SHALL WE ADOPT THE METRIC SYSTEM? 765 



the use of tables to be distributed, will reduce them to metric quantities 

 ia their statement of their vouchers, receipts, and accounts, which will, 

 it appears to me, be a perfectly useless labor. 



" 2. This reduction, involving additional calculations and transfers 

 from one set of units to another, unfamiliar and much less convenient, 

 will infallibly be the source of many mistakes, to the loss of the disburs- 

 ing-officer of the Treasury, or of the person who sells supplies to the 

 United States. 



" 3. It will be necessary, in order to make the operation of such a law 

 really successful, to throw away all the hay-scales and other platform- 

 scales whose beams are now divided according to the American stand- 

 ard units of weight, and all the rules and measures divided according to 

 the yard, foot, and inch, and all the weights, pounds, ounces, or grains, 

 of avoirdupois, troy, and apothecaries' weight, and to purchase, distrib- 

 ute, and substitute new scales and new weights according to the met- 

 ric system. These changes will be expensive. The trouble and labor 

 I do not speak of, as such labor will, in case of the passage of a law, 

 simply be the duty of all ofBcers and employees of the United States. 



" 4. If the metric system is made obligatory in government trans- 

 actions and not in transactions between indi^dduals, then continual con- 

 fusion and misunderstanding will be caused by the use of one standard 

 by the Government and another by the people. All packages are put 

 up by merchants, manufacturers, and producers in accordance with the 

 actual legal standards, pounds, ounces, grains, yards, feet, inches. The 

 transactions of the United States, large as they are, are insignificant 

 compared with those of private trade. Manufacturers and consumers, 

 and the people, will not change their customs at the call of the officers 

 of the United States. 



" In regard to making the metric system obligatory in transactions 

 between individuals : 



" 1. I do not believe that this is within the power of Congress. It 

 will be loGlked upon by the people as an arbitrary and unjust interfer- 

 ence with their private business and individual rights, and I do not think 

 that they will submit to it. It will inflict, if it can be enforced, a great 

 loss upon many, especially upon manufacturers and mechanics whose 

 shops are filled with costly tools, standard gauges, dies, and machines, 

 all constructed upon the basis of the foot and inch. 



" Every geared lathe in the United States depends upon a screw of a 

 certain number of threads to the inch, and all the screws it produces are 

 gauged in pitch and diameter by the inch. 



" The metre is not commensurate with the inch, foot, or yard ; all 

 reductions are approximate only. The law of July 27, 1866, makes the 

 use of the metric system permissive, legal, but not obligatory, and 

 establishes for the reduction of metres to inches, and the reverse, the 

 ratio of one metre to thirty-nine and thirty-seven hundredths inches, 

 which is not absolutely correct. To alter all this machinery, to change 



