374 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XX. No. 507. 



them as worthless and I can go no farther 

 than that. 



In view of the facts regarding the use of old 

 units in all metric countries, how is it possible 

 to treat with respect the repeated assertion of 

 the metric advocates before the house com- 

 mittee on coinage, weights and measures that 

 the change with us will require but from two 

 to five years, and what matters it that these 

 statements are made by men of distinction, 

 chief of whom is Lord Kelvin? 



Following the assumption of the ease of the 

 change, and a necessary outgrowth of it, is the 

 assumption that it has been made in countries 

 in which the system has been adopted. Thus 

 in ' The Coming of the Kilogram,' published 

 by the English Decimal Association, and thus 

 made official, we may find: 



' There are now no longer a great number of 

 sets of weights and measures in use among the 

 civilized peoples of Europe ; there are really 

 for all useful purposes two only,' these being, 

 of course, the English and the metric. 



It would again be superfiuous to mention 

 this contention of the metric party, but for 

 Professor Stevens's remarkable admission : 



A century has not been sufficient to cause the 

 abolition of old names and units among the com- 

 mon people of France, resort to them being usual 

 when no penalty is involved. The same is true 

 in Germany and Switzerland and in every other 

 country where the metric system is, in business 

 transactions, either obligatory or permissive. 



If it is the common experience that the 

 people of metric countries resort to the old 

 units when no penalty is involved, then it is 

 clearly impossible to bring the system into 

 common use in this country where general 

 compulsion is admittedly impossible. Fur- 

 thermore, if this system is so superior, how can 

 this admission be true? Why should it be 

 necessary to compel people to use such a won- 

 derfully superior thing as the metric system 

 is represented to be? It is certainly the only 

 case of the kind on earth. 



Just as the pro-metric case has been based 

 upon the belief that the change will be short 

 and easy, so the anti-metric case has been 

 based upon the belief that, as shown by the 

 experience of other countries, it would be long. 



difiicult and costly, and that the long transi- 

 tion period would be one of great confusion. 

 While I have made no count of its pages, it is 

 safe to say that eighty per cent, of ' The 

 Metric Fallacy ' is devoted to enforcing this 

 and to nothing else. Professor Stevens now 

 comes to our assistance, however, and admits 

 that a century of compulsory laws iii France, 

 and thirty years of them in Germany, have 

 been insufficient to complete the change, that 

 ' certain people would lose money and other- 

 wise suffer much inconvenience from the 

 change,' that ' all possible consideration should 

 be accorded to those whose large pecuniary in- 

 terests are afFected ' and that ' the first result 

 will be not the abolition of confusion, but the 

 increase of confusion,' and how long he expects 

 this period of added confusion to be is shown 

 by his admission that ' none of us of to-day 

 will live to see anything better than good prog- 

 ress on the part of the general public in getting 

 accustomed to the new standards and in losing 

 devotion to the old ones.' 



It thus seems to me that Professor Stevens 

 has admitted pretty much all that we have 

 contended for. There remain, in fact, but two 

 important differences between us — he regards 

 the change as worth this cost and this period 

 of confusion, while Mr. Dale and I do not, and 

 he regards the change as feasible, while, in a 

 manufacturing sense, we regard it as impos- 

 sible. 



In conunon with other scientific men. Pro- 

 fessor Stevens fails to recognize the root of 

 the difficulty and of the opposition, the diffi- 

 culty of changing established manufacturing 

 standards, of which~ textile, screw thread and 

 pipe standards are representative. I am, in 

 fact, in this respect, disappointed in this re- 

 view, as it ignores what I regard as the two 

 most important chapters of my portion of the 

 book ' Scientific and Industrial Measurements ' 

 and ' Scientific and Industrial Difficulties.' 

 I have there pointed out — I believe for the 

 first time and without reflection upon either 

 party — the reason why scientific men favor 

 the system while manufacturers oppose it. 

 In brief, this is because ' the scientific use of 

 measurements consists in measuring existing . 

 things; the industrial use of measurements 



