[To THE Erma or Tin "EirrorAroo."] Smt,—May I state our
experience in reply to the letter on this subject in the Spectator of August 13th ? It is now twenty-- one years since we abolished the English weights and measures in our processes of manufacture in favour of the metric system. We consider it one of the wisest things we ever did. It increased the accuracy of matching our colours and facili- tated considerably the preparation of the same. It is so simple that the rawest hand in the colour department seldom, if ever, makes a mistake, and the colours are made in half the time. In the days when we used the English weights and measures we had to deal, of course, with noggins, gills (which gills, English or Scotch P We had a Scotch colour-mixer who wrote up his own colours), pints, gallons, ounces (which ounce, 437i grains or 480?), pounds, stones, quarters. All sorts of mistakes used to happen. An abbreviated gallon, badly written, was sometimes read for gill, pints for parts, and so forth. After completing my apprenticeship in Alsace I begged for the metric system on our works, but met with opposition on all aides, chiefly from a manager we had, who was a well-educated man. He raised all sorts of difficulties,- e.g., it would increase the mismatching, it was not practicable in English processes, the men would never grasp it. He himself refused for a long time after its adoption even to learn the comparative weights and measures. In short, he bad a very bad attack of " metricitis." I was determined to carry it through, and bought my weights and measures in Alsace. One great advantage at the time was that, when new colours were submitted to us from the Continent together with processes, the quantities were always in the metric system, and they had not to be transposed. I give a sample of a colour taken from an old book to show how difficult it is to work and what-a nuisance it is :—Deep Chocolate.-4 lbs. flour; lb. gum ; 1 nog. oil; 1 gall. red liqr. 18; 5 quarts logwood liqr. 9; 4 oz. "salt" (good word); 12 oz. sal ammoniac ; 21 gills nit, of copper 84; 23 gills ext. of indigo. I want to make a small trial only, so one-tenth will suffice. In the metric system strike off the right-hand column only. Of course, I do not presume to say that the metric system will apply to every business, but surely there cannot be any great difficulty. Is it not merely a question of keenness and hustle P The English weights and measures should be relegated to the soup kitchen for those who love the good old rule-of-thumb
methods of a "small quantity," a "pinch," or a "spoonful."
I do not say that the adoption of the metric system will prevent mistakes and make good matching of colours a certainty. Everybody makes mistakes; but, so far as we are concerned, never let the English weights and measures darken our doors again. We have a German chemist here, and he glories in his perfectly true statement that in England we cannot prepare so small a quantity as a pound of colour with the English weights and measures.—We are, Sir, &c., Bridgnorth.
B. WARDLE AND COMPANY, Limited.
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