How far the French have adopted the Metric System.
A century of official pressure, of state-education, and of police proceedings against any public selling, marking or crying of goods otherwise than in metric measures and coins, cannot be without some effect, especially in large towns, but even there, while accounts are kept and bills made according to the legal system, the people, as distinguished from the official classes, have never taken to it, and in the country it is nearly entirely ignored, out of official transactions, both in weight and measures and in money.
The sizes of baskets and flower-pots are in pouces; lamp-chimneys have their size marked on them in lignes. The size of printer’s type is in points, each 1/6 line or 1/72 of the old French inch; and the printer’s pocket-rule is divided on one side into centimetres but on the other into ‘Ciceros’ corresponding to the English ‘pica.’
Barometers for ship-use have their scale usually in pouces and lignes. The port barometer on the quay of the great naval port of Toulon, in front of the town-hall, is on this old scale. In 1909 I found the barometer of a new Transatlantique passenger steamer making her first voyage to be ‘selon Torricelly,’ with its scale in the old pouces, 28 = 29·87 English inches.
The sounding line of French ships is in brasses of 5 old French feet, the cable is of 120 brasses, the knot is, as with us, 1/120 of the nautical mile of 1852 metres; the kilometre being absolutely ignored.
In Southern France the lengths of boats, as at regattas, is stated in páns, taken at 1/4 metre.
Wine is sold wholesale by the queue, by the barrique, by the feuillette. A barrique or piece of Bordeaux wine is 228 litres, of Burgundy 212 litres. Trade-units are as common in France as in England.
The housewife continues to ask for a four-pound loaf, a pain de quatre livres, for a livre of sugar, for a demi-livre of coffee, for un quart of chicory, for a demi-quart or for une once of pepper. In the market-place, in the streets fruit is openly cried at quatre sous la livre! or deux sous le quart! when no policeman is within hearing, and the police are discreetly deaf, even in Paris, except when ordered to be more vigilant; but then they kindly give a hint to the costermongers and street-traders and, after a few days of conformity to the law, the cries go on as before.
The grocer does not ticket his wares by the kilo, rarely even by the demi-kilo; he wisely tickets them with a simple 50, or 75, or 80, which means 5d., 7-1/2d., 8d., in coin, 10, 15, 16 sous, for a weight which is not mentioned but is understood to be une livre, and which can be halved and quartered down to an ounce. He finds that his customers are thus better pleased than if the ticket had ‘1/2 kilo’ marked on it, and he knows that they would be repelled if the price was by the kilo. About the only exception is when the price of goods cannot be expressed in centimes; thus if potatoes are less than, say, 2 sous a pound, the greengrocer has to ticket them ‘15 le kilo,’ 2 pounds for 3 sous. The practical non-existence of the centime, and the refusal of government to coin half-sous or farthings of 2-1/2 centimes, obliges him thus exceptionally to use the word ‘kilo.’
When a quart, a quarter-lb., say of coffee, is asked for, the grocer has to put into the scale three weights, of 100, 20 and 5 grammes, for a demi-livre two weights of 200 and 50 grammes, instead of being able to use a single half- or quarter-pound weight as under the Napoleonic compromise. For an ounce he gives 30 grammes.