THE DECIMAL SYSTEM.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17390, 30 January 1917, Page 4

THE DECIMAL SYSTEM.

The announcement that the British Chamber of Commerce Association is drafting a Bill to reform coinago, weights and measures, with a coinage batjis of a florin, one-tenth of a sovereign, suggests that the manufacturers and merchants of the Motherland have abandoned at last thoir insular determination to compel the great majority of foreigners who do business with them to master all tho intricacies of the British coinage, avoirdupois woights, and foot lineal measurements. Tho -proposal is another instance of tho manner in which the world-war is shaking to their, very foundations institutions covered by the cobwebs of ages. The

reform —and no one who has over been compelled to wrestle with calculations on the English system will doubt that it is a reform—will certainly do much to improve Britain's chances of capturing foreign markets, and the accountants, statisticians and school children of the Empire will rise up and call the new systems blessed if Parliament permits their adoption. The statement in tho cable message that tho florin is to be taken as the basis of coinage would seem to indicate that the proposals of the Decimal Association are likely to be adopted. The which numbers many great captains of industry among its officers, circularised the Chambers of Commerce of the*

United Kingdom in November, 1915, urging the use of decimal coinage and the metric system, and received, on the whole, a very favourable, response. The reform, in the shapo in which it is proposed by the Decimal Association, involves the total abolition of tho existing British measures of weight, capacity and lineal measurement, and the substitution of the metric system as used in France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, and a host of other countries, tho lineal unit being the meter, the weight unit the gram, and the capacity unit the liter (cubed centimeter), thus making a clean sweep of inches, feet, yards, chains, roods, acres, ounces,

pounds, hundredweights, tons, pints, quarts, and gallons. In regard to coinage, however, the association finds it possible to rearrange the system while retaining many of the coins at present in circulation, a matter of considerable practical importanco. Taking tho two-shilling piece, or florin, as the unit of calculation, with the cent, or one-hundredth part of a florin, as the smallest coin, tho half-sovereign

does duty as a five-norm piece, and the sovereign as the ten-florin piece. The half-crown is relegated to obscurity, but the shilling is retained as a fifty-cent piece, and the sixpence as a twenty-five-cent piece. The three-

pennvbit, the penny, the half-penny and tho farthing are replaced by a new set of coins, including ten-cent and fivecent pieces in nickel, and four-cent, two-cent and one-cem pieces in bronze. The cent will, approximate in value the present farthing, the actual difference being only that the cent is one-twenty-fifth Of a farthing less valuable than a firthin". Tho only considerable

drawback of the system seems to bo that it will require the use of four coins of practically the same size—the half-soveroign and sixpence, which now occasionally get mistaken for each other, antl two of tho new coins, tho

ten-cent; and one-cent pieces. So far as the nickel ten-cent piece is concerned it, is projjQsed to jy.ve it a

rippled edge, to distinguish it from tho sixpence, or twenty-five-cont pieco with a milled edgo, tho one-cent piece being smooth-edged, like the present bronze coins.