THE U.S. ECONOMY NEEDS, IN PART, a Commerce Department re-organized along the lines of the one created by Herbert Hoover, during his service as Commerce Secretary. This Cabinet office became the engine to America's "Arsenal of Democracy" on the outbreak of WWII, What Roosevelt appreciated in Hoover's Commerce Dept., was , however, was the extraordinary development and increase of influence that had accrued to Commerce, once it was helmed by a serious, hard-boiled U.S. mining engineer, responsible for successfully and profitably extracting mineral ores from the “bosom of the earth” using the most ingenious, leading-edge but reliable subterranean excavation, construction, mineral extraction technologies – and hard labor: Hoover himself had gotten his start working in the mines near Nevada City, California where he pushed mine-cars bodily, or manually, for a living. He also had to track the latest chemical-assaying techniques, work out cost-benefit projections for the latest milling machinery, guarantee the maintenance and upkeep of equipment, safety of existing shafts, and the digging of new ones, and personally create the “interfacing” of often–inaccessible mine-owners digs, by seeing to the construction of stub lines to the nearest rail-connections, in order to ensure transfer of ores to milling and processing plants sometimes scores or hundreds of miles away; and bring it all to work employing sometimes strife-ridden labor: all to start and then maintain productivity, not merely as against a fluctuating market demand, but sometimes also against all the physical, geological and material resistance that Mother Nature could compile to thwart him. The role of the mining engineer, in interfacing between hard, natural & physical contingencies and the masses of economic mankind, in order to render the former economically fruitful to the latter, is little appreciated today, when business often is reduced to playing by or adjusting man-made rules … creating new manners of valueless fictional papers is seen as showing business acumen.

1. THE U. S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE was created in 1903 under President Teddy Roosevelt, as the
Department of Commerce & Labor. Labor was split off in 1913, leaving the Dept. of Commerce proper.
According to some sources, Commerce is charged under Act of Congress, “and by virtue of the desire of the federal
government” to be generally helpful with the stimulation and distribution of commodities. But there’s much more
to the story, as will be glimpsed below. Pre-history aside, the Commerce Dept. came into its own in 1920 with Pres.
Harding’s appointment of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, later President Hoover, and it is Hoover’s
business-oriented, mission-reorganization of the Commerce Department that needs to be restored now.
As currently organized, the U.S. Dept of Commerce, now operating under President Trump’s Secretary Wilbur
Ross, consists of twelve legacy bureaus or “desks” with oversight in areas deemed to have relevance to the promotion
of U.S. Commerce. These are – and peruse this list:
Bureau of Economic Analysis https://www.bea.gov/
The Bureau of Industry and Security https://www.bis.doc.gov/
U.S. Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/
Economic Development Administration https://www.eda.gov/
Economic and Statistics Administration http://www.esa.doc.gov/
International Trade Administration http://www.trade.gov/
Minority Business Development http://www.mbda.gov/
National Institutes of Standards and Technology https://www.nist.gov/mep
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration http://www.noaa.gov/
National Technical Information Service https://www.ntis.gov/
National Telecommunications and Information Administration https://www.ntia.doc.gov/home
United States Patent and Trademark Office https://www.uspto.gov/
Indeed, a glance at the list of bureaus above, should confirm that despite its mandate, the Commerce Dept. is now
heavily dedicated to information services, data analysis, information technology and related, let’s say 21st
C.
technologies, but “beetles over its base” – meaning it is now overextended in these monitoring and data-collection
activities, certainly relative to the collapse of US. GDP and rising trade deficits over the last 40 years and more.
These various statistical "desks" within Commerce were originally intended to help the government promote the
productivity of U.S. industries and trades -- as in steel mills, machine tools production, lumber mills, and shipping
per se. But manufacturing and exports have collapsed instead. Why? This paper argues that changes in Commerce
Department itself following World War II, are at the heart of the loss of departmental effectiveness.
& INDUSTRY
A PROPOSAL for a RE-ORGANIZED
DEPARTMENT of COMMERCE

2. THESIS: THE MINDSET of a MASTER
WHAT HAS BEEN LOST from the Department over the course of the last half of the 20th C., especially, is
Commerce’s core original mission orientation as first fully conceived, implemented and realized under Secretary
Hoover, and maintained under Presidents Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Hoover’s experience, vision
and mission-orientation restructured the department so that it did not merely monitor the status quo in American
commerce – which at the time was characterized by a fisheries bureau, a sleepy steamboat inspection bureau, and
the lighthouse department with its fleet of floating "tenders"1 -- but instead aided businesses dynamically, by
streamlining and integrating Department desks representing core mining & manufacturing sectors, in order to help
create conditions which promoted an actually integrated national “infrastructure” economics, in which businesses
could advance to greater levels of productivity: "Productivity" that is, termed not just with reference to a merely
greater volume of output, but rather in consideration of the continued, ever-increasing application of scientific
principles toward the creation of an ongoing pattern of upward refinement of improvements, lead by higher
precision measurements both as to weights, standards, purity, and tolerances, as well as by innovative methods of
production. Hoover did not do this alone however:
SUCH A MOVEMENT for the systemization of science for the benefit of industries nationwide, was both leading-
edge in the early 20th C., and becoming accepted among American businesses, pioneered by the likes of Frederick
Taylor and his “Efficiency Movement.”2 Frederick Taylor, a disciple of Benjamin Franklin and Cotton Mather, was
the America’s first scientific “management consultant” whose drastic reforms were regularly met with controversy
and resistance among skilled labor. His “Taylor System” of shop management was adopted and put in use in the
U.S. War Department, as early as 1909, and the disruption created, forced Congressional Hearings before the
House Committee on Labor, lead by no less a figure than Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation
of Labor. Hearing transcripts are here: https://archive.org/details/investigationta00gompgoog
Hoover Knew Business, and the Taylor Principles
Note the 1912 date of Taylor's testimony before Congress: this date informs
us that principles of the “Efficiency Movement”-- and Taylor's scientific
methodology – were already common currency in business circles. This
businessmen’s population included at the time the young man, Herbert
Hoover. By 1912, Hoover himself was an established practitioner of the
“Taylor Movement," and had successfully applied Taylor's methods during
his meteoric career as a mine manager.
Hoover’s opportunity to apply “efficiency principles” in a government
setting arrived in early June, 1918, when President Wilson appointed
numerous business leaders to form a “tasks-force” committee to determine
and report what domestic industries might be re-prioritized vis-à-vis the war
effort, and so should be “retired” or “adjusted” to advance the cause of
Victory. Wilson appointed Herbert Hoover as the U.S. Food Administrator
for the war effort; Harry Garfield he appointed Fuel Administrator, and
Bernard Baruch was appointed chairman over all, of the War Industries
Board, etc. Characteristically, these committee members then formed their
own sub-committee to execute in-depth on Wilson’s mandate; however,
when all the research was done, Herbert Hoover was elected de-facto
chairman of the group, and nominated to write the official report to Wilson
– which he did.
1 See, The Department of Commerce: Origins and Organization of the Department, (Dept. of Commerce, 1913).
2 See, e.g., Frank Copley, Frederick W. Taylor, Father of Scientific Management, (1923). The author begins his
biography of Taylor, comparing his attitudes vis-a-vis American industry, with those of Benjamin Franklin.
Frederick Taylor

3. The task force report was returned within about two weeks, under date of June 22, 1918. The report was signed by
the full committee, but may not have got Wilson’s attention; so they issued another report two days later, on June
24, 1918. This too may have gone un-noticed, so the Committee solicited Hoover’s intervention, and Hoover wrote
his own cover letter/report to Wilson dated July 3, 1918. These task-force reports, and Hoover’s July 3, 1918
cover-letter to Wilson, can be found in Appendix XIII of Barnard Baruch’s official report of the War Industries
Board, American Industry in the War, p. 350, ff. (1921). https://archive.org/details/americanindustry00unit
Characteristic of Hoover’s mindset, he recommended NO immediate curtailments, but with reservations toward
breweries, and suggested instead a re-organization of his own board, and that it be re-prioritized to review each
industry scientifically, and to monitor and report periodically. Nothing intelligent could be done a priori. To wit:
In accordance with your instruction that we should prepare for you a recommendation in connection
with the systematic curtailment of non-war Industries, we have asked a special committee, comprising
Messrs. Clarence M. Woolley of the War Trade Board, Edward Chambers of the Railway
Administration, Edward F. Gay of the Shipping Board, P. B. Noyes of the Fuel Administration,
Theodore F. Whitmarsh of the Food Administration, Edwin B. Parker of the War Industries Board,
to make a detailed study as to the general policy to be pursued in connection with such industries. The
conclusions of this committee, to which we unanimously agree, except in those relating to the brewing
industry, upon which subject we are seeking further information, pending possible action by Congress,
are:
"That the approach to curtailment of non-war industries should be made by way of systematic and
scientific reduction in their activities rather than by total and initial annihilation. They do not find that
there are any industries which should be instantly cut off, but there are many which should be reduced
in activities at the earliest possible moment. These gentlemen are all members of the priorities board
of the War Industries Board. This problem, in certain phases, lies outside the present conception of
priorities in the use of material "As to further action in the matter, we recommend that the above
committee be constituted a special committee of the priorities board to study each industry from the
aspect of what can be curtailed and what is a desirable curtailment and to make such recommendations
to the priorities board from time to time and that the priorities board should advise the various
departments of the action of the board and the departments which will effectuate the conclusion of the
board.
“The committee has furnished us with a recommendation that the brewing industry should be curtailed
to 50 per cent of the normal barrelage. A copy of this report we enclose herewith. We have asked the
committee to further consider whether, In addition to the curtailment at once of 50 per cent, this
industry should not be notified that no further foodstuffs are to be purchased and that, with the
exhaustion of their present materials in process, they are to cease operation.
"We are also asking the committee to make a further report, if possible, on the reduction that we
recommend in connection with other non-war industries
"Yours, faithfully, " Herbert Hoover.
"O. K'd. W. W."
Baruch then notes, that this letter “was presented to the President by Messrs. Hoover, Garfield, Baruch and
McCormick, and O. K'd by the President, and forms the charter under which the Industrial Adjustments Committee
is operating.”3 So we see exercised a certain Executive deference to Hoover’s expertise, even this early. So it was
a habit of working in Taylor's proven “efficiency” methodology which Hoover brought to bear in his WIB work.
3 Baruch, Ibid, at p. 354.

4. As I have said, this was provenly good for business, but of a more dubious impact on labor.4
With the war concluded, Pres. Wilson appointed Hoover to head the European Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration: the U.S. relief effort which directed some 34 million tons of American food, clothing, and supplies
to Europe, across twenty nations. Wilson then dispatched Hoover to be U.S. representative at the Versailles Peace
Conference, and then Director of the President's Supreme Economic Council in 1918.
It was based on this extraordinary record, that Harding appointed him to Commerce Secretary in 1920. Here, let
me turn to an online source:
Under Hoover's leadership, the Department of Commerce became as influential and important a
government agency as the Departments of State and Treasury. Hoover encouraged research into measures
designed to counteract harmful business cycles. He supported government regulation of new industries
like aviation and radio. He brought together more than one hundred different industries and convinced
them to adopt standardized tools, hardware, building materials, and automobile parts. Finally, he
aggressively pursued international trade opportunities for American business. To win these reforms,
Hoover strengthened existing agencies in the Commerce Department, like the Bureau of Foreign and
Domestic Commerce, or simply established new ones, like the Bureau of Standards, for the
standardization project. He also formed commissions that brought together government officials, experts,
and leaders of the relevant economic sectors to work towards reform.
The initiatives Hoover supported as commerce secretary—and the ways in which he pursued them—reveal
his thinking about contemporary life in the United States and about the federal government's role in
American society. Hoover hoped to create a more organized economy that would regularize the business
cycle, eliminating damaging ebbs and flows and generating higher rates of economic growth. He believed
that eradicating waste and improving efficiency would achieve some of these results— thus, his support for
standardization and for statistical research into the workings of the economy. He also believed that the
American economy would be healthier if business leaders worked together, and with government officials
and experts from the social sciences, in a form of private-sector economic planning. This stance led him
to support trade associations—industry-wide cooperative groups wherein information on prices, markets,
and products could be exchanged among competitors—which Hoover saw as a middle way between
competition and monopoly. He insisted, though, that participation in these associations remain voluntary
and that the government merely promote and encourage, rather than require, their establishment.
University of Virginia, Miller Center https://millercenter.org/president/hoover/life-before-the-presidency
A very good treatment of Hoover’s transformation of the Department of Commerce along lines corresponding to
the “Efficiency Movement,” is Ethel Treibel’s The Department of Commerce under Herbert Hoover, 1921-29,
(1939), linked below.5 I will return to this article later.
Of course there were risks of trade associations developing anti-competitive and monopolistic features – and this
occurred under Hoover.6 But, for this report, I concentrate only on his Secretarial re-organization and management
of the Commerce Department, beginning in 1920. In that capacity, within the short space of 8 years, Hoover had
turned Commerce from a handful of scattered "data desks" into the third largest department in the Executive branch;
had helped to revolutionize the American industrial economy into a powerhouse, in an era rightly remembered as
"the Roaring '20's"; and, not incidentally, paved the way for his own successful run at the Presidency, in 1928.
4
5Treibel, @ http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1406&context=luc_theses
6

5. An Industry Example: Machinery's Handbook
It is not so readily possible for the layman to appreciate what goes on in serious modern factory or machine shops,
since even seeing is not understanding, and, for instance, each floor tool may represent the integrated accumulation
of centuries of mechanical motions and cutting improvements, and each unique material being worked, will likewise
represent a legacy of centuries of process improvements: so it is thus, only with the practice or operation of them,
that the machinist gains insight and proficiency: and yet, this proficiency is unseen and incommunicable -- except in
real, productive situations. For decades now, many aspects of our culture have short-changed manufacturing, and
short-circuited the public's appreciation for its key role in economics -- and so, even awareness of manufacturing as
an available body of knowledge, is rare.
Thus, for the non-machinist, probably the best substitute to a "hands-on"
appreciation as an apprentice, lies in exposure to industrial technical
reference manuals, that were (and are) compiled to be read, referenced
and applied by shop floor machinists, mechanics, welders, metallurgists,
and manufacturers. These are not text-books, but America's, and now the
world's, “go-to" reference guides for the already-initiated, which, over the
course of the 20th C., became the staple of successful manufacturing
nationwide, systemizing, standardizing, and integrating manufacturing into
an intelligible, reliable, functional and interchangeable body of real good-
old fashioned irreducible practical American know-how, raised to a
scientific level, and then raised again, and again. Immersion exposure to
these handbooks is probably the quickest way to apprehend one's own
"Cloud of Unknowing" with regard to manufacturing. I recommend
opening one, and wrestling with the text -- which should appear
meaningless. Consider for instance, the Machinery’s Handbook, a
continuing edition which was begun in 19147 and was soon to become
ubiquitous in American manufacturing shops.
MACHINERY’S HANDBOOK is still in print, as of the 30th
ed. of 2016.
The Machinery’ Handbook is a remarkable manifestation of this early 20th
C
“Efficiency Movement,” and rendered exacting specifications for virtually all
types of metal turning and cutting processing easily accessible to any machinist
anywhere in the United States. Perusing carefully the actual pages of
Machinery’s Handbook, (see, footnote 5) with its nearly endless tabular
displays of technical specifications to be replicated, tolerances to be held,
hardness to be achieved, tensile strength to be reached, etc., in the manufacture
of every conceivable component used in manufacture or assembly or
construction, can help to put one in the mind of the extraordinary number &
wide range of scientific industrial standards which AT ONE TIME had to be
marshalled into coordinated use, nationwide, in order for U.S. industry and
economy to advance coherently, from coast to coast.
The legacy industrial trades & manufacturing disciplines & processes
represented in Machinery's Handbook, are, to a great degree, the same
disciplines which Hoover was to better integrate and coordinate when he re-
organized Commerce -- and, in that way, really got the industrial economy
humming. This will be briefed again below.
7 See, http://www.woodworkslibrary.com/repository/machinery_handbook_for_machine_shop_and_drafting_room_1914.pdf

6. It Started with Mining and Metalllurgical Sciences
NOTE that these machining disciplines & trades referenced above, and the manufacturing industries they support
which are so fundamental to real productivity, are intrinsically hard industries, dependent on materials science at
the serviced of physical production. At base they are immediately derived from and are dependent on mining and
metallurgical sciences, and associated processes of physical chemistry.8 These particular core industrial sciences,
were also matters of Hoover’s personal expertise: for instance, Herbert Hoover was already President before his
appointment to Commerce Secretary: President, that is, both of the American Metallurgical and Mining Engineers
(19__- 1920)9 , and of the newly formed Federated Engineers Society.10 Hoover’ reflex for, and thus the pattern for
streamlining industrial operations nationwide, and eliminating waste in U.S.
factories was firmly set in these prior offices, just shortly before his appointment
by Harding, to Commerce. Thus, when reading Hoover’s famous statement
on his motif for re-organizing Commerce to better suit business, the
impulse is completely practical:
“I believe that we are in the presence of a new era in which the
organization of industry and commerce, in which, if properly
directed, lies forces pregnant with information possessed of more
progress·" I believe that we are almost unnoticed, in the midst of a
great revolution, or perhaps, a better word, transformation of the
whole super-organization of our economic life. We are passing
from one period of extremely individual action into a period of
associated activities ••• We are upon the threshold, if these agencies
can be directed solely to constructive performance in the public’s
interest.”11
Once installed at Commerce, Hoover promptly executed on this Industry ethic: e.g., he directed the Bureau of
Standards, which had been limited to meteorology, to establish standards for industrial output: both materials
standards and finished product standards were proposed, as for automobile brakes and headlamps. But, following
the patterns of industry, having a standard also meant setting a measurement, and thus a measurement method, and
thus determining tolerances, and even a standard for calibration of high-precision measuring instruments. Thus the
reference to the multi-valent “industry standard” as also a legal standard, was born; and the mindset of laboring men,
machinists, mechanics and business owners of the much of the 20th
C., found its way into the Federal Government:
informed by practices at the shop-floor level, and in the front-office, guided by Machinery’s Handbook or a
comparable manual. Hoover literally was the 20th
Century Taylor-made American Efficiency Movement, taken
hold in Commerce. In this way, Hoover quite systemically turned Commerce into a U.S. powerhouse, setting a
standard for productivity that carried the U.S. through the Depression, and then successful through World War II.
That was hardly an accidental or coincidental occurrence of unrelated effects.
THEREFORE, I submit, that the Commerce Department at the apex of its operation under Hoover and following
him, FDR, and therefore as the driving engine of the U.S. “Arsenal of Democracy” during WW II, has to be seen
as the expression of Hoover’s professional business acumen & organizational expertise -- as historically situated in
the high-productivity culture fostered by the Taylor Movement. This is probably not a very original observation,
but it needs to be re-stated now, in response to President Trump’s invitation for suggestions for the re-organization
of Executive Office Secretariats, presently. In short, the author believes that this original “Hooverian” organization
at Commerce, needs to be reconstructed again today – generally speaking, and with modifications for the 21st
C.
8 See, Jason Ross et al., Physical Chemistry: the Continuing Gifts of Prometheus (2014) 2ist Century Science &
Technology -- https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Chemistry-Continuing-Gifts-Prometheus/dp/1495997677
9
10 Treibel, op cit., p. 6
11 Odell, p. 326, cited in Treibel.

7. SO, WHAT WENT WRONG at COMMERCE?
Indeed, it is following the loss of such a focus in Commerce, beginning shortly after WWII and during the Truman
Administration, that the U.S. manufacturing economy itself, has been shifted to the periphery, and with it we have
witnesses the subsidence verging on collapse of our domestic manufacturing economy as that economy was oritnally
and naturally understood, as represented, e.g., in the Department’s Seal, which shows a merchant trade ship for
moving commodities, and a lighthouse for the better protection and safer completion of this enterprise:
IN A NUTSHELL: Key functions critical to the successful re-mobilization of Commerce, within a mission-
orientation corresponding to Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s Commerce Dept., have been since removed form
Commerce and, in particular, placed some of them into the Dept. of Interior, and later the Dept. of Transportation
(est. 1967), where their potential for use in realizing a comprehensive national mission-orientation for U.S.
commerce, is stifled, and so largely lost. Take for instance, the position of U.S. international ports and domestic
railroads: placed under the jurisdiction of the Department of Transportation, under which the key role of these
U.S. ports vis-à-vis our international commerce and the balance of U.S. & foreign trade, is just lost. Furthermore,
following the attacks of 9-11, U.S. deep-water seaports have been further stripped away from their proper conception
as having intrinsic Commercial purpose, and been handed over to Department of Homeland Security. Thus, it’s
no surprise to find that under the current, unmotivated paradigm there has developed an obvious concentration in
our Ports, to focus only on imports: thus, a surfeit of imports (often as containerized cargo), of cheaply-made,
finished, foreign goods clogs our port facilities as our international ports become one-way conduits. Meanwhile,
the interests of U.S. domestic manufacturers and their right to representation by U.S. government, in promotion of
their goods as exports, has been disregarded, and our industries disfavored.
Take for instance, the Bureau of Mines
The Bureau of Mines was founded in 1910, as a desk in the Department of Interior, in response to mine collapse
crises resulting from inadequacies in mine construction. By the Organic Act of 1910 Congress created the Bureau
of Mines to provide some oversight authority, and establish mine safety inspections. Within a few years the Bureau
of Mines had further solidified its competence in pure mineralogical research and applied geology, mineral
processing (extraction, etc.) mining safety, and environmental contamination. Effective mining being a highly
complex undertaking, the Bureau of Mines developed a correspondingly wide range of expertise
Then, in 1921, when Herbert Hoover became Secretary of Commerce he “cast a covetous eye on the Bureau of
Mines,” as well as the USGS Division of Mineral Resources, for their combined potential to advance United States
commercial growth, through the development of a scientific and modern mining industry. 12 Hoover, a professional
mining engineer, was relentless in pressing his case before Congress and the Executive, and was eventually successful
so that, in 1925 the Bureau of Mines was transferred to the Dept. of Commerce, as was the USGS Division of
Mineral Resources. The consolidation of these two agencies under Hoover’s Commerce Department signaled the
marshalling of industrial capacity under a streamlined ‘simplification process’ within the government itself, which
was – as noted above -- was an ideal which Hoover carried with him from the Taylor Movement, and his prior
commendable service in the War Industries Board of WWI, and which he finally realized in his Commerce
Department. 13
But the Bureau of Mines, which Secretary Hoover himself moved from Interior to Commerce, was removed again
into Interior in 19__ , and then finally DISSOLVED under President Clinton in 1996. Thus, what might be called
“State” support of the mining industry is now largely limited to the excellent training provided by the Colorado
[State-chartered] School of Mines -- but there is effectively nothing coordinated coming from the Federal level:
there is no longer even a Bureau of Mines in the United States Geological Survey !!
TO BE CONTINUED …
12 Mary C. Rabbitt, ____
13 In fact, in Hoover’s Commerce Department there was an entire agency dedicated to simplification