496 HISTORY OF THE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 



acknowledged that "recent adverse and partially inaccurate publicity 

 about metric" had indeed discouraged some people. But he urged the 

 Board to press on with its "challenging and important task" which 

 he linked with restoring "the country's technological innovativeness 

 and productivity." 



OPPOSITION IN 1979 



The opposition forces generated some support during 1979. To a 

 resolution of the North Dakota Legislature opposing any legislation 

 by Congress mandating conversion to the metric system, Fuqua 

 responded on May 14, 1979, that "the chances of such legislation 

 being considered or passed would be very small." In a letter to Robert 

 Willson of San Antonio, Tex. on May 24, 1979, Fuqua stated: 



No one should be forced by the Government to adopt the metric system, and the 

 guiding principle for those who desire to make a change should, according to the 

 Act, be that only when it makes economic sense should anyone adopt the metric 

 system. 



Brown added his support to voluntary conversion, as expressed in a 

 June 27, 1979 letter to Dorothy K. Gross in Charlottesville, Va.: 



My own feeling is that the Government should neither force anyone to "go 

 metric" nor should the Government prevent anyone from using it. I think that those 

 State boards of education, such as Michigan and California, who have introduced 

 the teaching of metric in elementary schools are performing a service for the coming 

 generation, many of whom will need to be familiar with both systems. 



Meanwhile, there was an active campaign being carried on to 

 repeal the metric legislation. In Congress, half a dozen or so bills were 

 introduced to rescind or seriously weaken the provisions of the 1975 

 legislation. More seriously, the House Appropriations Committee 

 voted to slash the Metric Board funding from the President's budget 

 request of $3,335,000 down to $1,613,000, adding in the committee 

 report : 



The committee is concerned that the Board, in its policies and actions, is becom- 

 ing an advocate of the metric system and is giving the impression that our official 

 national policy is to convert to the metric system albeit voluntarily. 



There was considerable soul searching within the Science Com- 

 mittee as to how to approach this crippling action. When the appro- 

 priations bill reached the House floor, on July 12, 1979, Crane made a 

 new assault on the metric policy by launching a fight to wipe out all 

 the funds for the Board. Crane argued that it should not take a new 

 Federal agency bureaucracy to tell the people what they had a right to 



