THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

813

April 27, 1917.

weather. Prices in South Wales show an all-round
advance, due to the improved tonnage position and
the reduction of stocks. Trade in Scotland suffers
from lack of export facilities, and the prospects in
Fifeshire are not encouraging.

Patent fuel manufacturers are said to be satisfied
with the interview with the Coal Controller on
Monday. The manufacturers asked that in any
scheme from neutrals special consideration should
be given to the increased cost of production. No
definite arrangements are reported.

May 3 is the last day on which miners may
volunteer for service under the scheme approved by
the Coal Controller and the Miners’ Federation.

The South Wales Miners’ executive at Cardiff
decided to negotiate for an advance of the general
wages rate.

A conference has been held in London relative to
the best methods of ensuring uniformity of procedure
in supplying coal to France and Italy. The result
of the conference has not been made public.

The programme of the Coke Oven Managers’
Association (Northern section) includes a paper on
“The Standardisation of Benzol Works Test” by
Mr. T. B. Smith at the meeting to-morrow
(Saturday).

The meeting of the Midland section of the Coke
Oven Managers’ Association at Sheffield, to-morrow,
the 28th inst., has been cancelled, Mr. Nicholson
being unable, owing to unforeseen circumstances, to
give his paper on “ Coke Oven By-Products.”

The final report of the Dominions
Improvements Doyal Commission is not apparently
in attracting the attention its great
Commercial importance deserves; and this is
Practice. possibly due to the very large field
it embraces and the multitude of
diverse matters it covers. One of these deals with
suggested improvements in commercial practice, and
particularly with regard to trade intelligence as
bearing upon our oversea commerce. This is a
subject of the greatest interest to the coal and iron
industries, and the branches of trade allied to them.
The Commission draws the very sound conclusion
that the ideal commercial intelligence system of any
Government must depend for efficient working not
only upon well-trained commercial representatives
abroad, but also upon a staff of experts conversant
with the conditions of industry at home. The former
would look after the improvement of our systems of
distribution, and the latter would concern itself with
improved methods of production.

We arrive, therefore, at once at a criticism
of the Commercial Intelligence Department of
the Board of Trade, the only existing organisa-
tion for collecting information concerning openings
for British trade abroad. One of the chief dis-
advantages of this system as now conducted
lies in the fact that whereas the information
is to a large extent available only in London,
the manufacturing industries are mainly centred in
the provinces. If a manufacturer or trader desires to
avail himself of the facilities possessed by this depart-
ment, therefore, he must either come to London for the
purpose, or he must take special steps to get himself
placed upon the special register for the receipt of
confidential information which it is not deemed
advisable to make public property. It is true that
this particular confidential information is also supplied
to chambers of commerce, but the fact remains that
many British firms do. not make use of it, either
from ignorance of its existence or because the
machinery for its dissemination is not understood.
What seems to be required is a closer contact
between the Intelligence Department and the-trader.
As an example of its aloofness, it may be stated that
certain kinds of information are held to be so
exclusive that they are not even supplied to the
chambers of commerce. Of this nature are the
lists of importers of British goods abroad. It is, of
course, quite right that these lists should not be
allowed to get into foreign hands; but there are
many British exporting firms who do not even know
that such lists exist.

No system of commercial intelligence can be con-
sidered adequate unless it includes a suitable staff of
trade representatives abroad. Up to the present the
duties of such a staff have been discharged by means
of the consular service, which, although much
improved of late years, is still somewhat out of
touch with commercial needs. It is not, however,
necessary to enlarge upon this subject, because the
whole system of trade representation abroad promises
to be thoroughly overhauled under the scheme
which is being set on foot in accordance with the
recommendation of Lord Farringdon’s Committee,
now being put into practical working under the
auspices of the British Trade Corporation.

Quite another question is opened up in connection
with the relations between foreign trade and the
shipper. Having secured the business, the delivery
of the goods is influenced by the attitude of the
mercantile marine. The trading community of the
oversea Dominions complain that shipowners in the
United Kingdom endeavour in their bills of lading
to contract themselves out of liability for loss or
damage in respect of the goods they carry. The
Harter Act of the United States is aimed against
this practice of contracting-out except under certain
contingencies, and legislation on similar lines has
been passed in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Many of the German shipping companies have also
adopted a bill of lading under which the shipper is
similarly protected, and the Norwegian Shipping
Law makes the same provision. Thus the British
shipowner appears to be in an almost unique position
in regard to his responsibilities as a carrier of goods,
and the Dominions Commission recommends that he
should be compelled to come into line in this respect.
The question of freights is a still more important
matter. It has been established that in the pre-war
period British steamship companies made a practice
of charging a lower rate on the same classes of goods
to New Zealand from Hamburg than from London,
thus encouraging German competition. Differential
freight rates have also been made between other
ports to the prejudice of British trade, and the
practice should certainly not be permitted to be
resumed after the war, when .Germany will certainly
strive to recover her old position’’ in foreign trade.
The Royal Commission on Shipping Bings, which
issued its report in 1909, brought to light some
of the disadvantages arising from the monopoly
possessed by the ship owners of this country, and
advocated certain remedial measures, which, however,
have not yet been carried out.

When the condition of British oversea trade is
examined in the light of the Dominions Royal
Commission Deport, many other weak spots are
disclosed. It should be part of the work of the
Reconstruction Committee to see that none of these
recommendations are lost sight of, or relegated to
that oblivion into which the work of so many Royal
Commissions have been allowed to lapse.

The recrudescence of interest in the

The Metric decimal system at the present time,
System. when the nation is engaged in a
critical struggle for its very existence,
is capable of more than one explanation, and there
may be some difference of opinion as to its wisdom.
At first sight it might appear that this often debated
question has little or no connection with the war.
But its advocates have reminded us that this is not
quite the case, and a recent report of the Decimal
Association points out that one of the results of the
war is the remarkable extent to which the metric
system is being assimilated in the life of the nation
owing to the fact that we are fighting side by side
with such typically metric countries as France and
Belgium. Another point of view to which expression
has been given is that the disturbance in our normal
conceptions of values caused by the war has been so
great that any small further variations that might be
produced by the adoption of the decimal system
would be inappreciable, and the present time is
therefore to be regarded as opportune for bringing
about this much advocated reform. Again, it is
probably true to state that the present outcry for the
adoption of this system is one of the effects of former
German competition in the world’s markets. The

British manufacturer is generally believed to be
severely handicapped in his foreign trade by the
persistence with which he clings to an obsolete and
irrational system of weights and measures. In the
severe industrial competition which, it is anticipated,
will follow upon the conclusion of peace, it is claimed
to be essential that Great Britain should adapt
herself to the conditions prevailing in many foreign
markets, and particularly in Latin America. Of
this assumed need we are continually reminded by
the unanimity with which its urgency is maintained
in the consular reports both of this country and also
of the United States, which latter country shares
with ourselves a more or less obstinate conservatism
in this respect. The adoption of the metric system,
in short, has been asserted to be a sine qua non for
the effective prosecution of our future competitive
power in foreign countries.

All these things have so often been debated, and
are now so widely accepted in a general sense, that
it is scarcely necessary to dwell upon them further
than to utter a word of caution against the danger of
concluding that the mere adoption of this system
would solve all our difficulties. Many of the merits
claimed for the decimal system may be at once
conceded, and its comparative simplicity cannot be
denied. Neither can it be asserted that there would
be much practical difficulty in its introduction in
many cases. The principle even now exists in the
British system. Thus we have already a British
metre of 39’6 inches in the measurement of 5 links.
The rod, pole or perch then becomes 5 metres, the
chain 20 metres. The furlong is 200 metres. The
square rod is 25 square metres, the rood is 1,000
and the acre 4,000 square metres. The difficulty,
however, remains that the British metre of 39-6 inches
is not the same as the Continental metre of 39 *37 inches,
and by its adoption uniformity would still be lacking.
The Continental metre is supposed to be one ten-
millionth part of a quarter meridian ; but it is not
exactly that length, neither is there any exact relation
between a metre and an inch. That it is about
39 J inches is, perhaps, as near as the relationship
can be expressed for practical purposes, but the dis-
crepancy might introduce some amount of confusion
if any attempt were made to express existing
engineering standards in terms of Continental units.
We have in use a large number of standardised
measurements of considerable delicacy, upon which
depends the whole system of interchangeable parts,
as, for example, Whitworth threads. A change of
system, therefore, would involve more than the mere
conversion of existing units. In mechanical engi-
neering the English system is probably the pre-
dominating standard of the world, when we consider
the enormous areas covered by the British empire on
land and sea. It is not our purpose to depreciate
the value of the metric system, which, as we have
stated, has many practical advantages, but rather to
show some of the inherent difficulties of its compulsory
adoption in a country in which other methods have
so long been in vogue. In France and Germany,
which countries have developed industrially almost
pari passu with metric units, the case is quite different;
but it may reasonably be doubted whether these
countries would have adopted the metric system if
such a course had involved so wholesale a scrapping
of patterns as would seem to be necessary in Great
Britain. The practical difficulties of conversion have
recently been well illustrated by Sir Guilford
Molesworth in a lecture delivered before the East
India Association. At the present time the units of
weight, length, area and volume differ considerably in
the provinces of Bengal, Bombay and Madras. An
attempt was made, at Sir Guilford Molesworth’s
instigation, to introduce a standard seer of one
kilogramme (2-2046 lb.), with decimal multiples
and sub-multiples, and the Indian Weights and
Measures Act of 1871 actually adopted this standard,
but has never enforced it, notwithstanding a petition
in 1877 from the Bengal Chamber of Commerce.
Quite recently, a Weights and Measures Committee
has endeavoured to introduce uniformity in Indian
units by another means, which, so far from being
a decimal system, is described by Sir Guilford
Molesworth as an “ octo-tertio-quinto-sexto-decimo-
quadragintal jumble.” Yet this committee cannot