Abstract
During the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, groups of scientists and exporters pushed for legislation that would make the decimal metric system of weights and measures the exclusive system of measurement in the United States. As is well known, these efforts to metricate America failed repeatedly. One of the key reasons why the federal government failed to secure metric adoption was the forceful opposition mounted by mechanical engineers. This group of experts participated in mass media, scientific publications, and political debates against the convenience of adopting the metric system. Their well-executed campaigns made the compulsory introduction of the metric system a highly contested political issue. This chapter follows two key individuals in this context, the mechanical engineer Frederick A. Halsey and the textile industrialist Samuel S. Dale, who founded in 1916 the American Institute of Weights and Measures, an association that for two decades led the fight against metric adoption.
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Notes
- 1.
North, Douglass C.: ‘Transaction Costs in History’, The Journal of European Economic History, Vol. 14 (1985), p. 558.
- 2.
North, Douglass C.: ‘Review of Measures and Men, by Witold Kula’, The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 47 (1987), p. 594.
- 3.
For an overview of the importance of standardised weights and measures for economic life, see Vera, Héctor: ‘Medición y vida económica. Medidas panamericanas y la lucha por un “lenguaje universal para el comercio” ’, Estudios Sociológicos, Vol. 32, No. 95 (2014), pp. 232–39.
- 4.
Sinclair, Bruce: A Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1880–1980, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980, p. 47.
- 5.
Melvil, Dewey: ‘Efficiency Society’, in The Encyclopedia Americana, New York: The Encyclopedia Americana Corporation, 1918, IX, pp. 719–20.
- 6.
The members of the Committee on Language, Weights and Measures were Albert Herbert (chairman of the committee), president of Hub Gore Makers; Charles A. Schieren, of C. A. Schieren & Co. and ex-mayor of Brooklyn; Charles H. Harding, of Erben Harding & Co.; Henry Fairbanks, vice-president of E. and T. Fairbanks Scale Co.; Theodore C. Search, Manufacturer, president and founder of American National Association of Manufacturers; and Andrew Carnegie.
- 7.
A typed copy of the report can be seen in RBML Melvil Dewey Papers, box 67. A somewhat modified version of the text was reproduced in Drury, Aubrey (ed.), World Metric Standardization: An Urgent Issue, San Francisco, World Metric Standardization Council, 1922, pp. 38–44.
- 8.
RBML Melvil Dewey Papers, box 67.
- 9.
‘Manufacturers Meeting: Opening of the Third Annual Convention of the Association in Masonic Temple,’ New York Times (26 January 1898).
- 10.
Cox, Edward Franklin: ‘A History of the Metric System of Weights and Measures: With Emphasis on Campaigns for its Adoption in Great Britain and in the United States prior to 1914’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Indiana University, 1956, pp. 584–7.
- 11.
National Board of Trade: Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Meeting of the National Board of Trade, Philadelphia: John R. McFetridge & Sons, 1901, pp. 55, 73–4, 299–300. That same resolution was supported again in 1902, see National Board of Trade: Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Annual Meeting of the National Board of Trade, Philadelphia: John R. McFetridge & Sons, 1902, pp. 137.
- 12.
Hearings before the Committee, Feb. 6-March 3, 1902, on Bill H. R. 2054, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902, pp. 1–5.
- 13.
Supplemental Hearing on the Subject of the Metric System of Weights and Measures: Hearings before the United States House Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures, Fifty-Seventh Congress, First Session, on Apr. 24, 1902, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902, pp. 1–11.
- 14.
See Vera, Hector: ‘Melvil Dewey, ‘Metric Apostle’, Metric Today, Vol. 45, 2010, pp. 1, 4–6.
- 15.
As an illustration of Dale’s position on metrication: Dale, Samuel S.: The Foreign Attack on Our Weights and Measures, Boston, 1926.
- 16.
Halsey, F. A.: ‘The Premium Plan of Paying for Labor’, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Vol. 12 (1890), pp. 755–80.
- 17.
For a couple of examples of Halsey’s non-specialised anti-metric articles, see ‘Disputes Metric Success’, New York Times, 23 August 1925; ‘Continuing the Metric War’, New York Times (5 June 1927).
- 18.
Samuel S. Dale to Charles H. Harding, 26 March 1919 (RBML Samuel Dale Papers, vol. 7).
- 19.
Spencer, Herbert: ‘Against the Metric System’, in Various Fragments, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1914, pp. 130–56. On Spencer’s opposition to the metric system, see Vera, Hector: The Social Life of Measures: Metrication in the United States and Mexico, 1789–2004, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, New School for Social Research, 2012, pp. 341–59.
- 20.
The first edition of Halsey’s The Metric Fallacy was published in a single volume with Dale’s The Metric Failure in the Textile Industry. The second edition of the book, this time without Dale’s text, was published as Halsey, Frederick A.: The Metric Fallacy: An Investigation of the Claims Made for the Metric System and Especially of the Claim that Its Adoption Is Necessary in the Interest of Export Trade, New York: The American Institute of Weights and Measures, 1920.
- 21.
Halsey Frederick A. and Dale, Samuel S.: The Metric Fallacy and The Metric Failure in the Textile Industry, New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1904, pp. 16–17; see also Cox, ‘A History of the Metric System’, pp. 606–17.
- 22.
Halsey The Metric Fallacy, 127. As part of their reaction against the introduction of the metric system, Halsey and others developed a not fully articulated but evident defence of diversity as positive value, not only in the somewhat limited field of technical standards, but in broader cultural aspects; they critiqued, for example, what they called ‘over standardization’ or applauded the defence of traditional national languages. On these issues, see ‘Over-Standardization’, Bulletin of the American Institute of Weights and Measures (1 October 1923), p. 3; and in that same publication ‘Elusiveness of World Uniformity,’ 1 July 1924, p. 14.
- 23.
Resolution and Protest of the National Machine Tool Builders Association, 1902.
- 24.
Quoted in ‘Manufacturers and the Metric System’, New York Times (25 April 1902). See also Steigerwalt, Albert K.: The National Association of Manufacturers, 1895–1914, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1964, pp. 93–4.
- 25.
The Metric System: Hearings before the Committee on Coinage, Weights, and Measures on H. R. 93 (58th Congress, 1st Session); H. R. 2054 (58th Congress, 2nd Sessions), and H. R. 8988 (59th Congress, 1st Sessions), Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906, pp. 1–19.
- 26.
Samuel S. Dale to Marshall Cushing, 6 October 1906; Marshall Cushing to Samuel S. Dale, 8 October 1906 (RBML Samuel Dale Papers, box 4).
- 27.
For an analysis of the distribution of costs of going metric (for a different national case, though) see Faith, Roger, McCormick, Robert, and Tollison, Robert: ‘Economics and Metrology: Give ’em an Inch and They’ll Take a Kilometre’, International Review of Law and Economics, Vol. 1, 1981, pp. 207–21.
- 28.
Marx, Leo: The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 198–209.
- 29.
Hofstadter, Richard: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York: Vintage, 1963, pp. 9–19.
- 30.
Calvert, Monte A.: The Mechanical Engineer in America, 1830–1910: Professional Cultures in Conflict, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967, pp. 179–86.
- 31.
Calvert, The Mechanical Engineer in America, 179–86.
- 32.
Dale, Samuel S.: ‘A Talk on Textile Arithmetic’, Reprint from Textile World Record, June 1908, SIBL 3-VBDP+ (Dale, S. S. Weights and measures).
- 33.
See, for example, the papers presented by Drury, the Metric Association, Dale, and W. R. Ingalss in one of the Pan American standardization meetings: Inter American High Commission: Report of the Second Pan American Standardization Conference, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1927, pp. 75–87.
- 34.
Wells, William: ‘The Metric System from the Pan-American Standpoint’, The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 4 (1917), pp. 196–202.
- 35.
‘To Star New Fight on Metric System: Manufacturers See Insidious Move to Make It a Feature in Pan-Americanism’, New York Times, 30 March 1916.
- 36.
Halsey, Frederick A.: The Weights and Measures of Latin America, New York: American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 1918.
- 37.
‘The Weights and Measures of Latin America’, Decimal Educator, Vol. 2 (1920) pp. 178–86, 218–19 and 259.
- 38.
Kunz, George: ‘The Metric System as a Factor in Pan American Unity’, in Barret, John (ed.), Report of the Second Pan American Commercial Conference: Pan American Commerce; Past, Present, Future from the Pan American Viewpoint, Washington: Pan American Union, 1919, pp. 270. See also George Kunz, ‘The International Language of Weights and Measures,’ The Scientific Monthly 4 (1917): 215–19. In a letter to Melvil Dewey Kunz drew a succinct explanation on his view on measurement and international languages: ‘Has it ever occurred to you that musicians in every part of the world can read and play the music written by anybody in the civilized world? Why not the meter-liter-gram?’ (George Kunz to Melvil Dewey, 18 December 1924, RBML Melvil Dewey Papers, box 66).
- 39.
Halsey, Frederick A.: ‘Pan Americanism in Weights and Measures’, in Report of the Second Pan American Commercial Conference, p. 274.
- 40.
On Drury’s plan for continental metrological unification, see One Standard for All America, San Francisco: American Standards Council, 1927.
- 41.
Dale, Samuel S.: ‘Uniformity or Confusion in Pan America?’ and a letter by A. F. Del Solar to the First Pan American Standardization Conference, 19 December 1924. RBML Melvil Dewey Papers, box 67.
- 42.
From Ministry of Industry, Colombia to Aubrey Drury, 5 November 1927 (Aubrey Drury Papers, box 3).
- 43.
Quoted in Hearings Before the Committee, Feb. 6-March 3, 1902, on Bill H. R. 2054 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1902), p. 163.
- 44.
Lind, J.: The Mexican People (Minneapolis: The Bellman, n.d.), 29–30.
- 45.
Confederación de Cámaras de Comercio de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, ‘Urgente necesidad de hacer universal el uso del sistema métrico decimal. Estudio para la 9na. Asamblea General de Cámaras de Comercio de la República. Septiembre de 1926’, RBML Aubrey Drury Papers, box 3.
- 46.
Lyman J. Briggs to J. T. Johnson, 9 April 1943 (a copy of the letter was sent to the Vice President of the United States, Henry A. Wallace). RBML Aubrey Drury Paper, box 3.
- 47.
Jourdan, Louis: La grande métrication, Nice: France Europe éditions, 2002, p. 166. Jourdan mentions the Wall Street Journal as the source of that figure, but unfortunately does not quotes an article or date in particular.
- 48.
See Zakaria, Fareed: ‘The Rise of the Rest’, Newsweek (12 May 2008).
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Vera, H. (2018). Breaking Global Standards: The Anti-metric Crusade of American Engineers. In: Pretel, D., Camprubí, L. (eds) Technology and Globalisation. Palgrave Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75450-5_8
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