30 



National Resources Committee 



and the health and safety of industrial workers is a 

 matter of f;:eneral concern. 



The Public Health Service of the Treasury Depart- 

 ment has broad authority to study the diseases of man, 

 and carries on at the National Institute of Health an 

 extensive program of investigation as to the causes, 

 nature, means of spread, methods of prevention, and 

 treatment of hmnan diseases. The progi-am varies in 

 emphasis as specific problems assume national impor- 

 tance, guiding criteria being the amount of attention 

 devoted to a problem by outside agencies, and its geo- 

 graphical scope. 



Health as a social problem is one of the more recent 

 fields of investigation by the Public Health Service. 

 A national health inventory, including surveys of the 

 prevalence of chronic diseases, communicable diseases, 

 iiiciipational morbidit}' and mortality, and a study of 

 liealtli facilities, has been made; and attention is also 

 given to the influence of environment upon health, sew- 

 age disposal, water purification, and milk pasteuriza- 

 tion. In the field of nutrition, it was Public Health 

 Service physicians who finally established the dietary 

 origin of pellagra, once the scourge of the South, and 

 determined the food elements needed to overcome the 

 disease. 



Soil Conservation 



Another problem recently recognized as transcending 

 the resources of nongovernmental agencies is that of 

 soil erosion. To meet national needs in this respect, the 

 Soil Conservation Service has been created in the De- 

 partment of Agriculture, and is undertaking a research 

 program designed to build a body of basic data from 

 which erosion control methods may be developed. In- 

 vestigations include the broad basic questions of how, 

 why, and where erosion takes place, with particular ref- 

 erence to the part played by climate, geology, soil, and 

 natural vegetation ; the cause, effect, and control of ero- 

 sion on farm lands and methods of restoring eroded 

 lands to economic use; and the effect of various types 

 of land-use and erosion-control practices on the control 

 of floods and on the conservation of surface and ground- 

 water supplies. 



Industrial Research 



Experience in the depression has led many to believe 

 that industrial problems have also become so important 

 as to justify much more extensive research by govern- 

 ment than has yet been devoted to them. The stand- 

 ardization and testing work of the Bureau of Stand- 

 ards and the research of the Bureau of Chemistry and 

 Soils on the processing of farm products and by- 

 products are believed to be far from adequate to meet 

 national needs, especially those of small industries 



which cannot finance extensixe research activities on 

 their own account. Govermnent cooperation with 

 trade and industrial associations in developing research 

 programs is a suggested activity in this field. 



Coordination on a National Scale 



The Federal Government is better able than any 

 other agency to coordinate extensive research pro- 

 grams.— T\\q authority, prestige, and resources of the 

 Federal Government may be used to organize and 

 direct reseai-ch in any given field on a national scale 

 to an extent impossible for any other agency. The 

 value of such coordinated national research programs 

 in time of war is obvious, but peacetime programs may 

 also benefit from governmental leadership, which may 

 be so applied as to sacrifice none of the freedom essen- 

 tial to scientific progress. The present governmental 

 organization exhibits three main forms of national 

 coordination of research which are exemplified by the 

 Department of Agriculture, the War and Navy De- 

 partments, and the National Advisory Committee for 

 Aeronautics. 



Coordination in Agriculture 



The United States Department of Agriculture is 

 said to be the largest single research organization in 

 the world, and in the course of its more than 75 years 

 of growth it has become without question the center 

 of American agricultural research. Through field 

 laboratories, grants-in-aid, extension activities, and 

 cooperative relationships with Federal, State, and pri- 

 vate agencies, the Department effectively coordinates 

 and in large measure directs all research work in the 

 country in its various fields of interest. 



The method employed is the democratic one of co- 

 operation, carried out under the general supervision 

 of the Office of Experiment Stations. The function 

 of the Office is not to conduct scientific work, but to 

 administer Federal grants for research to the States, 

 and to coordinate the research activities of the subject- 

 matter bureaus of the Department. The formidable 

 nature of the task may lie gathered from the fact that 

 there are approximately 7,50G research workers in the 

 Department of Agriculture and the State experiment 

 stations, active in every field of science bearing upon 

 agricultural problems. The Chief of the Office of Ex- 

 periment Stations is also Director of Research for the 

 Department, and administrator of the special research 

 fund made available by the Bankhead-Jones Act of 

 1935. 



Each of the States receives from the Federal Gov- 

 ernment $90,000 annually on an outright grant basis 

 for research in agricultural subjects; and each re- 

 ceives in addition a share proportionate to its rural 



