The Metric "Mare's Nest,"
Page 5
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A Suggestion that the New Attempt that is Due to Establish the Metric System for Public Usage, in These Most Receptive of Times, be Examined at Least as Suspect. Would the Change Be of Any Use to Commercial•vehicle Users, Traders, and Builders ? It Is Doubtful.
By the "Inspector."
Of all places in the wide world, at fisst thought, one would least expect to find in the United States of America unreadiness to adopt anything new in procedure, anything promising standardization and increaeed obnimercial activity. Yet it is in America that the most cogent reasoning is to be found M opposition to the wholesale adoption of the metric system.
Re-equipped Britain. • • We have here, in Britain, been rudely awakened from our long complacent sleep, suddenly aroused, by the fierce trumpet of war; to the fact that in recent years we have not been doing our best. But it is not too much to contend that our self-satisfaction of a year or two ago is gone for ever. We are eager, with a, keenness which even the progress-proud Amen-. canmay yet envy, to make the most of ourselves and our resources. We iealize that re-equipped England can be and must be more than a match for other nations who have not had the advantage of scrapping, in wartime wholesale fashion, personnel, plant and processes. These are da,ys when we regard Nelson's Monument as an entirely suitable background for a hoarding, when we talk of housing scores of female clerks in the Great Hall of the Courts of Justice, when we are both iconoclasts and pioneers at once. We are in the mood to accept, not meekly, but with acclamation; the strangest suggestions for upheaval and change.
Revarnished Hobby Horses.
• In all this there is just the risk that we may take the bit in our new-cut teeth, accepting without criticism any resuscitated proposal, however fiercely rejected in days gone by. There are signs of it already. Many an old hobby horse is being trotted out from obscurity, and not a few are proving, in our new mood, to be very useful steeds. How we ridiculed Daylight Saving! What scorn we poured out on the Channel Tunnel enthusiasts, how we rated it as a foolish violation of our cherished insularity!
The Coming Metric Boom.
Our old friend, the metric system, is to be staged once more. Realizing our receptive frame of mind, 'a renewed crusade is being initiated in the hope that the decimal may be hurried through the national turnstiles while "new business" is making good." We will do well, however, to beware that we are not exploited, in these days of boundless energy and striving, by the opportunists with fads and hobbies. We May, in this connection, very usefully bear in mind certain sane criticism of the metric system which emanates from the country where the Ford comes from.
Compulsory Weights and Measures.
It is claimed, by its enthusiasts, that the adoption of the decimal males of coinage, weights and measures would bring us into line with all the other civilized countries of the world—and Germany! The arguments against this are that it is in really practical use only in a few European countries, and there only where it is compulsory and where the choice is net left with the users. In no country have the people adopted it because of its ascertained advantages. Were the advantages tangible on the whole, compulsion would not be needed. No nation has finally and completely discarded its older units. After "112 years of effort and 70 years of compulsory law," according to Mr. F. .A. Halsey, the greatest authority in America and probably in the world on the "anti-metric" campaign, France has failed to eradicate many of its weights end measures, aged in the service ef special. industries, and confesses herself powerless to do more.
You Don't Buy Ribbon by the Foot.
Another strong claim is that for case of calculation. We are' in this respect, bound to remember that the decimal division of units is not only possible in COBnection with the older scales; but that it is a 'method which is actually growing. Outside the schoolroom or labaatory it is seldom, if ever, necessary to express 15,735a ins, in miles, nor does one have, in commerce, to calculate pennyweights into chaldrons or hundredweights into ounces. Each trade has its own unit,. with very few exceptions, and there is a•growing tendency to subdivide these decimally. For instance, for Years Past the Liverpool Cotton Association has quoted in 1-100ths of a penny instead of 1-64ths. Hauliers talk in tons and their fractions.mechanical engineers in inches, petrol suppliers in gallons, owners in miles per gallon.
There Is a Reason for the Bushel and the Chaldron.
The whole reason for the existence of a country's varied array of measures is to suit the convenience of its individual dealings. The various units are those which custom has yielded as most practicablesand most frequently required. It is as easy to talk and to calcuate in decimals of a lb. as of a kilo. It is easier to use 1 ton than 1000 kilos, 1 inch than 25 millimetres. There. is relatively as much scope for the fraudulent milkman with a litre can as with a pint one. The metric scheme is no gaurantee against dishonesty, as is often claimed. It is no easier to buy potatoes by the kilo than it is by the pound or
peek.
America's Trade to Metric Countries.
Finally, there is the claim that the universal adoption of the metric system would promote international trade, and this is to be the plank in the new metric: platform. America points to her own wonderful export records of modern machine tools, the embodiment of practicable accuracy, all constructed to English measures with te,he single exception of measuring and adjusting thread's, etc., in metric divisions to suit state-imposed conditions in France and Germany.
It Wants Thinking About, In Any Case.
There is enough that, is sane in some of this criticism to warn us to pause, if our present pliable mood be seized upon by metric enthusiasts. The industry in which we are all particularly concerned is essentially one in which weights' measures and coinage scales are all important. It will be well to consider the relative failure of the metric system elsewhere, before we, in our new-found desire to be, above all, abreast of the times, decide in future to write and think in kilograms per square centimetre, instead of. in lb. per square inch. Anyhow, it will puzzle the most expert metric enthusiast to decimalize the clock face, the calendar. or. the trigonometric circle. And we seem to manage quite passably with the 8-in. howitzer ; it would be no more useful if it fired a 205millimetre shell.