World Quart

The House Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures last week had its day on the legislative calendar and presented one bill, a bill to continue the life of the National Screw Thread Commission. But it did not report the Britten metric standards bill, although hearings on the bill were begun Feb. 1. Congressman Fred Albert Britten is from Chicago. He is prominent in the House on naval affairs and it was he who was given credit for bringing the next Army-Navy foot ball game to his city. Incidentally his business is building construction, and that accounts for his introducing the bill for a world quart (as well as a "world pound" and a "world yard"), a measure which if passed, as it probably will be eventually, may have more effect in its way than even the World Court resolution.

The "World-Quart" bill is a metric system bill. It proposes to make standard throughout the U. S. the metre (world yard), the litre (world quart) and the one-half kilo gram (world pound). The world yard and world pound are about 10% greater than our present measures, and the world quart about 5% greater than our present quart. The use of these measures would be made obligatory in merchandising (not in manufacturing).

There are just two outstanding reasons for making these changes: 1) The metric standards conform to the decimal system (the metre is 100 centimetres and 10 decimetres; and 1,000 metres are a kilometre or "world mile") so that one can be changed into the other by simply moving a decimal instead instead of going through arithmetical processes each time, the same advantage that our decimal coinage system has over the English system of pounds, shillings and pence. 2) The metric standards are used in every country in the world except the British Commonwealth and the U. S., are already universally used in science and in many industries (radio, etc.) which have grown up in recent years.

Since 1866, metric weights and measures have been legal in the U. S. and indeed our yard is officially defined as 3,600/3,937ths of a metre. They are used in the Philippines, in medicine, chemistry, in the jewelry and optical industries.

The group of those favoring the adoption of the metric system is wide and notable. It includes among scientists Thomas A. Edison, Luther Burbank and Glenn H. Curtiss. It includes Leonard Wood and Admiral Sims. It includes Elihu Root, John Barton Payne, Newton D. Baker and William G. McAdoo. It included John Hays Hammond and Samuel Vauclain. It includes Arthur Brisbane and Dr. Frank Crane, and includes General Pershing, who saw the A. E. F. acquire the use of it in France and found it both convenient and not too hard to learn. Its proponents argue for it that no country that adopted the metric system has ever abandoned it, that it is a great aid to commerce, that it is a great time-saver and that it would save $800,000,000* a year in the U. S. in educating children because of its greater simplicity.

The metric system was first established in France in 1799. A calculation was made of the distance from the equator to the pole, and the metre was made one ten-millionth of the distance. The calculation was slightly in error, however, so the metre is really only the distance between two scratches on a platinum-iridium bar. The litre, or world quart, is a volume equal to that of a cube whose dimensions are each one-tenth of a metre. The kilogram (one-half kilogram is proposed as the "world pound") is the weight of the water contained in a litre or world quart.

This system set up in France about a century and a quarter ago spread, at first gradually and then more and more rapidly, to Belgium, Holland, Spain, Colombia, Panama, Mexico, Portugal, Uruguay, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, Norway, Argentina, Roumania, etc., etc. It is now on every continent except Australia (and Australia has asked Britain for it). Only in the last five years has it been adopted in Russia, Poland, Japan, Latvia, Greece, Esthonia, Lithuania, Siam and Persia. Only the British Commonwealth and the U. S. remain outside and our measures are different from the British.

*Calculation of the Parent-Teacher Associations.