The Cost of Introducing the Metric System.

Southland Times, Issue 15056, 27 September 1901, Page 4

The Cost of Introducing the Metric System .

Irrespective of all other considei'ations, the periodically recurring agitation in favour of the compulsory use of the metric eystem ought to concern itself, but rarely does, with tiiß all-imporlunl question of what it would cost to uil'eet tho proposed change in the varied industries in which the inch, the foot, and the pound and other measures of the English -speaking race have been in tinie-honourod service. Moru than twenty years ago, in a report on the BUbject, madb to the Franklin Institute by Dr Coleman Sellers and tho late William P. Tat ham, it was stated that, according to calculation, in a well-regulated machine shop, thoroughly prepared for doing miscellaneous work, employing 250 workmen, the cost of a new outfit, adapted to new measures, would not be less than £30,000, or £120 per man. If new weights and measures were to be adopted, so the report continued, all tho scale beams in the country would have to be re-graduated and readjusted ; the thousands of tons of brass weights, the myriads oi gallon, quart, and pint measures, and of bushels, halfbushels, aud peek measures, and every measuring rulo and rod of every dosenption throughout the land, would have to be thrown aside, and others, which the common mind cannot estimate (substituted. The great mass of English technical literature would become almost useless, and would have- to be translated from a language which we, and the nation we have most to do with, understand perfectly, into a new tongue, which is strange to most of our people. As a ques'ion of cost, let those who advocate this change consider it carefully. To the teacher, to the closet scholar, to the professional man, to those who never handled a rule or a measure, but use weights and measures only in calculation.it may seem merely a matter of legal enactment; but to the worker, the dealers in the market places, to thofcc who produce tho wealth and prosperity of the land, thu question is a most serious one. Altogether, thu ultimate benefits of tlie duuige proposed would be of less value than the daiiiH-g'-s dining thu transition. Those who choose to do so can use the metric s>ysu;ui ; and no one can object to it ; but for the Government to require its people to use that, and no other, would be an arbitrary measure which they would bo neither willing nor able to bear. With this view of the subject Ihe must oi us will thoroughly agree at this latei day.— Cassien. Magazine.