60 Geopolitical treatises: See, for example, Staley, Raw Materials, and Emeny, Strategy. The science journalist Edwin E. Slossen saw far more clearly than the strategists how the laboratory might replace the land, but even he recommended that the United States acquire more colonies in pursuit of rubber. Creative Chemistry (Garden City, NY, 1919), 156.
61 international management: A cogent presentation of the idea is C.W.W. Greenidge, “Tasks for an International Colonial Conference,” The Crown Colonist, December 1943, 833–35. Enthusiasm within the State Department is registered throughout the Notter Records. See, for example, CDA 159, “Summary Analysis of Certain Problems Relating to the Development of the Petroleum and Other Resources of Dependent Areas,” May 1944 (box 124); PWC 248, “Proposal for an International Trusteeship System,” May 1944 (microfilm 1221); and DA 30, “The United States and Trusteeship,” December 1945 (box 132).
62 “We can produce”: PMPC, Resources for Freedom, 131.
63 reports that followed: Important surveys are Hans H. Landsberg, Leonard L. Fischman, and Joseph L. Fisher, Resources in America’s Future: Patterns of Requirements and Availabilities, 1960–2000 (Baltimore, 1963); National Commission on Materials Policy, Material Needs and the Environment Today and Tomorrow (Washington, DC, 1973); and National Commission on Supplies and Shortages, Government and the Nation’s Resources (Washington, DC, 1976).
64 “not a serious”: NCSS, Government and the Nation’s Resources, ix.
65 “The truth,” etc.: U Thant, “The Decade of Development,” 1962, in Public Papers of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations, ed. Andrew W. Cordier and Max Harrelson (New York, 1976), 6:118.
66 Places that had once been: On synthetic competition, see Eckes, Struggle for Minerals, 234. On quinine, see Paul F. Russell, Man’s Mastery of Malaria (London, 1955), 112.
67 cost of extractive: Harold J. Barnett and Chandler Morse, Scarcity and Growth: The Economics of Natural Resource Scarcity (Baltimore, 1963), chap. 8.
68 didn’t even mention security: NCMP, Material Needs and the Environment. The irrelevance of raw materials to major postwar interventions is explored in Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ, 1978).
69 59 percent of the world’s proven oil: Geir Lundestad, “Empire by Invitation?: The United States and Western Europe, 1945–52,” Journal of Peace Research 23 (1966): 264.
70 “may have to,” etc.: Daniel J. Sargent, A Superpower Transformed: The Remaking of American Foreign Relations in the 1970s (New York, 2015), 185.
71 Nixon administration was serious: Lizette Alvarez, “Britain Says U.S. Planned to Seize Oil in ’73 Crisis,” NYT, January 2, 2004.
72 matter of rising prices: A governmental investigation attributed the 1973–74 oil shock to panicked hoarding rather than inadequate supply. NSCC, Nation’s Resources, chap. 4. Also see Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (London, 2011), chap. 7.
73 The moon suits: NASA, “Space Suit Evolution: From Custom Tailored to Off-the-Rack,” 1994, history.nasa.gov/spacesuits.pdf.
74 The fifty-star flag that: DuPont, “DuPont Science: Out of This World and Down to Earth,” www2.dupont.com/Media_Center/en_US/assets/downloads/pdf/DuPont_SpaceEarth_FactSheet.pdf.
17. THIS IS WHAT GOD HATH WROUGHT
1 “a depressing experience”: Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943 (Washington, DC, 1955), 68.
2 Manila Probably Ours: Lowell Evening Mail, April 30, 1898.
3 “swarming ant-heap”: WTR, 11:43.
4 USS Oregon: Julie Greene, The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (New York, 2009), 20.
5 “ripe for dying”: WTR, 11:143.
6 MacArthur staged a lavish reception: Helen Herron Taft, Recollections of Full Years (New York, 1914), 144–45.
7 early U.S. colonial buildings: Gerard Lico, Arkitekturang Filipino: A History of Architecture and Urbanism in the Philippines (Quezon City, 2008), 230.
8 “nail currant jelly”: Theodore Roosevelt, “The Panama Canal,” in The Pacific Ocean in History, ed. H. Morse Stephens and Herbert E. Bolton (New York, 1917), 145.
9 Panama Canal Zone: In the following account, I’ve relied especially on David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York, 1977); Greene, Canal Builders; and Noel Maurer and Carlos Yu, The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal (Princeton, NJ, 2011).
10 yellow fever and resistance to malaria: J. R. McNeill, Mosquito Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater Caribbean, 1620–1914 (New York, 2010), chap. 2.
11 caskets: Marie D. Gorgas and Burton J. Hendrick, William Crawford Gorgas: His Life and Work (New York, 1924), 143, 174.
12 “I shall never forget”: Alfred Dottin, in Competition for the Best True Stories of Life and Work on the Isthmus of Panama During the Construction of the Panama Canal (Balboa, Panama, 1963), 105.
13 “whirlpool”: Quoted in Jeffrey W. Parker, “Empire’s Angst: The Politics of Race, Migration, and Sex Work in Panama, 1903–1945” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 2013), 23.
14 “dark and gloomy,” etc.: Gorgas and Hendrick, Gorgas, 141.
15 Delays, pileups, and breakdowns: Maurer and Yu, Big Ditch, 99–101.
16 pyrethrum: McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 460.
17 mainland wives, etc.: Greene, Canal Builders, 116–21; Michael E. Donoghue, Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone (Durham, NC, 2014), chap. 2.
18 medical exams … forcibly hospitalize: Parker, “Empire’s Angst,” chap. 3.
19 eight tons of earth: McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 496.
20 one cubic yard: Maurer and Yu, Big Ditch, 103.
21 “Today you dig”: Matthew Parker, Panama Fever: The Battle to Build the Canal (London, 2007), 341.
22 records kept on the deaths: Michael L. Conniff, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh, 1985), 31.
23 “ordnance requirements”: R. H. Somers, “Ordnance Inspection,” Industrial Standardization, June 1942, 155.
24 sixty-seven pounds: Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1943–45 (Washington, DC, 1968), 825.
25 fourteen ports … a hundred ports: Frank T. Hines, “Two Wars,” Army Transportation Journal, August 1945, 21–22.
26 logistics had been a specialist’s term: Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943, 9–11.
27 “obviously” … “pathway to China”: Quoted in Frank H. Heck, “Airline to China,” in The Army Air Forces in World War II, ed. Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate (Chicago, 1958), 7:114.
28 four thousand aircraft: Kevin Conley Ruffner, Luftwaffe Field Divisions (Oxford, UK, 1990), 3.
29 one plane every four minutes: Jeffrey A. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Cambridge, MA, 2007), 20.
30 “knocked-down shipping”: Leighton and Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943, 640.
31 “A crow”: Ivan Dmitri, Flight to Everywhere (New York, 1944), 26.
32 Van Vleck, a curator: Jenifer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Cambridge, MA, 2013), 142.
33 “probably all the camels”: Hugh B. Cave, Wings Across the World: The Story of the Air Transport Command (New York, 1945), 62.
34 “aluminum trail”: William H. Tunner, Over the Hump (1964; Washington, DC, 1985), 46–47.
35 once every eleven minutes: Reginald M. Cleveland, Air Transport at War (New York, 1946), 113.
36 one every minute and twelve seconds: Tunner, Over the Hump, 113.
37 “Roads, it would seem”: Cave, Wings, 106.
38 “knew that we could fly”: Tunner, Over the Hump, 59.
39 Britain cut Germany’s transatlantic cables: An ex
cellent account of this and the Zimmermann telegram is Daniel R. Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (New York, 1991), chap. 9. On cables, I’ve been guided also by Jonathan Reed Winkler, Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2008).
40 U.S. telegraphic connection: Winkler, Nexus, 152–54.
41 eight words transmitted … eight million words: U.S. Army Forces in the European Theater, Service: The Story of the Signal Corps (Paris, 1945), 8.
42 Sixteen thousand cipher clerks: Headrick, Invisible Weapon, 223.
43 Major stations: George Raynor Thompson and Dixie R. Harris, United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services; The Signal Corps (Washington, DC, 1966), 3:607.
44 “We have got our net”: Ibid., 3:582.
45 “modern miracle”: Rebecca Robbins Raines, Getting the Message Through: A Branch History of the U.S. Army Signal Corps (Washington, DC, 1996), 262.
46 Before the invasion of Normandy: Thompson and Harris, Signal Corps, 3:586.
47 faxing: Ibid., 3:605.
48 what hath god wrought … this is what: Ibid., 3:607.
49 “nine hundred and ninety”: With Walt Whitman in Camden (Boston, 1906), 3:293.
50 caused eight to ten times: Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (Cambridge, UK, 2001), 113.
51 “perhaps the most”: Emory C. Cushing, History of Entomology in World War II (Washington, DC, 1957), 43.
52 More than 95 percent of the: James Phinney Baxter III, Scientists Against Time (Cambridge, MA, 1946), 307.
53 fourteen thousand compounds: Paul F. Russell, Man’s Mastery of Malaria (London, 1955), 112–13.
54 Prisoners, etc.: Baxter, Scientists Against Time, 318.
55 “complete destruction,” etc.: E. Russell, War and Nature, 136. On DDT, see also David Kinkela, DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World (Chapel Hill, NC, 2011).
56 dropped 95 percent: E. Russell, War and Nature, 117.
57 “man has developed”: P. F. Russell, Man’s Mastery, 243.
58 death rate for all disease: Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier (Washington, DC, 1945), 1.
59 95 percent of the adult mosquitoes: Cushing, Entomology in World War II, 34.
60 “completely covered,” etc.: Quoted in Harold W. Thatcher, The Packaging and Packing of Subsistence for the Army (Washington, DC, 1945), 3.
61 Specialized equipment: J. B. Dow, “How the Navy Uses Standards in Its Electronics Program,” Industrial Standardization, May 1945, 97–99; John C. MacArthur, “Fungus Proofing of CWS Equipment in the Field,” May 20, 1945; folder 470.72; box 54; Entry 2B, Misc. Series, 1942–45; CWS; John Perry, The Story of Standards (New York, 1955), 179; Raines, Getting the Message Through, 263.
62 20 to 40 percent of the matériel: Russell Jones, “The Packaging Problem,” Army Transportation Journal, August 1946, 6.
63 “amphibious” packaging: Thatcher, Packaging and Packing, chaps. 2–3; Alvin P. Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan (Washington, DC, 1956), chap. 7.
64 Every president after: Maurer and Yu, Big Ditch, chap. 7.
65 fifteen thousand tons: Tunner, Over the Hump, 159.
66 “I may be the craziest”: Roger G. Miller, To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 (Washington, DC, 1998), 23.
67 “like appointing John Ringling”: Curtis LeMay, quoted in ibid., 46.
68 “The real excitement”: Tunner, Over the Hump, 162.
69 The lines did climb: Ibid., 222.
70 beaming radio broadcasts: The extraordinary story is told in Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, NY, 1997).
71 “When it came to radio,” etc.: Lech Walesa, foreword to ibid., xi.
18. THE EMPIRE OF THE RED OCTAGON
1 fire ravaged Baltimore: John Perry, The Story of Standards (New York, 1955), 140–41; Rexmond C. Cochrane, Measures for Progress: A History of the National Bureau of Standards (Washington, DC, 1966), 84–86.
2 compatibility failures: A. H. Martin Jr., “Diverse Local Standards Bar Free Trade in Many States,” Industrial Standardization, July 1940, 181–92.
3 College football: “Standard Gauge for Standard Football,” Industrial Standardization, April 1940, 96.
4 traffic lights: P. G. Agnew, “Consumer Standards on the Way,” Industrial Standardization, February 1940, 45; “How Standards Eliminate Trade Barriers,” Industrial Standardization, April 1940, 86.
5 “exceedingly rapid”: Lyman J. Gage, “National Standardizing Bureau,” April 18, 1900, reprinted in Science 11 (1900): 698.
6 “there was quite a discussion”: Quoted in Cochrane, Measures, 84.
7 Hoover: I’ve relied on Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1984); Kendrick A. Clements, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918–1928 (New York, 2010); and Glen Jeansonne, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Fighting Quaker, 1928–1933 (New York, 2012).
8 Osages: Louise Morse Whitham, “Herbert Hoover and the Osages,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 25 (1947): 2–4.
9 Harrison into a college baseball game: Smith, Uncommon Man, 16.
10 Rain-in-the-Face: WTR, 11:40.
11 Mr. Cat: Smith, Uncommon Man, 19.
12 “quieting of hate” … “hushing to ambition” … “meekness”: Herbert Hoover, Memoirs (New York, 1952), 2:158.
13 turning the lighthouses out: Oscar Straus, quoted in Cochrane, Measures, 229.
14 bureau developed a system: Described in Clements, Hoover, 255.
15 brickmakers: Perry, Story of Standards, 132; Clements, Hoover, 111.
16 Then came new standards: On Hoover’s other standardizations, see Cochrane, Mea sures, 258.
17 “sprinkled on practically”: W. C. Stewart, “Serving All Industries!—Bolts and Nuts,” Industrial Standardization, July 1941, 165.
18 “The screw thread is a simple”: Ralph Flanders, quoted in George S. Case, “What Can Be Done Toward World Unification of Screw Threads?” Standardization, November 1949, 290.
19 “had to find”: Herbert Hoover, “Crusade for Standards,” Standardization, December 1951, 381.
20 “Now the half-inch”: Ibid., 282.
21 imperial system: Aashish Velkar, Markets and Measurements in Nineteenth-Century Britain (New York, 2012), 63–66.
22 nursing in the Philippines: I’m guided by Catherine Ceniza Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Durham, NC, 2003), chap. 2, and Ma. Mercedes G. Planta, “Prerequisites to a Civilized Life: The American Public Health System in the Philippines, 1901 to 1927” (Ph.D. diss., National University of Singapore, 2008).
23 Nursing wasn’t new: Anastacia Giron-Tupas, History of Nursing in the Philippines, rev. ed. (Manila, 1961), 11–15.
24 aggressively overwrite: Details from ibid., chap. 3, and Lavinia L. Dock, A History of Nursing: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day with Special Reference to the Work of the Past Thirty Years (New York, 1912), 4:307–20.
25 more and more nurses from the Philippines: See Choy, Empire of Care; Barbara L. Brush and Julie Sochalski, “International Nurse Migration: Lessons from the Philippines,” Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice 8 (2007): 37–46; and Barbara L. Brush, “The Potent Lever of Toil: Nursing Development and Exportation in the Postcolonial Philippines,” American Journal of Public Health 100 (2010): 1572–81.
26 switched over to the metric system: Hector Vera, “The Social Life of Measures: Metrication in the United States and Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., The New School, 2011), 95.
27 “Suppose my neighbor’s,” etc.: Roosevelt, Press Conference, December 17, 1940, APP. 306 0.30-inch cartridges … bombs: M. F. Schoeffel, “Some Adventures in Military Standardization,” Standardization, September 1
951, 277.
28 “frightful commentary”: J. B. Carswell, “Postwar Standardization,” Industrial Standardization, October 1944, 211.
29 “We can’t borrow parts”: Benjamin Melnitsky, Profiting from Industrial Standardization (New York, 1953), 42.
30 $600 million sending spare screws: Ralph E. Flanders, “How Big Is an Inch?” Atlantic Monthly, January 1951, 45.
31 $84 million to establish: Edward R. Stettinius Jr., Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory (New York, 1944), chap. 5.
32 U.S. Army also adopted: Schoeffel, “Adventures,” 277.
33 By the war’s end: Richard M. Leighton and Robert W. Coakley, Global Logistics and Strategy, 1940–1943 (Washington, DC, 1955), 5.
34 “the integration”: Howard Coonley and P. G. Agnew, “The Role of Standards in the System of Free Enterprise,” Industrial Standardization, April 1941, part 2, 12.
35 Fenn Manufacturing: W. L. Fenn, “Standards Smooth the Path of the Subcontractor,” Industrial Standardization, June 1942, 163.
36 7.5 times larger: Cochrane, Measures, appendix F.
37 15 percent of Australia’s national income: Charles A. Willoughby and John Chamberlain, MacArthur: 1941–1951 (New York, 1954), 71.
38 Australian agriculture: My account is from Alvin P. Stauffer, The Quartermaster Corps: Operations in the War Against Japan (Washington, DC, 1956), chap. 5.
39 “Almost every phase”: K. R. Cramp, 1945, quoted in Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic: A Gastronomic History of Australia, 2d ed. (Melbourne, 2007), 187.
40 “Without any inhibitions”: John Curtin, quoted in Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War (1950; Boston, 1985), 4:7.
41 standards coordinating committee: “United Nations Standards Committee Opens New York Office,” Industrial Standardization, October 1944, 209–10.
42 For nearly two weeks: Meeting described in various articles in Industrial Standardization, especially “British Mission and American Groups Confer on Screw Thread Standards,” December 1943, 364–65, and John Gaillard, “New War Standard for American Truncated Whitworth Threads,” July 1944, 129–31.
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