{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":202,"pdf_page":210,"physical_index":210,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"977a25b529fcea6db546e66b00f04c459d75fcd337fb01d57f61f2dc9929c747"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"According to Rexmond Cochrane (1966, p. 138), author of the oficial history of the National Bureau of Standards, these early eforts to promote a scientific approach to consumption decisions “made so great an impression on the public that for years the Bureau was identified in the public mind with the testing of household materials and appliances and besieged with correspondence requesting personal help with home problems.” The bureau’s tentative efort in the 1920s and 1930s to provide scientific, test-based guides to consumer products for the buying public was to a large extent in response to increasing demand for such information. Consumer product testing had always been one of the bureau’s areas of activity, but over time, the demand for that service increased. George K. Burgess, director of the bureau, estimated that between 1922 and 1927, the number of tests undertaken for consumers and producers doubled. By 1924, the volume of requests from consumers for bureau product tests of radios, as well as requests for information about tests of radios conducted by the bureau, had grown so large that an announcement was made that further requests would not be considered.10 Yet in the 1930s, the Bureau of Standards was still being overwhelmed by inquiries from the general public about the relative merits of various commodities. Public demand for the testing of consumer goods presented the bureau with something of a problem, for while it was committed to disseminating objective information about products, the information it produced tended to be rather technical and, therefore, not expressed in terms easily understood by laypersons. Moreover, while the bureau was responsive to public demands for consumer product testing, its primary role was to support industry. Given this role, some consumer activists expressed skepticism about the degree to which the National Bureau of Standards could adequately represent consumer interests as opposed to the interests of business (McConnell 1934).\n\nThere were occasional bills proposed in Congress to expand the NBS’s testing of consumer goods, but these encountered resistance because of the expense involved (Briggs 1934). But even in the absence of consistent political support, the amount of consumer product testing by the bureau, often in collaboration with industry and consumer groups, increased substantially in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1927, thirty-six American industries had established their own testing facilities, jointly operated with the bureau.11 In the later 1920s, the bureau launched its specification program, in which it worked with manufacturers and consumers to define acceptable parameters for a vast range of products. In 1928, it set up a special Commercial Standards Unit, to deal with what one commentator described as “the pitfall of the consumer and the bane of the conscientious manufacturer . . . the maker of inferior goods.”12 The unit tested consumer products to ensure they met minimum quality specifications. As noted in Chapter 6, the bureau also ofered to certify products that met specifications so that manufacturers could indicate this to consumers. By 1931, it had received fifteen thousand requests for certification, along with thirty thousand notifications from manufacturers indicating that they were “willing-to-certify.”13 Manufacturers wanted certification so that they could display “certified” labels to reassure consumers about the quality of the products they sold. The new labels worked, to use historian Norman Silbur’s (1983) words, as a “certificate of character issued to an inanimate object” and spread rapidly through the marketplace, especially for consumer durables. By 1934, for example, three quarters of all gas burning appliances bore labels indicating that they met “nationally recognized specifications” (Agnew 1934, p. 61). Certification was in a way quite analogous to early branding. In both cases the point was to pin down products, ensure their quality, and remove uncertainty from the marketplace.\n\n202\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":201,"next_page":203}