In country towns goods are often openly ticketed in sous; I have even seen ‘six liards,’ six half-farthings, two for three-halfpence, as the marked price. In the South books and newspapers sometimes have the price boldly printed in sous, ‘20 sous,’ &c. In large shops, especially where there is a cash-desk, the salesmen have trained themselves to speak only of francs and centimes, but the smaller shopkeepers, even in Paris, usually say their prices in sous, at least for prices under two or three francs.
The peasant bargains for cattle in écus (half-crowns) or in pistoles of 10 francs; wages of farm labourers are still often in écus. Land is reckoned in the old measures according to local custom, and tables of these measures, with their metric equivalents, are given in the ‘Usages Locaux’ published for the use of juges de paix and other officials. Farms to let and land for sale are frequently advertised in these local measures. If the extent is given in hectares, the local equivalent in vergées, seterées, &c., is added. I have such advertisements of recent date.
The master of a government school in Normandy advertised the sale of his haystack by auction. The advertisement (in a newspaper of 1906, now before me) gave the weight of the hay as ‘5000 kilos (10,000 livres).’ He knew that the fathers of his pupils understood, as well as he did, a kilo to be 2 pounds, but he also knew that they would be much readier to bid if the weight was stated in pounds.
Market-prices of agricultural produce are frequently stated by newspapers in the old measures; that of apples is constantly recorded by the barattée, literally the churnful, about equal to our bushel.
The old agrarian measures are used quite close to Paris. I ask a farmer, not six miles from Paris, how much land he has, and he, knowing me to be ‘safe,’ says so many estrées. How much is an estrée? 1600 square toises is his answer.
I take up a Paris daily paper and see several advertisements of mushroom farms for sale, in the old quarries near Paris; the area of these is always given in toises.
Direct inquiries will always be answered most favourably to the metric system. The peasant’s caution will rarely let the inquirer detect his love of the old weights and measures, quite convenient to him. And the bourgeois, proud of his superior education and glorying in the triumphs of the metric system abroad, ignores the existence of any but the legal system; he is blind and deaf to the constant evidence which strikes the unprejudiced observer.
The doctor and the druggist would indignantly deny using any other than metric measures, but they have their professional units, necessarily on a gramme basis, though in figures corresponding to ounces, tablespoons, drachms, scruples and grains; drops (which are actually dropped, not measured) are prescribed, and the mixture is always made up to a total of so many ounces of 30 grammes. And the pharmacien, who is able to read through the frequent ambiguities of prescriptions written in grammes, centigrammes, &c., very likely to be confused, puts the mixture up in bottles which are moulded to show tablespoons of 15 grammes, that is half-ounces.
The druggists’ price lists give quantities in units of 30, 125, 250, 500 grammes or cubic centimetres, that is in quantities of 1, 4, 8, 16 ounces; and these are the quantities in which he usually sells drugs to his customers.
Thus in France there is a chronic struggle between the law and the people; the system of weights and measures was devised there, not for the convenience of the people, but to suit a decimal theory dear to the mathematical and bureaucratic mind; the people must make their convenience fit the system, and it is only by evasions and subterfuges that it can be made to fit, even approximately. The trader has to evade the law if he wishes to retain his customers. The manufacturer, not keeping an open shop, finds evasion easier, and all the circulars addressed by the government to Chambers of Commerce begging them to support the metric system remain without effect. A few months ago a circular deplored the practice of selling and buying silkworms’ eggs by the ounce. Recently a circular forbade professors and schoolmasters to utter the names of the old weights, measures or coins, or to allow their pupils to utter them.