Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/787

Rh "2. The unit of area: The are is 119·60332+ square yards.

"3. The unit of liquid measure: The litre is 0·26418635+ gallon, or 1·0567454+ quart, or 2·1134908+ pints.

"4. The unit of space: The stere is 1·308764+ cubic yard, or 35·386636+ cubic feet.

"5. The unit of weight is: The gramme $$=$$ 15·43234874+ grains troy.

"6. The unit of roods is: The kilometre $$=$$ 1,000 metres $$=$$ 0·62138+ mile.

"7. The unit of land-measure for farms and city lots is: The hectare $$=$$ 2·47114+ acres.

"8. The commercial unit of weight is: The kilogramme $$=$$ 1,000 grammes $$=$$ 2·20462125+ pounds avoirdupois.

"What will our farmers, citizens, merchants, tradesmen, and mechanics do with these figures? And will they submit to being obliged to reduce acres, feet, inches, pounds, and ounces by multiplying or dividing by the above figures?

"I think that to make the French metric system obligatory between individuals in this country will be an impolitic and arbitrary interference with the rights, interests, and habits and customs of the people."

The Surgeon-General reports: "In compliance with instructions from your office calling for reports as to objections to making the use of the metrical system of weights and measures obligatory in all government transactions, and also obligatory in all transactions between individuals, I have the honor to report as follows:

"1. As to the first of the questions submitted in the resolution, I feel constrained to express the opinion that the gravest inconveniences would immediately result from an attempt to render obligatory upon government officers only the use of a system of weights and measures whose units are so entirely different from those which have heretofore been, and would then continue to be, in general use among the people. I pass by the enormous difficulties which would result from compelling government officers to use a different unit for the measures of length from that used by the people. This would not only throw into confusion the whole system of land measurement as practiced in the United States, but would produce the most serious inconveniences from the resulting effort to use in all government works tools and machinery gauged by a different standard from those in common use. These and similar inconveniences, some of them of the most deplorable kind, would be felt so much more severely by other departments of the Government that the duty of representing the force of these objections may safely be left to them. I confine myself, therefore, in this report, to a brief statement of the disastrous inconveniences which would result to the medical department of the army from the measure in question. This measure would compel the substitution of the metric system of weights and measures in prescribing and dispensing medicines in the army for