The Skyland post. [volume] (West Jefferson, N.C.) 193?-1988, 1940-05-09
Today
AND
Tomorrow
BY
Frank Parker Stockridge

Frank Parker Stockridge
; STANDARDS different
One of the greatest obstacles
to mutual understand between
peoples and nations is the failure
of mankind to agree upon uni
form standards of weights, mea-
sures, values and qualities. I
have long thought that great
deal of the worlds troubles arise
because different nations have
different measures for the same
It takes a long time for people
to get used to new standards. A
hundred years ago or so an inter-
national commission set up a
worldwide system of weights and
measures, the metric system. Ev-
cry country in the world has au-
thorized the use of the metric
weights and measures, but only
few nations really use them.
In Continental Europe everything
is measured by meters and frac-
tons or multiples of meters
But English speaking peoples
still measure by inches, feet, yard
and rods. Russia has its own sys-
tenn of weights and measures
which differs from those of any
other country. And the nations
of the Far East have still diff
ferent ways of describing the
length, weight, thickness or value
of things in common use.
MONEY reck0ningS
The United States started off
with a decimal system of money.
It was based on the Spanish sill
yer dollar, which was almost a
world standard at that time. But
money was still reckoned in the
Colonies in terms of the English
system of pounds, shillings and
pence, and it took a long time for
people to get used to the new mo-
ney standards.
AS recently as my own boyhood
1 used to hear store-keeperS in
country towns quoting prices in
shillings. In New England there
were six shillings to a dollar. The
York shilling, used west of the
Hudson River, was twelve and
one-half cents, or eight to a dol
lar. / can remember the trouble
my mother had in remembering
the differences. She came from
western New York, where six
shillings meant seventy five
cents, and never got used to hav-
ing six shillings mean a dollar.
When we moved South we ran
into another standard of money
value. That was the ''levy." which
was the same as the York shll-
ling, or IL 1-2 cents. The same
value, I later found, was called
a 'bit" farther South and West.
And in Virginia, in the 188Os,
when anyone spoke of shilling
he meant the equivalent OF an
English shilling, or twenty-five
cents.
1oNrUU1cT0NI ;,otarn ati0na1
If one man in his life time has
seen such confusion in the COIN
age system of his own country,
what a mess the monetary sys-
TENS of fifty or sixty countries
must be. The same is true OF their
other measure. We measure Oil
by the barrel. Other countries
measure it by the ton. A ton may
mean two thousand pounds, or
two thousand two hundred and
forty pounds, of a metric ton,
which is about twenty-five hun
dred pounds.
A barrel of oil in this country
contains fifty gallons. A barrel OF
beer is thirty-two gallons. A gal
lon in the United States is trifle
smaller than a gallon in England
There is enough difference be-
tween the length of an inch in
America and in England tc
amount to several feet in mile
So, though we talk the same Ian
guage, we do not mean the same
thing, even when we speak about
such common things as inches and
barrels and tons.
LANGUAGE meanings
It may come about in the course
of a-few thousand years that al
the people of all the world will
speak and read and write the
same language. Here are some
thing like fifteen hundred diff
ferent languages and dialects now
in use. No wonder the people OF
| the world do not understand each
other.