POLITICAL NOTES: World Quart

Last week the House Committee on Weights and Measures heard the opponents of the Britten Bill (TIME, Feb. 22) which would require the use of metric units in place of English units in retail merchandising and in transportation.

James E. Howard presented a list of changes which he said the bill would require and which he declared would bring about chaos in industry: Grocers would have to get new scales, new measures (to take the place of peck, bushel, quart); housewives would have to alter their recipes to fit metric units; gas meters, water meters, tape measures, yardsticks would all have to be altered or replaced; measuring machines on counters would have to be reconstructed, new machinery devised for folding goods by meter instead of the yard; shirts and collars would have to be renamed—the 16-inch collar becoming 405 millimeters; the 7 3/8 hat, 187 millimeters.

He continued: “In building materials and construction, we should have to abandon the board measure and substitute square decimeters, centares or ares. Doors which are familiar to all builders as 2 ft. 8 in. by 6 ft. 8 in. become 762 by 2,032 millimeters. An ordinary brick 51 by 101 millimeters. The sizes of sash also are converted into strange units. All architect’s drawings will be in new units, involving a most perplexing conversion of current building material units or made upon a system that will involve changes in all woodworking machinery to meet metric units.”

John R. Leighty, an engineer representing the American Railway Association, declared that the change would cost the railroads $332,835,000—$100,000,000 for changing tariffs, $15,000,000 for changing standard plans, $216,000,000 for new tools and machinery, $1,835,000 for relocating 262,500 mileposts.

The Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., the National Industrial and Traffic League, the U. S. Rubber Co., the National Retail Grocers’ Associations and the New England Textile Industries, all sent representatives who objected to the change.