METRIC REFORM. 83 



yet the want of real progress may be seen in the following statement 

 (" United States Dispensatory," Wood and Bache, edition of 1870, p. 

 1737) : 



" Though the decimal system of weights and measures was established by law 

 in France, it was found impossible to procure its general adoption by the people, 

 ... If they adopted new weights, they gave them the names of the old weights. 

 ... So that three systems are now more or less in use in France the original 

 poids de marc, the decimal system, and the metrical pound, with its divisions." 



If such be the case in France, the birthplace of the system, what 

 elsewhere ? In the United States its use has been authorized for more 

 than ten years ; yet how many business men in the United States avail 

 themselves of their legal privilege ? How many druggists and physi- 

 cians ? What merchant uses the metre ? What surveyor computes in 

 hectares ? What farmer measures corn in a hectolitre ? Who weighs 

 by kilogrammes, or buys wood by the dekastere ? 



The words are strange and the things unknown among men of busi- 

 ness. 



It is worth while to inquire into the impediments. Among these 

 certainly cannot be numbered the merits of any existing system of 

 weights and measures. Take the English tables, for example ; they are 

 utterly barbarous the whole scheme confusion worse confounded ; no 

 one defends it as it stands. But there is nevertheless an impediment 

 connected with this no-system which has been a serious bar to reform 

 a vague hope that somehow something might possibly yet be made of 

 it hereafter. This indefinite hope is totally fallacious. There are two 

 tests the decimal scale, and a proper interrelation of the tables. The 

 English method wants both. Nor can it be altered so as to conform to 

 either. 



Take, for example, the leading table of all, long measure, and apply 

 the decimal test; it cannot stand it at all. If you keep the yard, for 

 example, you can keep no other denomination not one for no other 

 is decimally related to it; away go the inch, -^ of a yard; the foot, ^; 

 the rod, 5 yards; the rood, mile, and league; the prime, -^ of an inch; 

 the second and third, the fathom, the chain, link, etc., and all the promis- 

 cuous tribe of unrelated units. So it is impossible, if you choose the 

 foot, to keep anything else. Indeed, make your own selection of a unit, 

 and only that selected unit can be retained. 



It is the same case with all the other tables; though, instead of one 

 table of weights, you have three apothecaries' weight, troy weight, and 

 avoirdupois. Yet, among them all, there is not one single denomination 

 decimally related to any other not one of the ounces, drachms, scruples, 

 or pennyweights. Even the so-called hundred-weight is not really 100 

 pounds, but 112. 



It grows worse and worse as you study the uncivilized, unkempt 

 system. If the decimal test did not at once and forever dispose of it, 



