0.6 The science-government compact: 1945-1950  (Page 11/16)

Bush was a statutory member of the board in his capacity as OSRD Director, The OSRD was liquidated at the end of 1947, much to the relief of Bush, who had originallyproposed that since it was a temporary, emergency agency, it should be phased out after the end of the war in Europe. but took little or no part in its deliberations and dismissed its efforts will ill-concealed contempt on thegrounds that Steelman (who had a Ph.D. in economics and had been a university professor prior to joining the government as a labor relations specialist duringthe late Roosevelt years) had no understanding of science. No doubt Bush, who had enjoyed easy access to Roosevelt, was also piqued by his exclusion from theinner circles of the Truman White House. Steelman, in contrast, was becoming increasingly influential. With the liquidation of the emergency Office of WarMobilization and Reconversion in December 1946, he was designated The Assistant to the President, in effect the first White House chief of staff.

But more than personal pique was involved. The thrust of Bush’s Science—the Endless Frontier was that support for basic research in universities ought to be the central focus of science policy; the Steelman board regarded universityresearch support as just one aspect of a more complex situation . Science—the Endless Frontier was based on the reports from four committees of non-government scientists; the Steelman boardwas composed entirely of government officials. Bush and the scientific establishment also suspected that the Steelman board wanted to preempt militarydomination of post-war science policy, and that it was expected “to promote the right kind of science foundation.” England, op. cit. , 63; note 8, 375.

Despite the distaste of scientific elders for the Steelman exercise, the resulting five-volume report, entitled Science and Public Policy and commonly referred to as the Steelman report, ranks as a seminal achievement. A Program for the Nation , its first volume, was transmitted to the president on August 27, 1947, exactly three weeks after hispocket veto of the National Science Foundation Act of 1947. The succeeding volumes of the report were the following: vol. 2, The Federal Research Program ; vol. 3, Administration for Research ; vol. 4, Manpower for Research ; vol. 5, The Nation’s Medical Research . Its principal recommendation was to nearly double the national (federal, plusindustry and other sources) R&D budget to approximately $2.1 billion annually by 1957 through a “planned program of expansion” that would requiregreater increases in public than in private spending. Thenceforth, federal R&D expenditures should be equal to at least one percent of Gross National Product (GNP). This appears to have been the first use in an official public document of the now familiar R&D/GNP (later R&D/GDP) ratio.

In contrast to the Bush report, which based its few cost estimates on prewar basic research expenditures, the Steelman reportexplicitly recognized a link between R&D expenditures and national income. Steelman, op. cit. , 26. It also set explicit 1957 distribution targets by sector: 20 percent for basic research, 14 percent for health and medicine, 44percent for non-military development, and 22 percent for military development. The report included charts which extrapolated desired federal R&D expenditures through 1957 and the desired numbers of scientists through thatsame year.