Why a Mare's Nest?
Page 8
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A Suggestion that the New Attempt to Establish the Metric System for Public Usage be Examined on its Merits and Not,, as Suggested, as "Suspect."
By a Member of the Executive Committee of the Decimal Association.
Let us, in this most important of questions, try to avoid faulty reasoning. There is something un-English about. the recent methods of arguing. Election cries and cheap newspapers do not conduce to cool heads, for in a multitude one must shout to be heard. Our elections and our correspondence are conducted in a series of yells. Tariff Reform is yelled. " Dear Food!" Election Reform becomes " Down with the Lords!" We can safely leave these methods to our out.-at.-elbow friends, the politicians, and look at the question in a sane and dispassionate way.
The Metric System is Not a Panacea.
Better logic has been knewn than this; we laughed at Daylight Saving—and yet it was right ! We laughed at. the Channel Tunnel—yet it was right!! We laughed at the Decimal System—yet it was—right? .0h dear, no! " Wrong " is the conclusion this time ! ! ! One gathers from antagonists of the system that to make a case for the metric system one has to prove that foreign trade will increase and .multiply without any work on the part of the trader, and that Britain must be selected by the Fates for their special care as a reward for her tardy conversion. Now the metric system won't, as far as.I know' wash clothes, nor will it serve as a .substitute for the pushful commercial traveller.
Why Change at All?
The sole rational explanation of the desire to change to the metric system is that it forms the nearest approach to an international system yet arrived at. Rightly or wrongly the metric "cranks" pin their faith to the belief that a mutually intelligible' system of weights and measures is conducive to extended trade.
Trade in this Connection Means Foreign or Export Trade.
The statement that every trade has its own weights and measures is quite true, but that is an appeal to the very insularity and—worse than insularitylocaliem that puts us at such a disadvantage in external dealings. It is only too true that each trade has its own units--the trouble is that it generally has five or Six different local units. If you are selling ribbons to a fellow native, your chaldrons (is it?) are• all very well, but one would think that to offer an Argentin° (say) 50 chaldrons of ribbon at 40 groats per draper's dozen would not he very helpful to trade. And whatever local measures the Argentine has evolved, a quotation of so many metres of ribbons at so many francs OT florins per metre would at any rate form an intelligible basis:I shall be told that "of course" dealers issue their catalogues in the coinage and measures of the customer, Well, the "Daily Telegraph" leader of 3rd March, quoting from the Report of the Dominions Royal Commission, says weed° not: it complains that even in dealing with Canada we will not quote in dollars, but in our own complicated coinage And why the frenzied appeals of our consuls for catalogues in the system used by the native? Here as in other eases, the voluntary principle has failed. New Markets Offered.
We have made new friends .during the war, and their system is in most cases the metric system.. Italy, Roumania, Serbia, Belgium, all use it, and the scene of the trade war is to be South America, where practically all countries use it.
The Importance of the U.S.A. in this Connection: The attitude of the U.S.A. is, as all deeimal advocates will probably admit, of the greatest importance in this movement. It is well-to consider one or two points about the U.S.A. position. In the first place we must remember that Britain is the oldest and biggest customer of the U.S.A. And Britain is the " buyer " nation: we go to the States for food for raw material and for machinery with which we turn out manufactured articles ;• obviously, therefore, as we pay the piper we "call the measure." As long as the British system suits us it is good enough for the States, but if the U.S.A. was the last. great, country left with the British system I think we might hope to see a very rapid conversion. The question ought to be conducted in the two countries at the same time, of course, and it is well to realize that.
The Americans are not all "Antis!"
Ttiey do not, for instance, rattle many shillings or sovereigns in their pockets. And I have before me a, copy of State Document No. 241, "The Report on the Metric System in Export Trade "--the Report to the International High Commission in the U.S.A., and. some rather 'instructive information can be gatheredas to the state of 'enlightened American opinion. I can 'only quote briefly:—
1. As to the proportion of manufacturers using the Metric System for export trade—a list is given which "can be almost indefinitelY extended "arid the "availability
of metric 'products has been advantageous in many cases in domestic trade." 2. Has their experience warranted an extension of the policy? "Not only so, but such extension is essential." 3. Several objections are adequately met: they are Of the same type as those brought forward in England, most, of which are met by the proposed Metric Bill itself (drawn up by the Association of Chambers of Coinmerce). The terms of this Bill are not nearly so drastic as objectors try to make out ; for instance, the proposal, in the first place, is to make the metric system compulsory only in contracts of buying and selling—there, being no interference with the system used in the factory—and the Bill is not to apply to contracts where the units employed are those In use in the foreign country concerned. It ia very instraetive in reading the Report Mentioned to notice how the coMmunity of interests between Great Britain and the U.S.A. crops up—and it is pointed out that this purpose is not altogether served. since the U.S.A. still retains measures long sines dropped by Britain (troy weight, liquid and dry meaSures, for example). Enough has been said to demand, I think, a fair, unbiassed review of the . situation—this is notea spasinedic agitation, kit, the result of the steady growth of opinion among the leading trade experts of this country, as a gla;nce at the names of the memhersi af the .Decimal Association will prove. .