Many well-informed people studying the matter superficially, think the difficulties in the way of a change to the new system insurmountable. Thus, they think of the cost to the manufacturer—which we have just seen to be rather large but not insurmountable; they think of the changes needed in books, records, such as deeds, and the substitution of new measuring and weighing instruments. Germany and all the other countries of continental Europe made the change. Are we to assume that the United States can not? That would be ridiculous. Granting that commerce has grown greatly, so also has intelligence and capability of the people for doing great things.
Scientists are universally agreed as to the wisdom of the adoption of the metric system. The country, as a whole, must be educated up to the notion that sooner or later it is sure to be universally adopted, that it is only a question of time when this will be done. Already electrical, chemical and optical manufacturing concerns use the metric units and system exclusively. The system is also used widely in medicine and still other arts. Then all institutions of learning use the metric system exclusively whenever this is possible. All that is needed is to complete a good work well begun.
There is one rational objection to the metric system and but one. It is that 10 is inferior to 12 as a base for a notation for numbers, but the world is not ready to make this change nor is it likely to be for generations to come. Moreover, this improvement is far less important than uniformity in weights and measures. For these reasons this objection can be passed over. Men said the metric system would never be used outside of France; but it has come to be used all over the world. The prophets said we should never have uniformity as regards a reference meridian of longitude. But we have. And so it will be with the adoption of the metric system in the United States and Great Britain. It is only a question of whether it comes sooner or later. When that day comes, the meter, a long yard, will replace the yard, the liter, the quart (being smaller than a dry and larger than a liquid quart), the kilogram will replace the pound, being equal to 2.2 pounds, and the kilometer (.6 mi.) will replace the mile. Within a week or so after the change has been made to the new system, all men in business will be reasonably familiar with the new units and how they are used, and within a few months every man, woman and child will be as familiar with the new system as they ever were with the simplest parts of the old. So easy it will be to make the change as far as ordinary business affairs are concerned. However, for exact metal manufactures years will be needed to fully change over to the new. Here the plan is to begin with new unit constructions and new models, as automobiles using new machinery constructed in the integral units of the metric system. All old constructions are left as they are and repaired as they are. This was the plan used in Germany and of course it works.
In conclusion it can be said that we started with the idea that the change to the metric system was needed for the sake of foreign commerce. We now see that we need it also for our own commercial and manufacturing transactions. If we are to have the efficiency so insistently demanded by the age in which we live, then we must have the metric system in use for the ordinary affairs of daily life of the masses of the people, we must have it in commercial and manufacturing industries, and we must have it in education. If efficiency is to be the slogan, then the metric system must come no matter what obstacles stand in its way.
ADAPTATION AS A PROCESS
BY PROFESSOR HARRY BEAL TORREY
REED COLLEGE
FOR the physicist and chemist the term adaptation awakens but the barren echo of an idea. In biology it still retains a certain standing, though its significance has, in recent years, been rapidly contracting, as the influence of the conception for which it stands has waned. Many biologists are now of the opinion that their science would be better off entirely without it. They believe it has not only outlived its usefulness, but has become a source of confusion, if not, indeed, reaction.
Darwin's first task, in the "Origin of Species," was to demonstrate that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. But he was well aware that
such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting the world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration.