LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Herbert Hoover: Commerce Secretary
built 278 days ago
Hoover brought representatives of industry to Washington conferences to exchange information in order to improve efficiency and standardization. The representatives would agree on a "sense of the meeting" and return home to propagandize for their recommendations. The impetus the trade association movement received from Hoover's office was only temporarily dampened by Justice Department efforts to prevent price-fixing. When progressives protested that he was not using his office to promote business reform, he replied that the Commerce Department was not the appropriate agency. But Hoover had an important part in ending the twelve-hour day in the steel industry and winning the Jacksonville Agreement, which brought temporary labor peace to many of the soft-coal fields. Regulation of radio and the air-waves and the airplane industry ... began under Hoover's Commerce Department.
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A mining engineer by training, Commerce Secretary Hoover was much influenced by the ideas of Frederick "Speedy" W. Taylor (1856-1915), an efficiency engineer regarded as the father of "scientific management." (INTRO NOTE Taylorism) Under Hoover's leadership, initiatives undertaken within the Department of Commerce by the Bureau of Standards and the Division of Simplified Practice reflected the impact of Frederick W. Taylor on the business world, and set the tone for a nationwide effort to maximize worker, managerial and industrial productivity.
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As Commerce secretary, Hoover ... hosted two national conferences on street traffic, in 1924 and 1926 (a third convened in 1930, during Hoover's presidency). Collectively the meetings were called the National Conference on Street and Highway Safety. Hoover's chief objective was to address the growing casualty toll of traffic accidents, but the scope grew and soon embraced motor vehicle standards, rules of the road, and urban traffic control. He left the invited interest groups to negotiate agreements among themselves, which were then presented for adoption by states and localities. Because automotive trade associations were the best organized, many of the positions taken by the conferences reflected their interests. The conferences issued a model Uniform Vehicle Code for adoption by the states, and a Model Municipal Municipal Traffic Ordinance for adoption by cities.
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Commerce Secretary