gressman added the ironic objection that the need for an aeronautical laboratory seemed a foregone conclusion; he would vote for a laboratory, but not for a commission to determine the need for one.32 The resolution authorizing the Woodward commission failed.

33

So did the bill authorizing a laboratory, when it was introduced four days later. As Aerial Age summarized the issue: "While Congress almost as a whole admits the need of such a laboratory, there are questions of 'peanut politics' to be settled and various warring factions of the government to be consulted before it finally comes to a vote.” The main obstacle in the House seems to have been Majority Leader Mann, reportedly indignant over the manner in which the whole question had been handled-especially Chambers's attempt to locate the laboratory in the Smithsonian against the will of the Woodward commission, an effort he considered "impertinent and impudent" and grounds for court-martial and dismissal from the service. Mann was a close friend of Samuel Stratton, avowed enemy of the bill, and he was "always on the job and able to block any legislation which he [was] strongly opposing.' Although Chambers and his allies had persuaded the secretaries of the army, the navy, and the Smithsonian Institution to endorse the legislation (perhaps without telling them that the Woodward commission had not officially endorsed it), equally powerful men were contesting it. Stratton had Mann's ear, and Maclaurin was writing from MIT to key senators.35

99 34

Considering time to be their enemy and seeing that the 62nd Congress would expire on 4 March before considering their bill, the Chambers forces tried attaching a rider to the Sundry Civil Bill to get some aeronautical research funds for the Smithsonian in the current session. But that plan failed as badly as the bill had; the problem was not time, but lack of support. The Smithsonian advocates had too many enemies and not enough friends in the 62nd Congress. The gap widened in the 63rd. The same bills, reintroduced the following month in the new Congress, died in committee. 36

THE SMITHSONIAN TRY

After the failure of the Woodward commission and the Chambers proposals for a laboratory, the leadership of the movement changed. Chambers was transferred to other duties in the navy, and Zahm receded into the background. In their place emerged Charles D. Walcott, the powerful and influential secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. who was believed (by Captain Taylor at least) to have been the force behind the movement all along.

Walcott was a remarkable man with a remarkable career already behind him in 1913. Leaving school at age 18 without even the equiva

lent of a high school diploma, Walcott had followed a natural interest in and talent for paleontology that led him through an assistantship with the state geologist of New York and into the United States Geological Survey, which he joined in 1879. When he left the survey 28 years later to become secretary of the Smithsonian, he had established a worldwide reputation for original research, had published widely, and since 1892 had headed the entire survey, a position given him because of his recognized abilities to get along with people (especially congressmen) and his gift for explaining and justifying scientific research to laymen. These same gifts made him an ideal secretary for the Smithsonian, and from this post he increased the scope of his already catholic activities in behalf of the advancement of science in the United States. He was, for example, instrumental in founding the National Park Service and the Carnegie Institute, in the rejuvenation of the National Academy of Sciences, and less successfully in numerous attempts over the years to arouse interest in a department of science within the federal government.37 His association in the minds of many with the latter movement made his activities in the field of aeronautics somewhat suspect, but his unparalleled political gifts more than overcame that handicap. In sum, he was just the man to guide the aeronautical

laboratory movement through the labyrinth of bureaucratic intrigue and congressional politics.

Walcott began his campaign early in 1913 by unilaterally reopening the Langley Aerodynamical Laboratory within the Smithsonian Institution. For this he needed only the approval of the Smithsonian board of regents, which was quickly forthcoming. 38 One of the immediate purposes of this move was to honor Langley and his cherished research in "aerodromics," but there was more to it than that. Walcott and the Smithsonian had grandiose plans afoot and the reopening of the laboratory was only the first step. Walcott was so anxious to proceed auspiciously and correctly that he even got President Wilson to endorse the scheme beforehand.39

The laboratory activated by Walcott looked remarkably like the one proposed by Chambers. It was to be run by a director, who would be a member of an advisory committee composed of representatives of government agencies concerned with aviation and private interests "acquainted with the needs of aeronautics," the total membership not to exceed 14. The advisory committee would be assisted by subcommittees whose chairmen would be drawn from the main committee, though the other members need not be. These subcommittees would supervise and direct the work of the laboratory in conducting and reporting on aeronautical research.

In two respects this laboratory differed from the one envisioned by Chambers. First, it was intended to be merely a nucleus to which would be added "other laboratories and other essential agencies" leading at last to a "Bureau of Aerodromics." 40 Walcott was empowered by the Smithsonian's board of regents to use $10,000 of the institution's Hodgkins Fund to reopen the laboratory, to use $5000 a year for five years thereafter to operate it, and to request from Congress $50,000 "for the continuation of aerodromical [aeronautical] investigations under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution."

The most marked difference, however, between Walcott's scheme and the one proposed by Chambers the previous year was a heightened concern for the Progressive ethic recently affirmed by election of Wilson and a Democratic Congress. While the laboratory would conduct such research “as may serve to increase the safety and effectiveness of aerial locomotion for the purposes of commerce, national defense, and the welfare of man," it was in no way to "promote patented devices, furnish capital to inventors, or manufacture commercially, or give regular courses of instruction for aeronautical pilots or engineers." It was to "exercise its function for the military and civil departments of the Government of the United States, and also for any individual, firm, association, or corporation within the United States provided, however, that such department, individual, firm, association,

or corporation shall defray the cost of all material used and of all services of persons employed in the exercise of such functions." In sum, the laboratory would use and complement the resources of the federal government for the advancement of aviation in general, scrupulously avoiding the kind of favoritism to special interests that had besmirched the record of Taft and his Republican predecessors in the age of the trusts and the robber barons. Finally, the composition of the advisory committee was modified again from the original Chambers proposal: now, half the members would be from government, the other half from either government or private life. Walcott had in mind eventual government funding for this laboratory, and he clearly wanted its organization and purpose described in terms of the national interest to free it from the taint of Aero Club commercialism and partiality.

The advisory committee met three times, in May, June, and December. It consisted of 11 men: seven government representatives, and four private.11 Virtually all of its work was divided among 16 subcommittees, ranging from Publication and Dissemination of Aeronautical Information to Applied Aerodynamics. All the subcommittees but one were chaired by government members of the advisory committee; the ratio of government to private membership of the subcommittees was about two to one, roughly the same as that of the advisory committee itself, 42

The group's first year was devoted almost entirely to surveying the state of the art. Subcommittees in each branch of aeronautics determined what work needed to be done and how it might best be accomplished. Most notably, the full committee sent its recorder, Albert F. Zahm, on a survey of Europe's aeronautical laboratories. Zahm traveled to all the important research establishments in the company of Jerome C. Hunsaker, a young naval officer who went along to prepare himself for teaching a new course in aeronautics at MIT that fall. The two men were greatly impressed with what they saw, and on their return communicated their enthusiasm in reports that reinforced the sentiment within the American aeronautical community favoring a national laboratory. 43

But, before this impact could be felt, a new crisis arose. In December 1913, after the third meeting of the advisory committee, Walcott discovered that the same law that had made the Woodward commission technically illegal applied also to the Smithsonian advisory committee. Government members were not allowed to sit on any such committee without congressional approval. Walcott brought this to the attention of the Smithsonian board of regents at their December meeting and was directed by them to take the matter before Congress. Specifically, he was empowered to request of Congress $50,000 to support the work of the laboratory.44 Should such a request be granted, it would have

the dual effect of supplementing the limited moneys the Smithsonian was able to supply through the Hodgkins Fund and of giving tacit congressional approval to the committee, thereby resolving the legal technicality that had brought down the Woodward commission.

Walcott took his proposal before Congress in March 1914, arguing before the House Committee on Appropriations that funding the Aerodynamical Laboratory would be in the best interests of the government. It would, he said, help foster commercial aviation in the United States, bringing the U.S. abreast of the Europeans and encouraging an important new means of transportation and communication. At least one of the members of the committee, however, saw in this the nose of the camel: Would not Walcott's laboratory grow into a great new bureau with ever-increasing budgets and scores of new government buildings to fill up the District of Columbia? 45 Since the original resolution of the Smithsonian board of regents empowering Walcott to establish the advisory committee had specifically directed the secretary to look to the addition of other agencies and the grouping of them into a "Bureau organization," he could hardly deny the congressman's charge. The current enthusiasm in Washington was for efficiency and streamlining; the prospect of another new agency, perhaps even a "Bureau of Aerodromics," worried some on Capitol Hill more than did