Auaust 18, 1899. ] 
of vital importance to commerce and trade. 
The testimony of their far-sighted consular 
agents in various parts of the world is that 
British trade with all nations except our 
own is sadly handicapped by its units of 
measure, and our own consular reports are 
of thesame tenor. Within a year we have 
entered upon a new era in our foreign rela- 
tions. Our trade with foreign nations has 
increased enormously and must increase still 
further if we are to maintain our footing. 
We have already absorbed a considerable 
population by whom the metric system has 
long been used, and our merchants and 
manufacturers are already feeling the dis- 
advantages of our antique and irrational 
measures of quantity. Fortunately for us, 
our principal competitors are the English, 
who are carrying nearly the same burden. 
But they have been quick to recognize the 
necessity for reform and in five years they 
have made more progress towards it than 
we have in thirty. 
Schools of engineering and professors of 
engineering and applied science can do 
more, if they are so minded, to help their 
country in this emergency than any other 
agency that I know of. They can do it by 
amore liberal use of the metric system in 
their daily work. Electrical engineering, 
by a wonderful stroke of good fortune, 
emancipated itself from this curious slavery 
in the very beginning, and its astonishingly 
rapid growth from infancy to the vigorous 
manhood which it now enjoys is very 
largely due to that fact. In the engineer- 
ing college of to-day the student in physics 
and chemistry is brought into close re- 
lations with the metric system, but when 
he advances to his professional studies in 
civil and mechanical engineering he is too 
often compelled to relapse into the exclusive 
use of the foot, the pound and the gallon. 
I am far from recommending the abandon- 
ment, at this time, of these useful units, 
but I strongly urge the importance of al- 
SCIENCE. 
203 
lowing them to share their work with their 
metric analogues and very liberally. Even if 
there were no other advantage there would 
be an enormous gain to the student in com- 
pelling him to do his problems and his 
laboratory exercises in more than one 
system of units, than which nothing con- 
tributes more to clearness of understanding 
and soundness of knowledge. If we had 
begun this a quarter of a century ago and 
kept it up we should bein much less danger 
of being beaten in the race for the markets 
of the world than we are to-day ; for this 
system is bound to become universal and 
in the near future. The prodigious ad- 
vantages which it offers in its simplicity, 
its economy and its already extensive use 
will insure this. No body of men can 
more effectively influence public sentiment 
to an appreciation of this fact than those I 
now address. 
One of the ablest and most scholarly 
arguments in favor of the metric system 
ever made was that of Charles Sumner in 
the Senate of the United States more than 
thirty years ago. He summarized the 
argument as follows: ‘A system of 
weights and measures born of philosophy 
rather than chance is what we now seek. 
To this end old systems must be abandoned. 
A chance system cannot be universal. 
Science is universal; therefore, what is pro- 
duced by science may find a home every- 
where.”’ 
T. C. MENDENHALL. 
WORK OF THE U. 8S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.* 
APPROPRIATIONS for the work of the U.S. 
Geological Survey for the current fiscal year 
amount to $806,000 as against $816,000 for 
the preceding fiscal year. The apparent 
decrease is largely because of special items 
appropriated in the former year, one of 
which, for printing and binding monographs, 
amounted to $40,000. The amounts for 
* Published by permission of the Director. 
