The appointment of new committee members is as follows:

Committee on Specifications and Tolerances:

Mr. Marion L. Kinlaw, Supervisor of Weights and Measures, North Carolina Department of Agriculture, is appointed for a five-year term to replace Mr. John C. Mays whose term is expiring.

Committee on Laws and Regulations:

Mr. Charles H. Vincent, Assistant Director, Department of Consumer Affairs, City of Dallas, Texas, is appointed for a five-year term to replace Mr. M. R. Dettler whose term is expiring. Mr. John L. O'Neill, State Sealer of Weights and Measures, Kansas Board of Agriculture, is appointed for a four-year term to replace Mr. Mike Dennis who has found it necessary to resign from the Committee.

Committee on Education, Administration, and Consumer Affairs:

Mr. W. B. Harper, Chief Inspector of Weights and Measures, City of Birmingham, Alabama, is appointed for a five-year term to replace Mr. George E. Mattimoe whose term is expiring.

Committee on Liaison with the Federal Government :

Mr. Edward H. Stadolnik, Head Administrative Assistant, Division of Standards, Massachusetts Executive Office of Consumer Affairs. is appointed for a five-year term to replace Mr. Moe Greenspan whose term is expiring.

In closing, let me point out that as program managers we face common resource problems. There never will be enough funding to permit full scale attacks on all of our problems. In response, you must identify those problems that are most pressing, and we at NBS must arrange our priorities to ensure optimum interaction with you in seeking solutions. In this way we shall jointly contribute—as we have for nearly 70 years—to the achievement of true and total equity.

PRESENTATION OF HONOR AWARDS

TION 392

Dr. Roberts presented Honor Awards to members of the Conference who, by attending the 57th Conference in 1972, reached one of the five attendance categories for which recognition is made-attendance at 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 meetings.

Award Recipients

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ADDRESS

by the Honorable Karl E. BAKKE, Acting General Counsel, U.S.

Department of Commerce

!

Representing the Department of Commerce which is charged with promoting and encouraging our profit-motivated, private enterpris system, I always enjoy speaking to the scientists and technologists who have had so much to do with making this American economic syster. work so well.

The subject of my speech today is “Economi Policy of the Federal Government." To cover such broad terrain in a limited amount of time

is a weighty responsibility-I know—and my hope to accomplish it results in part from my blind faith in Mark Twain's maxim: “Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.”

In part, too, my hope is justified by the fact that I have chosen to focus principally on that part of federal policy dealing with international economic matters since this area is such an important part of the Administration's economic policy at this time. The Trade Reform Act, multinational negotiations on textiles, a new era of commercial relations with the Soviet Union and with the Peoples Republic of China, the move toward conversion to the metric system of weights and measures and toward establishing international engineering standards, and a number of other significant initiatives in international economic policy have been----or are about to be- set in motion. The timing of these initiatives is a function, in large measure, of economic necessity. But their success will depend much upon the climate-or attitudes—of business leaders in this country and upon the ability of our science and technology to rise to the great challenge of increasing simultaneously both the productivity of our industry and the quality of the goods produced by that industry in order for America to maintain a competitive position in the world market. Inoar is useless if no one pulls it.

Therefore, my theme today is that you in commercial science and teelmology, and within government whose concern is business, must be thinking internationally.

When I refer to "thinking internationally," I mean a realization of global interdependence, including our dependence on other nations. This will be a profound change from the habits of thought many of us have fallen into as a legacy of our early history as a nation.

And this is not simply the way I or others might believe things should be—this is the way things are, whether we like it or not. America can no longer be isolationist, either economically or politi

(ally. We're living internationally right now, and so we must be thinking internationally, too.

America is currently faced with many situations illustrating vividly why we must make this transition to thinking internationally. Not the least of these is the dependence upon imported petroleum for a good part of the energy needs of our nation. The textile and shoe industries, to take two more examples, have known for years that modern business is international business. In these and other industries, competition has been strongly affected by imports, technological advances of foreign firms, and the policies of foreign governments as well as our own. I should also mention tourism, trade with Canada, international banking, fishing and other commercial relationships that exemplify the nexus of international economics and federal policy in matters of particular importance to the American business community.

I. An Historical Perspective Discovery Period

From the historical perspective, one thing we can say with certainty is that America was discovered by people who were thinking internationally. Whether you credit the discovery of America to Columbus or, as I would prefer from pride of ancestry, to Lief the Lucky, son of Eric the Red, we know that the first Europeans to reach our West Hemisphere shores were not motivated primarily by a sense of adventure, but by a desire for increased trade and commerce.

Columbus, in particular, was looking for trade routes to the Orient, not for America. He came here thinking internationally. As historian Samuel Eliot Morison has said: “America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered, it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. . . . History is like that, very chancy."

One cannot help but note that many of you might cite technological discoveries which might indicate that science, too, "is like that, very chancy." Colonial and Post-Revolutionary Periods

Those who came to our shores after Columbus were also thinking and living internationally. Throughout the colonial period and after the Revolution, lively trade both among growing east coast cities and across the Atlantic was a basic fabric of the new world existence. It tas international in the sense of acknowledged interdependence.

This internationalism of the early American economy was built on necessity. We were not at that time a self-sufficient nation, and we iere largely barred by the mountains, and by proclamation of the English Parliament, from proceeding beyond the coastal areas to the

great American frontier. A lively commerce had to be internation.
commerce, so we started out thinking internationally.
America Turns Inward

We are all familiar with George Washington's dictum, “Tis ou true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world." This manifesto has been cited ever since to suppor isolationist political and economic arguments. I suggest that the Father of our Country has been badly used in this interpretation. I: more modern terms, I think a fair rendering would be that nonalignment in international political affairs is essential for a small, nev nation. This is far different from international isolationism.

The necessity of our new nation to trade, and the substantial help w received from others in obtaining our independence, belie a "go it alone” attitude or policy, either politically or economically.

However, as time passed, a strain of isolationism did develop in the United States—not so much from conscious choice, I believe, as from historical circumstance. The Louisiana Purchase and the opening up of the west turned us away from thinking internationally, because so much of our energy was directed toward our own magnificent domesti : challenges. The "Manifest Destiny" to build America kept us thinking about ourselves through the Mexican War and the annexation of vast areas in the far west. We had the great American frontier to conquerwe had additional resources to exploit, and new markets to develop. right here at home. Then the Civil War, Reconstruction, and our own industrial and technological revolution kept our attention focuser! largely inward. Overall, our trade and political relations with other countries had become less important to us at this point in time.

Twentieth Century

This attitude of looking inward has, I believe, persisted for most Americans itil very recently—and for many it still persists. Not even our involvement in two World Wars was sufficient to waken us fully as a nation to the need to begin thinking internationally again.

Since 1945, the thinking we have done about the world has, for the most part, not been on the basis of the recognized mutual interdependence which I would regard as international thinking. Instead, it has been based upon missionary zeal and a somewhat disingenuous faith in a cornucopia of economic resources, which allowed us to assist others from our own pockets to the extent of about $150 billion. This has been commendable, but not what I would call thinking internationally-at least not realistic international thinking.

Let me point out some aspects of our generally held attitudes since the Second World War:

First, we have rested comfortably on our military superiority.

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