The Nation: Miles to Go

Last week Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans sent Congress a 188-page report suggesting that the U.S. at last forsake bushels, pecks, inches, feet, ounces, pounds and furlongs in favor of the metric system used by more than 90% of the earth’s population.

Stans recommended a ten-year conversion program, which would cost from $10 billion to $40 billion, including the massive expense of changing the nation’s industrial equipment to the new measure. Conversion, according to a Stans aide, should increase American exports by $1 billion or $2 billion a year. Under the Constitution, only Congress can set a national system of weights and measures. It is not very auspicious that the metric system, adopted in France around 1800, was first urged on the U.S. Congress by Jefferson.