Abstract"Practice" has become a ubiquitous term in the history of science, and yet historians have not always reflected on its philosophical import and especially on its potential connections with ethics. In this essay, we draw on the work of the virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre to develop a theory of "communal practices" and explore how such an approach can inform the history of science, including allegations about the corruption of science by wealth or power; consideration of scientific ethics or "moral economies"; the role of values in science; the ethical distinctiveness (or not) of scientific vocations; and the relationship between history of science and the practice of science itself.

Materialistic desire may be the engine of capitalism, but those seeking to redress economic inequities in America have also found it valuable for building and strengthening unions, regulating production and retail practices, attacking monopolies and business collusion, and championing redistributive economic policies. 1 Consumption is the universal virtue for capitalism; what better weapon to trim that system's excesses? But, protean like capitalism itself, the tactics used to muster the reformist potential of consumption have also evolved. Thus prior to World War I, consumption-based calls for higher wages relied heavily on a mixture of ethical and loosely physiological claims as labor activists implicitly or explicitly defined an appropriate (and continually advancing) "American standard of living" and demanded wages sufficient to reach that level. As the 1920s progressed, union leaders and their liberal allies emphasized a different justification: rising industrial productivity would require increasing working-class "purchasing power" to provide an expanded market for the abundance of goods now rolling out of American factories. This shift in justifications benefited labor activists in multiple ways: It countered conservative arguments that a minimum "living wage" was economically unsound; it moved the debate from a moral grounding (which had often proved ineffective) to one of pragmatic business self-interest; and it helped labor representatives build alliances with moderate or liberal mass-producers and retailers who recognized a similar logic, such as the auto manufacturer Henry Ford, General Electric's chairman Owen D. Young, and the department store magnate Edward Filene. 2 It also bound proponents more tightly to

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ArgumentCreated in 1884, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been the major federal source for data in the United States on labor-related topics such as prices, unemployment, compensation, productivity, and family expenditures. This essay traces the development and transformation of formal and informal consulting relationships between the BLS and external groups (including academic social scientists, unions, businesses, and other government entities) over the twentieth century. Though such a history cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive analysis of how political values have shaped the construction of labor statistics during this period, I argue that it can nevertheless provide important insights into the political context for the construction of knowledge about American workers and their living and working conditions.