The Washington herald., 1921-02-17
The Metric System.

|ONGRESS is asked to force this country to
adopt the metric system OF weights and
measures Such bill is now before Con-
gress. Once more this is attempting to do by law,
what industries far better do for themselves, if
it is to their advantage.
Those who gEbly talk OF its necessity if this
country is to develop trade in foreign countries
but throwing dust. Certainly who stops to
consider the consequences involving every person
in the United States and all their daily transactions
could seriously propose anything of the kind
Of course there is promised the gradual ap-
proach." The change is to come pecemeal cover
ing a period of ten years. But whether ten Or
twenty or thirty years every child would have to
learn and then forget the tables OF weights and
measures Every adult would have to learn to think
in and absolutely strange terms expressed in a
foreign language whenever he bought sold,
weighed measured anything
1t would require the acquiring OF new habit
Of mind in all transactions. Instead OF thinking in
inches and feet yards and rods acres and miles, it
would be necessary think in meters, dekameters,
hectometers and k,ometers, in centares and
hectares.
weights. How long would it take the home buyer
to know how many yards OF cloth she wanted for
d given purpose translated into meters; how many
quarts or pounds OF foodstuffs as expressed sin
other and strange names?
and scales of every kind in daily use in the forty
eight States to the new forms of rules and meas
ures2 What would be the loss in throwing away
the present endless stock owned by workmen shops,
stores and factories and in homes? What would
the supply cost
There is a very attractive profit there for some
one to with the enormous loss Is this
the why OF this bill2 Otherwise it seems needless.
That We had national system OF weights and
Europe is not serious trade handicap. Our col
Icgcs teach both systems All specialists both.
Chemists and scientists trained to think in Both;
they can use either as any situation may demand
Typewrters, sewing machines, automobiles, ag-
ricultural machinery and the like, not sold by
inches or quarts. We are not marketing land in
foreign countries. Patents filed abroad can readily
be translated into other terms.
No factory or mill has to refuse foreign orders
through inability to fill them in any system of
urements or weights Americans, have taken con-
tracts in all parts of the world without making the
American carpenters throw away their foot rules
and squares or the housewife think in strange
terms.
As matter of fact the metric system is to in
ternational trade and industry just what French is
to diplomacy. 1t is something needed by those who
must use it. 1t facilitates intercommunication ex-
change OF commodities and terms in the one in
stance, and OF views and opinions in the other.
Yet President Wilson does not speak French.
Many of our ministers at foreign courts do use
that language, nor that OF the country to which
they are accredited Neither do many international
traders and heads of American industries under
stand the metric system of weights and measures.
Both employ interpreters in trade we'll in di-
PIomacym The metric also, is the only
system Of weights and measures used in Europe
than is French the only language
1t is not possible that this bill has re-
mote chance of passing in Congress. 1t is but the
child of special interests that have the support of
innocent dreamers. 1t is both wholly impractical
and wholly unnecessary. 1t does not need law to
make every industry the metric system where
more convenient They can do that for themselves.