the consumer has more and more money to spend, and as technology gives him more and more complex products, we are going to have to produce more products useful to and understood by the consumer.

Then, finally, there is another whole area. For example, perhaps you don't care if I burn my house down, but you do care if I set two or three people's houses around me on fire. Society has to step in. These are safety standards. More and more, we get more control over the forces of nature, you must institute safety standards which before weren't needed.

Mr. ROUDEBUSH. You mentioned the need in the case of atomic energy. These are, of course, new fields. How about in past or existing fields, where is the glaring need of a standardization? Do you follow my question?

Mr. McCUNE. Yes. We put out a publication that is quite thick. That includes all the new projects going right now, and we hope that every one of them represents a need. There are hundreds and hundreds of them.

In addition, there are many standards which under our procedures require review, for example, the National Electrical Code which is an American standard, is revised continuously. It is revised every 2 years, but the committees working on it are continuously working on it to get new information on products. New information is being fed in by associations who belong.

Mr. ROUDEBUSH. Now, one final question. How much difficulty do you run into by having different units of measure used in different countries, like the metric system in use in France, and a different system used in most of the English-speaking countries? I realize even the gallon is different between Canada and the United States. Does this cause much problem in standardization?

Mr. McCUNE. I would have to give a longer answer than I think you would like. The answer is "not much," if you make it short. Let me qualify this a little. Measurement is no problem at all, the decimal inch and the linear centimeter, and so forth, no problem at all. You can express anything in both.

On the other hand, far more important are the kinds of things where one country has certain gages of steel and another country is different; one country has a cerain size drill and another country has a different size drill. The simplest of these examples is screw thread. Different countries have different shapes and sizes of screw threads, different numbers. Yet today we have an international standard on screw thread and various countries are getting closer to the same thing. It makes no difference of how you express it in terms of linear measure. What is more important is to choose something that is uniform; it is not a question of measure, but a question of uniformity. Mr. ROUDEBUSH. That is all I have.

Mr. McCune. I might add that in different industries, it is very different. I believe you will find in oil and pipeline, the whole world uses identically the same. The same thing in the aircraft industry, and so forth, whereas in other things you find great diversion.

Mr. VIVIAN. I am interested in remarks made by Mr. McCune. On page 8 you have evidenced some degree of apprehension regarding involvement of the United Nations in the standard-making operation;

and you indicate a preference for international standard-making bodies outside of the United Nations.

What difficulties have you had with the United Nations so far? Mr. McCUNE. None. My intent was to say that one of our problems in this country is that we have so many standard-making bodies. It is quite conceivable for a single item you could find two or three different standards. This is not the case when you have a single American standard. If we fractionate the world activity so that you have standards through any number of agencies, you bypass the organizations which the world created in order that you would have a single one, and our standard becomes geometrically more valuable as it is not proliferated and different.

Mr. VIVIAN. In what ways are consumers more adequately represented in the Pan American standards organizations than they would be in the United Nations?

Mr. McCUNE. I can't answer that specifically because I don't know. What I do know, however, is both the international and technical commission and the international standard organization principles involve the same effort that I spoke of in getting parties at interest in the standard. I have carefully excluded the areas where we make treaties because this is a different thing, and I would suggest in treaty making we might well go through something like the United Nations. But in trade and commerce I think we would do better to work with the standard making organizations of all the nations who have formed international standards organizations. The reason there are two is because the international technical commission came long before the international standards organization.

Mr. VIVIAN. I ask you if you listened to or read the statement presented for Congressman Dingell and if you have any exceptions to take to the views which he expressed.

Mr. McCUNE. I do to this extent: I don't believe a check of the people who are actually developing standards would show that small business was not represented, or that small government or small people were not represented in this activity at all. I don't believe this would come out.

I share his desire that they may be represented, but I doubt seriously that a nose-to-nose count would bear this out.

And the other was this: If I understood his statement correctly, he was almost asking that the Department of Justice pass on each standard. There are thousands and thousands of standards, and if each one had to be approved by Justice we would never get a standard up.

Mr. VIVIAN. That is very close to what he said.

Mr. McCUNE. We believe that procedures which are obligatory upon us because of our constitution and charter carefully avoid any situation which would be considered unsatisfactory by the Department of Justice. We would like some time to petition the Congress for a Federal charter for this organization. We recognize that there are quite a few in line now and Congress is considering how this might be done.

You will find that this constitution provides for our operation under a Federal charter or a State charter. We are operating under State charter because we had a State charter. I believe if we had a State

charter and the Department of Justice reviewed it on that basis there would be no objection. It would be a long time before we get a Federal charter.

Mr. VIVIAN. Congressman Dingell has used the words "asked to pass upon the antitrust aspects of new standards, and so forth." How do you encompass that function at all at the present time for the procedure making standard?

Mr. McCUNE. You don't, as I understand it, and again I am not lawyer, but the antitrust aspects would be primarily, I would think, such things as a combination in restraint of trade and unreasonable attempt to force people out of business unjustly, and so forth. This is the area where there would be concern. We avoid this by allowing all parties at interest to express their opinion and carefully avoiding the promulgation of standards in which there isn't a reasonable consensus, which is really the only way anyone can do it.

Mr. VIVIAN. Have there been efforts to change the standards pattern being developed?

Mr. McCUNE. There have been none during the time that I have been associated with American Standards Association that I can recall. There have been suits filed against the association, and I believe successfully defended. A standard hurts.

Mr. VIVIAN. Are there consumer representatives?

Mr. McCUNE. Yes.

Let me go into this a little bit. We have had in the American Standards Association a Consumer Standards Board. We have 16 or 17 standard boards. One of them is the Consumer Standards Board, and it was their job to protect the consumers' interests. Any organization which wished to, could join and have membership on this standards board. Our new constitution provides something quite different. That standards board was parallel to our other standards boards, and our new constitution has created three councils, one of which is called a Member Body Council. This would be primarily those people who engage in standards making activities and know how to do this.

A second board would be Company Member Council, and a third would be a consumer council; a consumer council has the right to petition if it doesn't like a standard. It has a right to request that standards making activity be undertaken. The Board of Directors of the Institute is the final ruling board.

We would also like representatives and we are hopeful that we can have interested branches of the Federal Government on our board of directors as you will see from our constitution and bylaws. This is the way we will do it. I am not saying we didn't, but I am saying we are trying to strengthen this. This is one of the important things in our reorganization.

Mr. VIVIAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONABLE. Where does USASI get the money to operate now; are there membership dues?

Mr. McCUNE. Yes; there three sources of revenue-for the institute. The two primary sources of revenue are dues from members and the sale of standards.

Mr. CONABLE. The sale of standards?

Mr. McCUNE. American standards. We print them, offer them for sale to everyone.

Mr. CONABLE. How wide a membership do you have?

Mr. McCUNE. Well, there are 138 member bodies and about 2,000 companies. A member body might be, for example, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers or the Institute of Electronic Engineers, which has a hundred thousand members.

Mr. CONABLE. Apparently American participation in ISO projects has been sporadic.

Mr. McCUNE. Not sporadic, sir; it is continuous.

Mr. CONABLE. But it has only been partial. You say that we have 115 active ISO projects and the Nation participates in 74. As a result of this legislation, do you think our participation would go up substantially?

Mr. McCUNE. I think as a result of this legislation there would be participation in areas, not of present overweening interests, but I would like to have strong future impact where we would get in.

I think more important, however, in the areas which we are represented we would do a more effective job in representing the interests of the United States.

Mr. CONABLE. Our whole interest in this field has been voluntary participation.

Mr. McCUNE. That is right.

Mr. CONABLE. Do you see any possible danger of losing the voluntary aspect of this organization if the Government starts making grants in areas in which they feel we should be participating, but where there hasn't been sufficient interest? Can we find ourselves in a subsidy situation in which as it has been said, "Federal control follows Federal funds"; can the whole process become considerably less voluntary if this legislation serves as a foot in the door?

Mr. McCUNE. You are talking like many of the members of our board of directors who have wrestled with this concept for quite some time and our consensus is that the United States would be better off with help in this area at the present time from the Government in this area.

Mr. CONABLE. You feel that this country should move toward the attitude that most of the other countries of the world apparently take. I understand that they strongly subsidize or actually directly control the function of standard making, something that we haven't done.

Mr. McCUNE. Well, I think your understanding is reasonable. Each country is different and I don't know exactly how it is in every country in the world. It is true that in many of the major countries the support of standards making varies from a wholly governmental activity to joint support and I think it is equally true that the United States is a country in which there is the least Government support in the whole standards making activity.

I want to be quite clear. The problem is that the word "standard" if you look it up in the dictionary has about 25 meanings. For example, I am not talking about the Bureau of Standards which is an entirely different thing which maintains physical standards and so forth. Here the United States does a beautiful job of supplying basic standards of that tvpe. I am talking, however, about performance standards, safety standards, and so forth, which are quite different from the Bureau of Standards activities and here I think the United States has more of a voluntary system and I frankly believe that with

the kind of organization which we have drawn up here that we will not be wasteful of funds or be unduly pushed into activities that are not necessary, and the latter is quite important because if you start a new standards activity you will find that many, many people have to become part of it simply because they are afraid to be left off. Therefore, you have to use a lot of thought and care in establishing new standards and be sure there is a real need.

Mr. CONABLE. Do you think that the consensus of your board is that it is too difficult on a voluntary basis to elicit the necessary funds for broad scope standards activity?

Mr. McCUNE. I think there is a shade of difference. I quoted you the number of secretariats and the large number of participation, far more than half of the total world projects and we are probably the second or third nation in total number of secretariats in ISO, so we have a very substantial participation.

Mr. CONABLE. It certainly isn't proportionate to our commerce, though.

Mr. McCUNE. I would remind you that there are many other countries which in the past at least have depended on exports for their livelihood more than we have from our country. This is one of the differences. We have a very substantial opportunity to live. Export trade is very important, but there are countries in this world who are export or die. We have to get there and we will get there. This is important to the country. We have to do it for balance of payments and many other reasons.

And for these reasons we think participation here at this time with some help from the Government would be worthwhile, more participation and better participation, better in terms of better representing our interests.

Mr. CONABLE. What do you expect in the way of pattern of grants that will emerge? Actually, we talked a good deal yesterday about the grant powers of the Secretary relative to the contract-making powers that he would have. How do you think the pattern of grants would emerge here?

Mr. McCUNE. Let me say this, there are two areas we are talking about. One is support in international activities. I think the primary support that we need is really in terms of traveling expenses to attend these meetings so that we can always take the best man, and these are expensive.

For example, it may mean going to Calcutta for a week or 2 weeks and working on this, or some other place in the world. This kind of support is generally what is needed in this area.

A clearinghouse is a very different thing. Actually the establishment of a clearinghouse is going to require doing a little bit, doing this and a little more until we get it on straight, and I would presume that we, maybe others, hopefully the institute, would make proposals to the Department of Commerce and we have done a good deal of work on how you would actually get at the job, where are the standards, how do you index them so they are useful. You have to index them so they are useful to people.

Mr. CONABLE. I just wanted to have firmly in mind what you have in mind in seeking Government participation in what has been a voluntary activity up to this time. Apparently some element is missing