THE METRIC SYSTEM. 189 



has been in the main compulsory. As French citizens have been 

 obliged to use francs and centimes, so must they have been obliged 

 to use the State-authorized weights and measures. But the im- 

 plication of the above statement is that the old customs have sur- 

 vived where survival was possible ; the people can still talk in 

 sous and ask for fourths, and they do so. Doubtless " ignorant 

 prejudice " will be assigned as the cause for this. But one might 

 have thought that after three generations, daily use of the new 

 system would have entailed entire disappearance of the old, had 

 it been in all respects better. 



Allied evidence exists. While in the land of its origin the 

 triumph of the metric system is still incomplete, in one of the 

 lands of its partial adoption, America, the system has been de- 

 parted from. It will be admitted that men engaged in active 

 business are, by their experience, rendered the best judges of con- 

 venience in monetary transactions ; and it will be admitted that 

 a Stock Exchange is, above all places, the focus of business where 

 facilitation is most important. Well, what has happened on the 

 iNew York Stock Exchange ? Are the quotations of prices in dol- 

 lars, tenths, and cents ? Not at all. They are in dollars, halves, 

 quarters, eighths ; and the list of prices of American securities in 

 England shows that on the English Stock Exchange quotations 

 are not only in quarters and eighths, but in sixteenths and even 

 thirty-seconds. That is to say, the decimal divisions of the dollar 

 are in both countries absolutely ignored, and the division into 

 parts produced by halving, re-halving, and again halving is 

 adopted. Worse has happened. A friend writes : — " When I was 

 in California some twenty years ago the ordinary usage was to 

 give prices in ' bits,' the eighth of a dollar — a ' long bit ' was fifteen 

 cents, a ' short bit ' was ten cents. If one had a long bit and paid 

 it one got no change — if one gave a short one no supplement was 

 asked." Thus lack of appropriate divisibility led to inexact pay- 

 ments — a retrogression. 



Perhaps an imaginary dialogue will most conveniently bring 

 out the various reasons for dissent. Let us suppose that one who 

 is urging adoption of the metric system is put under cross-exami- 

 nation by a skeptical official. Some of his questions might run 

 thus : — 



What do you propose to do with the circle ? At present it is divided into 

 360 degrees, each degree into 60 minutes, and each minute into 60 seconds. 

 I suppose you would divide it into 100 degrees, each degree into 100 minutes, 

 and each of these into 100 seconds. 



The French have decimalized the quadrant, but I fear their division will 

 not be adopted. Astronomical observations throughout a long past have 

 been registered by the existing mode of measurement, and works for nauti- 

 cal guidance are based upon it. It would be impracticable to alter this 

 arrangement. 



