The general quest for economic eficiency and standardization was, as we have seen, also a project of the state. Beginning in the early twentieth century, government agencies were created to ensure quality control for government purchases.7 Early consumer activists were inspired by, and drew attention to, the efort on the part of the federal government to establish standards for the products they procured. Stuart Chase and Frederick Schlink, pioneers of the consumer movement, opined, in 1925, that “there are billions to be won if the consumer—both ultimate and intermediate . . . can follow the example of the federal government in purchasing material.”8 The National Bureau of Standards (NBS), in addition to its work establishing standards (discussed in Chapter 6), developed an elaborate testing program to ensure that those standards were met. Other government agencies, such as the Bureau of Chemistry and the Bureau of Home Economics, did likewise, building their own testing laboratories. While in-house laboratories and standards divisions were developed by various governmental agencies, it was, however, only the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) that had a program to conduct systematic testing specifically of consumer products.
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