Men and Measures

by Edward Nicholson

2. The Propaganda of the Metric System

I have read many books and many articles and letters in newspapers and scientific periodicals advocating the compulsory use of the metric system, optional amongst us since 1897, but which no trade, industry or profession will adopt, and I have almost invariably found that the writers knew the metric system imperfectly, and always that they knew their own very badly. I have found their advocacy illustrated by examples of problems in imperial weight and measure which showed defective instruction in the art of cyphering and supported by statements which were misleading and only to be charitably excused on the ground of ignorance.[^[59]] Too often opponents of their propaganda are sneered at as wanting in scientific knowledge, business experience, and common sense.

The propaganda of the metric system is effected, from abroad by diplomacy, and from within by—

1. Calling it ‘antiquated,’ a term which might be applied to Law, to Religion, to Marriage, to Property, and other ancient institutions.

2. Calling it ‘irrational,’ when it has that great reason which comes from custom, convenience, improvement in recent times.

3. Calling it ‘unscientific,’ when it joins to popular convenience the option of decimalisation, whenever that is found convenient, in addition to the alternate decimalisation already established in several series.

4. Putting forward as current certain weights, such as the Troy pound, long ago obsolete.

5. Putting forward as legal measures trade-units, such as the cask, the sack, &c., used for convenience in trade, as much in metric countries as with us.[^[60]]

6. Putting forward, as necessary, sums and calculations which a decently taught schoolboy would laugh at.

7. Ignoring all that is convenient in our system and all that is inconvenient in the metric system.

8. Ignoring the satisfaction of the people of the United States with our system, even when retaining the old wine-gallon and corn-gallon.

9. Ignoring the resistance of the French people to the metric system after a century of education in it and of police-constraint.

10. Urging us to follow the example of other countries that have adopted it, but omitting to find out whether the peoples of these countries, from civilised Germany to barbarous Haïti, use it—so far as they do use it—otherwise than under compulsion. It is the governments of these countries, not the people, that have adopted it, always in the name of Science; and the day police-pressure were taken off, the old system would return, or, at the least, the decimal series would disappear.

11. Threatening loss of foreign trade, when our trade weights and measures are so well understood by foreign manufacturers and merchants that they find no difficulty in placing their goods on our market, and are so well known that many foreign manufacturers find it impossible to use metric standards, those of England being alone accepted in most of the markets to which British manufactures are exported.

12. Calling opponents prejudiced, unprogressive, unscientific, wanting in business experience and common sense.

Such are the arguments used in the propaganda of a system which would make much of the past life of our country unintelligible, send most of its manufacturing machinery to the scrap-heap, dislocate trade for years and bring about in our country the same struggle that is still to be seen in France between the law and the people.

The claims of the metric system are exactly on the same basis as those of the Esperanto language. If the metric system were made compulsory, an energetic body of Esperantists might only have to adopt the metric plan of campaign to get their ‘simple, rational, scientific and international’ language made first optional, and then, when it was found that no one would use it, compulsory, while the use of the antiquated and unscientific English language would be forbidden.

What will be the result of the conflict between the two systems prevailing about equally in the greater part of the Western world? On the one side North America, the United Kingdom and its colonies in the Eastern Hemisphere; on the other side the Latin nations of both hemispheres with the principal Teutonic nations whose governments have imposed the French system on them. Russia and several other countries are awaiting the results of the conflict. But it is a siege rather than a conflict, for the attack is entirely from France; and though it has the inherent weakness of its system being a failure in the country of its origin, yet the defence has the weakness of its people being so badly instructed in their system that they cannot repel the invasion, and have even allowed the enemy to take up a legal position in their own country. The colonial policy of England, the simple plan of respecting custom, of not interfering needlessly, is very different from that of France. British colonies that were French or Dutch keep the laws and customs that we found there, and amongst these their systems of weights and measures. If these were convenient they remained, trade bringing a gradual adoption of the English system mixed with local measures; and as these were on a system more or less common to all the Western nations before the French Revolution, weights and measures gradually harmonised. But the policy of France is distinctly aggressive; its colonies must have French laws and the metric system, and other countries also must be induced to abolish their systems and replace them by the system which a century of police-action has not succeeded in making the French people adopt, and which they evade in every possible way.

Why the propaganda of the metric system should have had any success in England appears a mystery—yet it is intelligible to anyone who has observed the contagion of opinions, even the wildest. England has been fascinated by its presentation as scientific and international. This is a scientific age, and every new thing that can be puffed as ‘scientific’ is likely to take with people unprepared to criticise the science. I have seen the council of no mean English city induced by the word ‘scientific’ to vote in favour of a petition to make the use of the metric system compulsory; the few members, not one-tenth of the whole, who dared to oppose the resolution being called unscientific, unprogressive, &c.

Repeatedly repulsed, the French siege will not cease its attacks; England, and America also, must be prepared to meet them.

Although the English-speaking peoples have a system with which they are satisfied, unfortunately few know its principles; and, in weights and measures as in other matters, an inferior article well advertised supplants an old-established and satisfactory article that is not advertised. If the French people have not revolted long ago against the system imposed on them by the Paris bureaucracy, it is because it is thoroughly advertised as scientific, international, and as conquering the world by the superior civilisation of the French nation. They have been trained to make almost any sacrifices for the glory of France, and so long as they can evade the decimal and other inconvenient portions of the metric system they suffer this patiently for the satisfaction it gives to their patriotic feelings.

But their government must go on conquering, or they may strike against a system which brings in no more glory; as other peoples may when they see that the English-speaking peoples of the world refuse to be persuaded into accepting it.

Here is the weak point of the attack. And when the English-speaking peoples, those of the British Empire and America, are as well instructed in their good system as the peoples of the metric countries are in the bad system imposed on them (and which they evade for all the good teaching of it), the assailants will raise the siege.

We could reply: Amend your own system and make it acceptable to your own people before you ask us to put aside a system which we find convenient and which is founded on better principles than ours. Our system has been carried to all countries; it is decimal wherever decimalisation is convenient; its international unit is the Ton-register of 100 cubic feet, or 100,000 ounces, as old as the first civilisation of the world, as the civilisation which established the Meridian mile used by your seamen as by ours. We reject an artificial system founded in hatred of the past, and only kept up in its native country by police-force. In the name of decimals you want us to abolish our pound, and use a kilogramme which your own people will not use. It should be enough for you that we have given your system a denizenship by the abuse of which we have been greatly annoyed.