OUR COINAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21505, 31 May 1933, Page 15

OUR COINAGE

Sir, —The letters you publish in response to Dr. Neale's article suggest to me the desirability of further stressing the outstanding advantage of our present system over any alternative decimal system. Tho value of any facility or convenience depends on the degree to which it serves the purpose for which it was devised. Let us remember that we are discussing coins. Whatever their function may have been in previous times, their present use is practically limited to retail trading: to paying for goods over the counter. They enter only incidentally into wholesale transactions. Well, because of its obvious conveniences (does anyone not see it?), we have adopted the dozen as the basis of our counting when putting lip quantities of goods for sale; a dozen eggs; a dozen oranges; two hundred dozen of that; fifty gross of something else. The dozen as a unit is ingrained into our consciousness. It is a confirmed habit. And to enhance the convenience of tho habit, we have divided our shilling, our monetary unit for retail trading, into 12 pence. As a result, our way of counting our money is in dozens, the same as our way of counting our goods. And, as Dr. Nealo points out, our larger unit, the pound, divided into 20 shillings, has the added convenience of being also divisible by five and by many higher numbers. But by adopting a decimal system of coinage we abandon the many advantages of a coinage which is complementary to our way of marketing goods. We introduce confusion. For tho "dozen" habit will persist with us as it has persisted in Canada and the United States and other countries that have adopted a. decimal coinage. It persists because folk can't drop a centuries-old habit overnight, and won't either. In Vancouver I have seen fruit offered at 35 cents a dozen! . . . Suppose Mrs. Smith goes shopping. Eggs are, say, 45 cents a dozen. She wants five. She has to multiply 45 by 5 and divide by 12 to find out what they cost. How is sho to do it? in her head? Or must she carry a scribbling pad, or a book of tables, or a slide-rule. Or will she leave it to the shopmen ? When she has done her sum, and gets the right answer, 18J, what coin must she tender? And when sho has attempted many such sums in many shops andgot a headache and wrong change and missed her tram home? What then? Surely practical old John Bull showed his sturdy common sense in sticking to his supremely serviceable, even if much-maligned, system of pounds, shillings and pence, in conjunction with his equally convenient habit of marketing goods in dozens. F. Broomfield.