 

 was operating under conditions of almost unprecedented difficulty, for the 

 demands imposed by war for this kind of personnel in Washington were 

 far in excess of the supply. The Commission nevertheless gave OSRD 

 reliable clerical people qualified to handle highly confidential material, 

 and, beyond that, exerted special care to guard against the engaging of 

 any who could not be relied on. For a considerable period, OSRD was au- 

 thorized to recruit its own personnel in these categories, as a way of coun- 

 tering the shortage to some degree. This was a help, but the organization 

 was never adequately manned in these supporting ranks. 



What the staff lacked in numbers, however, it made up in loyalty and 

 effort. New recruits were impressed with the importance of the task under- 

 taken by OSRD until they appreciated the fact that a slight delay in the 

 handling of papers in Washington might mushroom into a very significant 

 delay in getting new equipment into the hands of troops on the batdefield. 

 This spirit was intensified after the United States went into the war by 

 the large number of young married women on the staff whose husbands 

 were with the fighting forces. 



The existence within OSRD of two offices concerned with personnel — 

 the Scientific Personnel Office and the division of personnel operations and 

 management — was a source of some confusion. For the most part their 

 functions were distinct; SPO dealt principally with the scientific personnel 

 of contractors and with the War Manpower Commission while the divi- 

 sion dealt with Government employees and relations with the Civil Service 

 Commission. There was some overlap. Thus SPO had the responsibility 

 for application of the "no-profit-no-loss" policy even in the case of salaries 

 of scientists coming on the Government payroll, while the division was 



