The metric weights and measures constitute a SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM; our weights and measures are a DISORGANIZATION. Naturally one can expect a GREAT SAVING OF TIME, THOUGHT AND LABOR from the use of a system, and this is the fact. If one dared introduce ordinary arithmetical problems into an article like this, it would be easy to show by examples how a person has to be something of a master of common fractions in order to solve in our system common every-day problems, whereas in the metric system nearly everything is done very simply with decimals. In our system a mechanic after making a complicated calculation with common fractions is as likely as not to get his result in sixths, or ninths, etc., of an inch, whereas his rule reads to eighths, or sixteenths, and he must reduce his sixths, or ninths, to eighths, or sixteenths, before he can measure off his result. In the metric system results always come out in units of the scale used. The metric system measures to millimeters or to a unit a trifle larger than a thirty-second of an inch. In our system one is likely to avoid sixteenths or thirty-seconds on account of the labor of calculation. Then, besides, the amount of figuring is so much less in the metric system. Take the case of a certain problem to find the cubical contents of a box. Our solution calls for 80 figures and the metric for 35, and this is a typical case, not one specially selected. Thus, metric calculations, while only from one third to two thirds as long, are likely to be two or three times as accurate, are far easier to understand, and the results can be immediately measured off. Hence, we waste time in these four ways. Shakespeare in Hamlet says: "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all." In like vein it might be said: Thus custom (in weights and measures) doth make April fools of us all. It is no exaggeration to say that counting grown-ups solving actual problems and children solving problems in school we are sent on much more than a billion such April fool errands round Robin Hood's barn every year.
Noting how much time is saved in making simple every-day calculations by using the metric system, suppose that we assume of the 60 or more millions of adults in active life in this country, on the average only one in 60 makes such calculations daily and that only twenty minutes' time is saved each day. Let us suppose that the value of the time of the users is put at $2.40 per day or 10 cents for 20 minutes. Then 1,000,000 users would save $100,000 per day or $30,000,000 per year. But perhaps some one is saying that much of this time is not really saved, since many persons are paid for their time and can just as well do this work as not. The answer to this is that in many instances such calculations take the time of OTHERS as well as the person making the calculation. Occasionally a contractor might hold back, or work to a disadvantage a gang of a score of workmen while trying to solve a problem that came up unexpectedly.
An estimate of the value of all weighing and measuring instruments places the sum at $150,000,000. Thus, we see that in five years, merely by a saving in TIME—for time is money—all metric measuring and weighing instruments could be got NEW at no extra expense. This estimate of the cost of replacing our weighing and measuring instruments by new metric ones and of saving time has been made by others with a similar result.
A matter of very much more importance than that just discussed is the extra unnecessary expense put upon education, viz., two thirds of a year for every child in the land. Presumably if the metric system were in use with us, all our children would stay in school as long as they now do, thus getting two thirds of a year farther along in the course of study. Actually, if arithmetic were made more simple, vast numbers would; stay longer, since they would not be driven out of school by the terrible inroads on their interest in school work by dull and to them impossible arithmetic. If metric arithmetic texts were substituted for our present texts, it is safe to say children would average one full year more of education. What the increased earning power would be from this it would be hard to estimate, but clearly it would be a huge sum.
Consider also how much more life would be worth living for children, teachers and parents if a very large portion of arithmetical puzzles inserted to qualify the children to understand our crazy weights and measures were cut out of our text-books. If we were to adopt the metric system, literally millions of parents would be spared worry, and shame, and fear lest Johnny fail and drop out of school, or Mary show unexpected weakness and have to take a grade over again; uncounted thousands of teachers would be saved much gnashing of teeth and uttering of mild feminine imprecations under their breath; and, best of all, the children themselves would be saved from pencil-biting, tears, worries, heartburns, arrested development, shame and loss of education!
A committee of the National Educational Association has recently reported that Germany and France are each two full years ahead of us in educational achievement, that is, children in those countries of a certain age have as good an education as our children which are two years the foreign childrens' seniors. Surely one of these years is fully accounted for by the inferiority of our American ARITHMETIC and SPELLING. This much, at least, of the difference is neither in the children themselves, nor in the lack of preparation of our teachers, nor in educational methods.
Professor J. W. A. Young, of the University of Chicago, in his work on "Mathematics in Prussia," says: "In the work in mathematics done in the nine years from the age of nine on, we Americans accomplish no more than the Prussians, while we give to the work seven fourths of the time the Germans give." Professor James Pierpont, of Yale, writing in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (April, 1900), shows a like comparison can be made with French instruction. Pierpont's table exhibits only one hour a week needed for arithmetic for pupils aged 11 and 12! As the advertisements sometimes say, there must be a reason.
But if the children are kept in school two thirds of a year longer somebody pays for this extra expense. Now children do not drop out of school until they are about 12 years of age and have both appetites and earning power. The number of these children that drop out each year is probably about 2 1/2 millions. Of this number let us say 1 1/2 millions would become wage earners, thus passing from the class that are supported to the class that support themselves and earn a small wage besides. We have then three items in this count: (1) The cost to the state in taxes for the education of 2 1/2 million for two thirds of a year, or $50,000,000; (2) The cost to the parents for support of 1 1/2 millions for two thirds of a year at $67 each, or $100,000,000; (3) The wages of 1 1/2 millions over and above the cost of their support, say $50 each, or $75,000,000.
The above figures are put low purposely so that they can not be criticized. It should be remembered that 46 per cent. of our population is agricultural, and that on the farm, youths of from 13 to 15 very often do men's and women's work: also that in many manufacturing centers great numbers of children get work at relatively good wages, and that the number of completely idle children out of school is not large.
With these figures in hand let us consider now a kind of debit and credit sheet against and for our present system of weights and measures.