242 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 12 



if the latter be taken as standaid, it should 

 be divided into twelfths (or telths), and these 

 again into twelfths, etc. The mile might be 

 slightly reduced to 1,728 yards (in the tel- 

 system 1,000 yards, 3,000 feet). All such de- 

 tails and all proper preliminaries to the pas- 

 sage from ten to twelve could be worked out 

 by scientific committees appointed for the 

 purpose, once the niunber twelve is laid at the 

 base of our numeration, notation and all 

 forms of measurement — a position for which 

 it is uniquely fitted. 



One and only one objection can be made to 

 this proposal, namely, that it is impractical, 

 infeasible and visionary. We dare not an- 

 swer with the favorite Scripture, "Where 

 there is no vision, the people perish," for this 

 sentiment alas! is foreign to the Hebrew 

 proverb. But the objectors themselves reject 

 with scorn the similar objection to the intro- 

 duction of the metric system, that it is im- 

 practical and visionary and could only with 

 great difficulty be effected. It is the stock 

 objection of all conservatism, the objection 

 that confronts every effort to rationalize, 

 humanize, beautify, glorify and justify our 

 life on earth, the objection that it can not 

 be done! The same has been said of a hun- 

 dred proposals, all declared unrealizable, and 

 all now actually realized. It may be hard to 

 answer Zeno's arguments against the possi- 

 bility of motion, but it is none the less easy to 

 move! So it will be with the change from 

 ten to twelve. Attempted, it will be accom- 

 plished. 'Not in a day or a year, but at most 

 in a generation. Let the children be taught 

 the tel-system year after year. The time nec- 

 essary to learn it wiU be quite inconsiderable. 

 Once learned, it will also be loved. In the 

 meantime scientific commissions can go over 

 the whole ground carefully and prepare the 

 way in the wilderness and level up in the 

 desert a road for the age to come. When the 

 change is finally carried into effect, the jar of 

 switching off the ten-track to the twelve-track 

 will be much less severe than we now imagine. 

 But it will bring incalculable blessings to all 

 future generations. The great giant arith- 

 metic will be shorn of half his terrors. It is 

 very common in these loud-mouthed days to 



make Brobdingnagian pretensions. We are 

 told that each of a score of trifles (base-ball 

 among them) won the war, when each made 

 only a paltry contribution to the collective re- 

 sult. So we are assured that each of many 

 things would have abridged the war by 

 months or years. The World Trade Club in- 

 forms us that had Congress adopted the 

 " meter-liter-gram legislation before Congress 

 (1904), the war would have been shortened 

 two years." If a few other such things had 

 been done, perhaps the war would have been 

 stopped like Buck Fanshaw's riot, before it 

 was started or even imagined! As such in- 

 debtedness heaps up on all sides, one is re- 

 minded of the famous couplet: 



Owen More lias run away, 

 Owin ' more than lie can pay. 



We are further assured that 



Clyde Wolfe, Master Mathematician, University 

 of California, writes: A conservative estimate is 

 that the exclusive use of meter-liter-gram would 

 shorten the time of teaching arithmetic to the aver- 

 age child by 2 years. 



If so, then the substitution of twelve for 

 ten as a base ought to shorten it by at least 

 four years. !N"o such claim is made here, but 

 it is affirmed that a very large and sorely 

 needed saving of time and energy would be 

 effected, and that if the introduction of the 

 thoroughly rational twelve-system should be 

 supplemented by the adoption of a thoroughly 

 rational alphabet, with one-to-one correspond- 

 ence of sign and sound, then would the words 

 of the English language indeed be winged and 

 fly over all the earth, then would our Anglo- 

 American civilization lead the van of prog- 

 ress, and its commerce would fulfil the boast 

 of its poet: 



Trade is the golden girdle of the globe. 

 William Benjamin Smith 



A NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF 

 NUTRITION 



In a recent issue of Science (August 1, 

 1919) Lusk calls attention to a reconstruction 

 problem which seems in danger of receiving 

 less consideration than its fundamental sig- 

 nificance demands, viz., the food problem, vital 



