1900 2 TRANSACTIONS. 49 



to their cost that many avenues of trade are becoming con- 

 tracted and even closed by the persistence of their present 

 system of wei^'hts and measures when pitted in foreign coun- 

 tries against the universal metric system there. Boards of 

 Trade, engineers and scientists have petitioned the British 

 Government to adopt the metric system and have urged their 

 claims with the most cogent reasons which cannot much 

 longer be ignored. Many apparently insurmountable diffi- 

 culties that have been portrayed by opponents to the desired 

 reform, such as change of tools, plates and templets, in 

 machine shops and factories huve vanished by the fact that 

 the changes have been made and to the commercial advantage 

 of the manufacturer. That the change from one system to 

 the other will cause some little exertion for a short time until 

 the metric system is familarized, is admitted, but when once 

 acquired people will wonder how they could possibly have 

 floundered so long in the old morass of weights and mea- 

 sures. 



The United States are in a position somewhat similar to 

 that in Great Britain, perhaps somewhat worse, from the lack 

 of a uniform system applied throughout the Union, for it 

 appears every State is or may be a law unto itself in the 

 matter of weights and measures, of which condition chaos 

 alone can be the result. However, the metric system has 

 made more advance in its use by the various departments at 

 Washington than has been done in London, and a bill, already 

 referred to, is now before Congress still further increasing its 

 use, but unfortunately not with a compulsory clause applic- 

 able to the whole country. In order that the metric system 

 may be speedily and thoroughly introduced, and with the 

 least friction, it will be necessary in Great Britain and the 

 United States as well as here to enact a law making the sys- 

 tem, after a certain date, the only legal one and abolishing all 

 the old measures. The scientists, the leaders of the manu- 

 facturing industries and the exporters are the advance guard 

 clearing the way for the coming change, and the sooner the 



