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One hundred years
of the Bureau of Labor Statistics
It is now 100 years since the law creating a Bureau of Labor in the Department of the Interior was signed by President Chester A. Arthur. The new Bureau, which until 1913 functioned as the only Federal agency concerned with the world of work, was directed by the Congress to collect information in the labor field.
The first BLS Commissioner—Carroll D. Wright—understood the importance of employer-employee relationships in the U.S. economy. He recognized the role that objective information could play in the development of an atmosphere in which workers could realize their full potential and industry could be innovative and efficient. He believed that disinterested information could promote effective, rational, and equitable decisionmaking. It was Wright who established the motto that has, during the past century, become the hallmark of the BLS—"judicious investigations and the fearless publication of the results thereof."1
This excerpt is from an article published in the July 1985 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.
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1 Commissioner of Labor Caroll Wright to Secretary Teller, Feb. 4, 1885, National Archives Record Group 48.
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