THE METRIC SYSTEM. 403 



it shall be the legal standard of weights and measures of the United 

 States. 



Should Mr. Shaf roth's bill become a law, it is practically certain 

 that a similar act will be passed by the British parliament soon after- 

 ward. Experience in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and other Euro- 

 pean countries within the last thirty years affords the assurance that, 

 while temporary inconvenience may be expected, the transition will be 

 soon accomplished in all important commercial centers; that persons 

 of middle age and advanced years who have had no previous familiarity 

 with the metric system will continue to use that to which they are accus- 

 tomed; that the younger generation will everywhere appropriate and 

 appreciate it; and that the agricultural population will be the last to 

 become adapted to the change. Concerted opposition to the metric 

 system by many whose capital would suffer depreciation by change is 

 to be expected. The powerful influence of conservatism will be hard 

 to overcome, however strong may be the arguments of those having com- 

 mercial interests with Europe and South America. The passage of the 

 metric bill may be again delayed. But the United States has become 

 an exporting country and this necessitates two important changes. One 

 is the removal of unnecessary tariff barriers to foreign trade. The 

 other is the adoption of a system of weights and measures that is 

 equally suited to domestic and foreign trade. Those who have been 

 opposed to the recent American policy of forcible annexation of foreign 

 countries have the partial compensation of knowing that it gives a 

 strong impulse to the unification of weights and measures for the entire 

 world. There may be honest difference of opinion among the advocates 

 of the metric system regarding the advisability of assigning so early 

 a date as 1906 for the legal establishment of this system in our country. 

 Probably all of them will agree that 1905 is not too early a date for the 

 exclusion of the old system and adoption of the new in the different 

 departments of the government. The people will thus be induced to 

 learn the metric system practically and compare its simplicity with the 

 complexity of the system to which they have been accustomed. The 

 opposition to it hitherto has come chiefly from those who have no prac- 

 tical acquaintance with it. They are quite excusable for thinking best 

 to 'let well enough alone,' just as the majority of Englishmen would 

 object to substituting our simple American system of decimal currency 

 for their cumbrous system of farthings, pence, shillings, pounds, crowns 

 and guineas. It is well to remember, moreover, that existing conditions 

 in England and America are quite different from those under which 

 Bismarck introduced the metric system into the newly formed German 

 empire. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Mexico to the Arctic 

 circle, there is but a single system of weights and measures, which has 

 some few good features with its many bad ones, and which is satis- 



