James W. Evans

“ So late as 1899 Herbert Spencer declared: “My opinion is that, should the attempt ever be made to force it [the metric system] on the English people, not as submissive as the Continentals, the resistance will be so determined that the attempt will have to be abandoned.’
Curiously enough we have on record some instances of the difficulty in dealing with old forms of measures, which should serve as forceful examples of the vast amount of trouble in store for us should any alteration to the metric system be unhappily sanctioned. ”

“ To be in a position to return a confident answer is one not so easily reached as is often assumed. Those who favour the metric system lay great stress upon its simplicity. Admittedly it has much to recommend it in that respect, and the enthusiasm of its supporters ensures that point not being allowed to escape notice. Still, those who contrast the British system with the supposed newer one, may not always be aware of the mass of independent, solid, well-fortified opinions in favour of our own. ”

“ The English-speaking communities lead the world in commerce, with a common system of weights and measures, and to ask them to dispense with it would be to make a heavy demand upon their practical methods of dealing with business, and is quite as illogical as to ask us to change our language in order to facilitate trade abroad.
We have the best system of weights and measures in existence. It is suited to our commercial requirements, long practical employment has proved its value for all trading purposes, it is part of our language, and ingrained in us. ”

“ Introduce the metric system, and there would be an upheaval—the tailor, the bootmaker, dressmaker, butcher, baker, anyone and everyone engaged in trade; everyone who is a buyer, who is a seller, would have to revise not only his arithmetic but his appliances. ”

“ Merchants who trade abroad must be prepared to face exactly the same difficulties which meet the foreign manufacturers who wish to exploit the markets in English-speaking communities, which have uniformity in all essentials.
The argument that we should adopt metricalisation because so many other countries have done so, is unsound. In acting as they did they made an advance. We, in the British Empire, have, fortunately, no such multiplicity of measures as they had, and which made uniformity cheap at any price. ”

“ Any calculation which can be made by the French metric system, we can make with equal ease by the British system, and hundreds of calculations can be made much more easily by the British system than by the metric system itself. ”

“ The interests of science, simplicity, uniformity, clerical convenience, advantages in foreign trade, and kindred claims, not always supported by fair tests, are invoked by Associations called into, and kept in, existence by a certain class of manufacturers, in the hope that a public, not always too well informed and alert on such matters, and who have not time or opportunity for reasoning such questions out, may be induced to suffer a change which is not required, is not desirable, and would prove a source of entanglement in every branch of trade, without conferring any adequate advantage. ”

“ A country of large commercial transactions in every branch of trade is necessarily most liable to a superfluity of measures, and hence also to a considerable extent of incongruity; but when the extent and the diversity of English commerce is borne in mind, it is a fact worthy of notice that the natural English system is a single system, having one foot, one mile, one acre, one pound, one gallon, and one bushel. ”

“ The professional men who advocate the metric system quite forsee this—that it will make work. In fact, in the journal of a scientific institute in Sydney, that was one of the most potent and convincing arguments in favour of its adoption. But why should we disturb a scientific, and, from a British point of view, an almost universal, area in favour of a clumsy, unscientific French measure. There is probably more land surfaces measured, deeded, bought, and sold in terms of the acre than of any other unit. ”

“ Although there does not appear to be any probability of the metric system coming into common use in Canada, there are reasons for believing that it will become the international system, and that there will be but two systems—the French and the English.” The very wide-awake people of the United States, we may be sure, would not hesitate one moment in making a change if they deemed it beneficial. That they do not is a tribute to the sufficiency of the one they work by. ”

“ To the common mass of the people the use of weights is in the market and the shops. The article weighed is to be carried home for the daily subsistence of the family. Subdivisions of the pound, the half, the quarter of a pound, are often necessary to conciliate the wants and the means of the neediest portion of the people, that portion to whom the justice of weight and measure is a necessity of life, and to whom it is one of the most sacred duties of the legislator to secure that justice, so far as it can be secured by the operation of human institutions. ”

“ The vast majority of our population consists of working people, people of narrow incomes, and the minor shopkeepers who minister to their wants. And these wants daily lead to myriads of purchases of small quantities for small sums, involving fractional divisions of measures and money—measuring transactions probably fifty times as numerous as those of the men of science and the wholesale traders put together. These two small classes, however, unfamiliar with retail buying and selling, have decided that they will be better carried on by the metric system than by the existing system. ”

“ I only like a change when it is needful to alter something bad into something good, or something which is good into something better." Those who ask for the change have absolutely failed to prove that they offer us something better than what we possess. ”

“ Professor De Morgan, while assenting to the proposition that a change to the metric system might prove of benefit to foreign commerce, believed that it would create such an immense “amount of confusion throughout the country that the inconvenience would far more than counterbalance the advantages we should derive in our foreign commercial relations.” The home trade of all countries is of far greater volume, and consequently of more importance, than the traffic carried across their borders. ”

“ Any one system must be better than a host of conflicting ones. Still, regiments of officials controlling peoples accustomed to being dragooned in yielding to the decrees of authority, could not change the habits of the people as if by magic. ”

“ It is incontrovertible that in dealing with the division of material substances, the binary scale comes into mental and practical play as easy and convenient. Not all the specious pleas of those who advocate the so-called reform can turn us from it. Its advantages over the decimal system in all the operations of every day life are apparent. ”

“ If in the domain of private interests only, the alteration would cause disquietude, widespread annoyance, outlay, perhaps litigation—how much greater would be the burdens thrown upon the different Lands Departments in having to revise all surveys. The prospect opened up is an appalling one, and the immensity of labour involved, which would not be completed for tens of years to come, not to speak of the money it would cost, is likely to have a deterrent effect in adopting a system, not only strange to us, but which is not wanted, and is inferior to the one we are acquainted with. ”

“ The adoption of the metric scheme would not alone turn topsy turvy all our methods of weighing and measuring, and compel craftsmen and workmen, sellers and buyers, to abandon familiar bases of reckoning, but they would have to do it to the accompaniment of unfamiliar terms—of “kilos” and “litres” and “grammes,” carrying sometimes Greek, and sometimes Latin, prefixes. A strange system and a strange nomenclature would cause great worry, distraction and annoyance. ”

“ The facility in calculations afforded by the metric scheme is common to all decimal systems, which after all are very ancient, but clerical convenience is not everything—in thought and practice we will always adhere to binary sub-divisions in our commercial measures, halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and so on. Those who are in touch with trade in the metric countries would derive benefit from a change, by doing away with the necessity of transposing the weights and measures of one system into another. ”

“ The adoption of its principles is with us as a people instinctive, and not easily to be eradicated.
As we have seen, Adams takes strong exception to the fundamental unit of the metric system, as inconvenient for every day use. Professor A. De Morgan, of London University College, in expressing somewhat similar thoughts, said: "I take an exception to the metre. It arose from a mere fanciful connection with the quarter of the meridian, which I think of no practical importance to any man alive. . . . The metre is, of course, too long to be the common measure. ”

“ Analysing the question, and his words have not since been improved upon, he said—"The French metrology, in the ardent and exclusive search for an universal standard from nature, seems to have viewed the subject too much with reference to the nature of things, and not enough to the nature of man. Its authors do not appear to have considered the proportions dictated by nature between the physical organisation of man and the unit of his weights and measures. The standard taken from the admeasurement of the earth, has no reference to the admeasurement and power of the human body. ”

“ Dispassionate observers have not been slow to point out that the troubles encountered in effecting changes on the Continent of Europe would be greatly multiplied in the mother country. In the report of the Standards Commission, presented to the House of Commons, there is this reference to the point referred to:—“ It is obvious that in this country, where the people are more accustomed to self-government than in other European countries, the Executive has far less power of compelling obedience to the law in all the small transactions of trade against the will of the people.” ”

“ That, however, is apart from the question I have been debating in this work, and my purpose will have been amply served if I have been successful in throwing some light upon a little known subject, and, above all, in leading my readers to the conclusion I have long since arrived at—that our system is, fundamentally, the best in existence, the most convenient for the needs of man, and that it would be an act of stupendous and costly folly, to change to the metric system. ”

“ The alteration sought would be oppressive upon the people, and the price of uniformity would be enormous inconvenience which none living would see the end of. The people who trade abroad are the very ones most able to meet any difficulties which now arise, and the interests of home traders, in their widest and best sense, should not be sacrificed to meet the wishes of the few. Our system is the best in the world, and should be maintained. ”

“ There are few who have any adequate grasp of the momentous issues involved in determining upon what foundation our system of weights and measures should rest. Much has been written upon the subject. To the great bulk of the people it might as well never have been penned—they know nothing, or practically nothing, of it, and the little information which has reached them has often been of a misleading or negative character. ”

“ Metricalisation has received adoption in all the countries of Europe, except Russia and our own motherland. But at this juncture we may profitably consider the course of events in two great divisions of the English-speaking race—the United States of America and Canada. If it be true, though it cannot be admitted, that the United Kingdom is losing ground in the struggle for commercial supremacy by adherence to out-of-date methods, our kinsmen in the countries named are not under any imputation of slothfulness in matters of trade. ”

“ The attitude of the public is markedly one of indifference. Fortunately we can generally rely upon the common sense of the representatives of the people in the various Parliaments to resist attempts to force upon us a retrogade measure. Should that safeguard fail, however, it is easy to foresee that such a storm would be raised, so much turmoil would be created, every branch of trade would be so disturbed, that practical completion of the movement would never be accomplished. ”

“ So far as scientists are concerned, generally they use the metric system, and are in no way hindered in calculating by any method they select. They are indifferent to the units of retail trade, the pecks, pots, and pounds, or the quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of daily weighing and measuring. Professional men must, however, use a system having accordance with commercial measures, and these measures, to be convenient, must possess appropriate modes of subdivision at almost every point where every branch of trade may require one. ”

“ But it would be equally stupid not to point out the dangers attendant upon a change which is asked for by no inconsiderable or no inconsequential body of people, well-meaning in many cases, but not always so well versed in the real question as they claim to be. ”