Hakding. — Certain Decimal and Metrical Fallacies. 109 



For British buyers they are quite willing to manufacture 

 to British measures. Beautiful and accurate scales to 

 English feet and inches are " made in Germany." Time 

 has been decimalised for the navigator's convenience, as 

 the Nautical Almanac tables show ; but it would be an 

 intolerable inconvenience to have to exchange our present 

 clocks for ten-hour dials. 



That our foreign trade would benefit by the change is more 

 than doubtful. While we were painfully and laboriously 

 discarding all our patterns and making new tools — probably 

 we should find it necessary to purchase most of them abroad 

 — our foreign rivals, with all their scales ready to hand, would 

 have an unprecedented opportunity of invading all our markets, 

 and during the time of transition, at all events, would have an 

 overwhelming advantage. Just as free trade and exchange 

 throughout the United States has brought vast prosperity, so, 

 high authorities maintain, British success in trade has been 

 in great measure due to the uniform system of standards 

 existing throughout the British-speaking world. Is this 

 colony desirous to strike the first blow to break it up ? 

 France was once kind enough to hint that she would consent 

 to reckon from the Greenwich meridian if Britain would adopt 

 the French measures. Was the suggestion made for Britain's 

 advantage? Scarcely. France would be the gainer in such 

 a compact by both changes. 



The question is a vital one. Even if the change could be 

 shown to be for the better, would it be worth the price we 

 should have to pay ? 



Every individual in the community would be injuriously 

 affected. Every map, from the magnificent British Ordnance 

 Survey to the diagrams on the margins of deeds, would require 

 recalculation on an incommensurable scale. In the case of 

 city frontages particularly, where fractions of inches are 

 precious, the recalculation would be a fruitful source of dis- 

 satisfaction and dispute. 



All contractors' calculations of quantities, all measure- 

 ments of bricks, timber, and other building material, would be 

 affected. All graded instruments, from the artisan's two-foot 

 rule to the costly and delicate apparatus of the engineer, 

 would have to be replaced, all patterns superannuated, all 

 calculations translated. If workmen only realised what it 

 meant to them the trades-unions would make inflexible oppo- 

 sition to the change the foremost item on their programme. 

 They will protest loudly enough, we may be sure, the day 

 that it is sprung upon them. Then it will be too late. Those 

 concerned are not so supine in the United States. I read, 

 only a few days ago,''' that the American Society of Civil 



* Engineer, 7th August, 1903. 



