TITLE XXI.

WEIGHTS AND MEASURES.

The systems of weights and measures in actual use among different peoples, stand to each other in no simple numerical relations; and the transformation of values from one of these systems to another, is ordinarily an irksome and time-consuming operation. No common system could therefore be substituted for all these, which would not stand to them or to most of them in the same relation of inexact commensurability in which they stand to each other. But there is hardly a transac tion of practical life into which considerations of weight, or measure, or both, do not enter; and such is the constitution of the human mind that clear conceptions of quantities of any kind are unattainable, except by reference to unit values, which education or long use has made familiar. It matters not how thoroughly we may have been instructed in the denominations of weight and measure employed by other peoples, or how earnestly we may have endeavored, by the study of their visible types placed immediately before our eyes, to acquire the power of directly conceiving positive values, when expressed in these experience teaches us that our notions thus acquired continue long to be vague and inexact; and that, in order to render them definite, intelligible and satisfactory, we involuntarily seek to transform them, by reductions founded upon relations which, if not true, are at least approximate, into values which long habit has taught us to associate directly with determinate quantities of the ob jects valued. The substitution, therefore, anywhere, of a new system of weights and measures for the system actually in use, founded as the new system must be, if it is to become a common and international system, upon a basis which will generally bear no simple numerical relation to the basis of the existing system, will impose upon an entire generation such a burden of inconvenience, daily and hourly felt, as to require for its justification very clear demonstration that the advantages to be secured by the substitution are much more than an offset to this very serious inconvenience. And as there are many minds in which considerations of great public benefit, or even of great individual benefit, which is only prospective, will after all weigh little in comparison with a much less amount of present and personal inconvenience, it is inevitable that every proposition for the unification of the systems of weights and measures in use in the world, no matter what may be the basis proposed for the new system, or what may be its theoretic simplicity, will meet with determined opposition in many quarters.

But the inconvenience here referred to, which consists in interference with men's established habits of thought, is not the only one which nec

essarily results from the abrogation of a system of weights and measures after it has been long in use, and the substitution in its place of a new system, even though it be a greatly better one. That inconvenience can be but temporary, and can affect, at farthest, but a single generation. To abolish suddenly the metric system of weights and measures in France, at the present day, would be to compel the French people to pass a second time through the same painful struggle with established associations as that which attended its original introduction.

But apart from this, every system of weights and measures long in use becomes inevitably entangled in, or incorporated with, the operations of industry or the material interests of men, to the extent that it constitutes at length an element in the actual value of many descriptions of property. The disadvantage which must arise from this source, in case of the abolition of the system, is one of a more permanent, and apart from its permanence, of a more serious nature than any which can spring from the mere violence done to mental associations.

The artificial divisions of landed property are among the things least liable to change among men; and the boundary lines which mark these divisions are naturally expressed, whenever that is possible, in integral numbers of the unit of measure employed. The introduction of a new unit having no simple relation to the first, will make all these values fractional. And the importance of this consideration increases in proportion as the dimensions of the divisions are less, and the absolute value of the surface measured is greater. These are the conditions which exist in regard to the real estate of cities, where they are true as well of buildings as of the ground on which the buildings are erected.

Again, the dimensions of railways, and of the locomotives and other rolling stock used in operating them, have been determined in conformity with the existing systems of measurement; and all these too become fractional numbers when the system is changed. The same thing must occur in every department of mechanical manufacture, where both the objects produced, and the machinery by which they are produced, will cease, with a change of system, to possess dimensions capable of being integrally expressed. When we consider into how many details of manufacturing art the exactest measurements enter as elements of vital importance, and reflect at the same time what vast sums have been invested in the various forms of mechanical production, and made dependent for their returns of profit upon the stability of existing systems of measurement, we shall perceive that the sudden introduction of others, and their immediate extension to every department of industry as well as commerce, would seriously and injuriously affect some of the most important springs of public and of private wealth.

If, however, in view of all the possible consequences which may and must result from the substitution of a system of weights and measures uniform for all nations, in place of the numerous, diverse, and greatly incongruous systems at present in use, it shall appear that there are permanent and lasting advantages to be secured to mankind by the change, sufficient to outweigh the temporary inconvenience and possible confusion

which it may cause, there can be no doubt that means ought to be taken to insure the introduction of such a system at as early a day as may be practicable with a due consideration for the tenacity with which men cling to established usages, and a due regard to the material interests which are likely to be affected by it.

But, supposing the first question to be thus disposed of, and the desirableness of a common system of weights and measures for use among all nations to be universally admitted, there remains behind a second question of hardly less difficulty, which is to determine among the various systems which may be suggested, that which combines in itself the largest number of practical advantages, and which is therefore intrinsically the best. And here it may be remarked, that many existing systems are so exceedingly bad, so arbitrary in the assumptions of the units upon which they rest, so variable in the absolute values of these units in different provinces or districts of the same countries, and often in their details so inconsistent with themselves, as to call for reform in the interest simply of the peoples who use them, and without regard to the relations of these peoples with contemporary nations. Since, therefore, no system of weights and measures which may be proposed for international use can have any chance of acceptance, unless it shall be in itself very manifestly a good system, it follows that many of the arguments which may be urged in favor of the adoption of an international system, will be arguments of weight in favor of the system itself, independently of its international character.

The disadvantages which result from the great number and diversity of existing weights and measures, are too obvious to require extended illustration. They are felt by all men engaged in effecting the world's exchanges, in the oppressive burden of arithmetical computations with which they incumber all their operations. They are felt by statesmen and statisticians in the difficulties with which they surround all inquiries relating to the resources and the wealth of nations. They are felt by engineers, mechanical artisans and manufacturers, in the greatly increased labor to which they subject such persons, whenever they seek to inform themselves of the improvements in the sciences of construction, or in the practical arts of life, taking place in other lands, in order that they may profit by them. They are felt by travelers and tourists, in the obstacles which they interpose to their proper understanding of what they see and hear in regard to the countries which they visit, and the liability to which they expose them, of taking up erroneous impressions, which, through the publication of their observations, are often conveyed to others. And as it respects all historical or archæological research, not only the diversity of weights and measures existing at present, but the instability of those standards in the past, and the extreme uncertainty which accompanies any attempt to fix their absolute value at any given period of remote antiquity, throws around many questions of the deepest interest an obscurity which no patience of investigation will ever be able to remove.

The desirableness of a uniform system of weights and measures, to be

used in common by all mankind, is, however, too obvious to admit of any difference of opinion. If between any two individual men, in order to the interchange of material objects, or even in order to the interchange of intelligent thought, it is necessary that there should exist some standard or standards of value recognized by both, the same is true, in a much higher degree, of large communities of men; and by an extension of the reasoning, the same is just as true of all mankind. It is proper to ob serve, however, that the same is not just as true of all mankind, except on the supposition that relations of frequent commercial, social or intellectual intercourse are established between all the branches of the great human family; and therefore that it has not had always in the past the same importance which it has in the present; nor has it at this time the same magnitude of importance which it is destined to have in the

future.

Writers who have endeavored to trace the origin of the weights and measures which we find prevailing among ourselves at the present time, inform us that, in a primitive state of society, men found in the dimensions of their own bodies or of its members, the prototypes of their original linear measures. Two reasons conspire to make such a derivation natural. In the first place, the first uses which the uncivilized human being will have for measures, will be for the construction of his habitation, of his garments, of the rude implements which he employs to facilitate his labor, or of the weapons with which he pursues his game. These must of course bear some convenient proportion of dimensions to the person who intends them for his own use. But, in the second place, the idea of an artificial and material scale or rule for the measurement of objects, is one which involves processes of reflection and abstraction which primitive man has not yet learned to use; while his own person, with its several members, is ever present, not merely as a measure, but as the very thing which is to be accommodated and fitted by means of the earliest constructions for which measurements are made. As in the course of time more numerous comparisons become necessary, the same standards of measurement are naturally applied in making them. In the measurement of distances, another idea suggests itself, equally growing out of the condition and habits of primitive man. Before man had learned to subjugate animals to his service, his only means of locomotion were such as he possessed in common with these; and in estimating the moderate distances from his dwelling to which his daily walks might extend, nothing could more naturally suggest itself than to count his steps. From this arose the fundamental unit of itinerary measure, which is still more or less employed for rude determinations; i. e., the pace.

In the state of society here supposed, each man will be his own standard. And though the persons of different individuals differ sensibly in dimensions, yet in the transactions which may occur between the mem bers of a community so rude, these differences will be unimportant; more especially when it is consindered that no series of successive measure

ments, made by the same individual, by means of a standard so imperfect, are likely to be more than mere approximations to equality. As civilization advances, and society becomes more perfectly organized, and exchanges multiply, and men, looking beyond the mere supply of their daily wants, aim at the accumulation of wealth, the necessity will be felt of greater uniformity and more exactness in measurements, and an artificial and constant standard will, by common consent, be adopted to supersede the natural and variable one; but this will still bear the same name (the foot for instance) as the standard superseded, and will be designed to represent its average value.* Such conventions will at first extend only to limited districts, and different districts will have different artificial standards, agreeing in name and according approximately, but only approximatly, in value. It is thus that there early originated in different countries of Europe, and in different provinces of those countries, more than one hundred different units of measure, all bearing the name pous, pes, pied, pié, pé, fuss, fod, fot, foute, or foot, and all equally signifying the derivation of the measure from the average length of the human foot; a value, however, which in many instances it exceeds, (as in England and the United States,) and in some, (as in Portugal and many of the Italian States,) largely. The greater number of these discordant measures have disappeared, chiefly in consequence of the extension of the metric system, which now prevails in France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. Nevertheless, at the Exposition of Weights and Measures in Paris, made in connection with the Universal industrial Exposition of 1867, there were exhibited thirteent units of measure as being then in actual use under the name of foot, (or its equivalent in other languages,) among which where found eight different absolute lengths.

The history of the origin of existing weights and measures is interest. ing, inasmuch as it is a part of the history of the human race. But in its bearing upon the question, what ought to be the standards adopted by men in a high state of civilization, it is of no importance whatever. Yet the foot-measure has been strongly advocated in our own time, on the score that it is a natural measure, suggested by a sort of instinct, which

* Instead of being taken at an average value, this unit of linear measure may have been derived from the person of some conspicuous individual. Thus the Olympic foot-measure of the Greeks is said to have been taken from the foot of Hercules; and the French pied du roi should seem from its name to have had a similar origin. We find it also stated that the English yard was derived from the length of the arm of Henry I. in 1101; the length of this measure, previously to the Norman conquest, having been somewhat greater than that of the modern metre.

The measures here referred to were from Prussia, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, Hesse, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Great Britain and the United States. The foot-measures of Great Britain, Russia and the United States are identical; also those of Switzerland and Baden. Those of Prussia, Denmark and Norway are very nearly so. The rest are more or less different from either of these; but the foot-measures of Baden, Hesse and Switzerland have metric values.