Page:British Weights and Measures - Superior to the Metric, by James W. Evans.djvu/51

Rh Manufacturers of these goods would reap a golden harvest. They look for it eagerly, and are not slow in loosing their purse strings to foment an agitation destined to bring about that result. Some of them hunger for an opportunity to batten on the misfortunes of the people. But what of the masses, who will have to foot the bill?

The interests of science, simplicity, uniformity, clerical convenience, advantages in foreign trade, and kindred claims, not always supported by fair tests, are invoked by Associations called into, and kept in, existence by a certain class of manufacturers, in the hope that a public, not always too well informed and alert on such matters, and who have not time or opportunity for reasoning such questions out, may be induced to suffer a change which is not required, is not desirable, and would prove a source of entanglement in every branch of trade, without conferring any adequate advantage. The whole country would be plunged into a chaos of differing weights and measures, and unwarranted expenditure involved.

The outlay involved would aggregate an enormous sum The pockets of the people would be touched, and they would speedily want to know what beneﬁt they were going to get in return. When they pay out money, they want some advantage in return. In this instance, the tax upon the trading community would be a heavy one, without reward but intolerable inconvenience and confusion in the transaction of business. We have here no records of the number of weighing and measuring appliances in use, but considering the great internal and external trade we have, it would be well within the mark to say that in the Commonwealth of Australia alone, with its population of 4,000,000, an