VAULT
Elimination of National Waste
A famed technologist-turned-public citizen trained his engineering eye to a booming American economy and found areas in need of optimization in this article first published in January 1925.
Written by Herbert Hoover, U.S. Secretary of Commerce
IN COOPERATION WITH COMMERCE and industry to advance productivity, the U.S. Government, through the Department of Commerce, has developed a definite constructive national program for the elimination of waste in our economic system. The need is plain. The American standard of living is the product of high wages to producers and low prices to consumers. The road to national progress lies in increasing real wages through proportionately lower prices. The one and only way is to improve methods and processes and to eliminate waste. Regulation and laws are of but minor effect on these fundamental things.
There are wastes which arise from widespread unemployment during depressions and from speculation and overproduction in booms; wastes attributable to labor turnover and the stress of labor conflicts; wastes due to intermittent and seasonal production, as in the coal and construction industries; vast wastes from strictures in commerce due to inadequate transportation, such as the lack of sufficient terminals; wastes caused by excessive variations in products; wastes in materials arising from lack of efficient processes; wastes by fire; and wastes in human life.
Against these and other wastes, the Department of Commerce has for the past three years developed an increasingly definite program.
Unemployment. The First National Conference on Unemployment, called in 1921, produced successful relief measures, and demonstrated that exhaustive investigations should be made of the whole problem. A committee of businessmen, labor leaders, economists, and engineers collaborated in this study, and this report did much to curb the beginnings of a dangerous boom in the spring of 1923.
Secretary of Labor James J. Davis (left) and Herbert Hoover attended a 1921 labor conference on unemployment. Photo: Library of Congress
Seasonal Construction. A committee reporting on this showed conclusively that custom, not climate, is mainly responsible for the ups and downs in building, and that these evils are largely unnecessary and can be eliminated. For most types of construction it is now possible to build the year round in the United States.
The value of yearly construction in this country is over five billion dollars. If building falls off, there is always a slackening in many other lines of industry, resulting in unemployment, decreased purchasing power of employees, and further depression.
Important action has now been taken in many communities in changing leasing dates and in other devices to induce more regularity to construction.
Bituminous Coal Industry. Investigation revealed the high instability of this industry and the fact that it was functioning at great material loss. Due to the war and to periods of profiteering, far too many mines had been developed and placed in operation.
The primary remedies needed in this industry were better transportation, reduction of seasonal character of industry, summer storage of coal, and industrial peace. Through an application of these, the industry is now on the road to stabilization.
In this industry, the past year, as compared with the year 1920, shows a saving to the consumer of about one billion dollars, which must be reflected in decreasing costs of production in every avenue of industry and commerce.
President Calvin Coolidge (center) stood with Herbert Hoover and other attendees at the 1924 National Conference Utilization of Forest Products Summary, held at the National Museum in Washington, D. C. Photo: Library of Congress
Superpower. Engineering science has brought us to the threshold of a new era in the development of electric power. This era promises great reductions in power cost and wide expansion of its use. Fundamentally, this new stage of progress is due to the perfection of high voltage, longer transmission, and more perfect mechanical development in generation of power.
The Northeastern Superpower Committee, with its engineering subcommittee, reported in April, 1924, dealing with the major steps necessary to bring about the technical development required, and already a number of these steps have been undertaken by the various power systems throughout this area.
Purchasing Specifications. The war showed that the faultiness of specifications used in Federal purchases resulted in great waste of public funds.
The Federal Specifications Board was established to take the multitude of specifications in hand, and the manufacturers are being brought into consultation to make sure that the industrial and commercial setting of a given specification is right from the point of view of the practical producer. In this manner a complete revision of Government specifications is under way, 210 such standard specifications having been prepared up to the present time.
One of the new technologies promoted by the Department of Commerce under Hoover (second from left) was delivery of mail via airplane. Photo: National Archives
A specific saving is in the wearing parts in automobiles, and a computation made by manufacturers shows that the benefit to the public automobile user through the longer life amounts to a saving of at least fifteen million dollars a year.
Improvement in Technical Processes. Many of the small manufacturers who cannot afford to establish the laboratory and research staff necessary for consideration of broad problems now use the Bureau of Standards in researches into the elimination of waste in industrial processes.
Instances of such researches of public interest are reduction of losses in the baking of Japan ware and in the installation of an optical-glass industry.
Simplified Practice. A large field in the elimination of waste lies in the direction of simplified nomenclature, grades, and variations in dimensions of industrial products. The Division of Simplified Practice, established in 1921, serves as a centralizing agency in bringing together producers, distributors, and consumers for the purpose of assisting these interests in their mutual efforts to eliminate waste in production and distribution.
Herbert Hoover, 31st president of the United States, was U.S. Secretary of Commerce from 1921 to 1928. Prior to that he was a mining engineer and served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I.
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