One of the first orders of business in our newly founded United States was the establishment of uniform weights and standards in order to facilitate trade.
In order to find out what that really means and how important a task it actually was, we need once again to study history.
As all civil engineers, I studied surveying many years ago in college. Modern surveying is quite interesting and involves a bit of trigonometry. Back in the Middle Ages in Europe, however, it was not as accurate. For instance, an acre was taken to mean the amount of land a farmer could work by himself. An acre of rocky ground on the side of a hill was larger than an acre of meadow. A bushel was the amount of seed required to sow an acre.
Other measurements were just as confusing. A gallon of beer was larger than a gallon of wine due to its lower power of intoxication. Dutch millers charged the same price for a bushel of flour to wholesalers and retailers. They just used a larger "bushel" when selling to wholesalers. In Rome when the price of a loaf of bread was fixed, the size of the loaf would vary from year to year since the price could not. In some parts of Europe wheat buyers used smaller and smaller bushels to measure the wheat they purchased as they moved farther out from the cities to purchase it. The logic was they had to offset the cost to transport the wheat back to the cities. In some places a bushel of oats was larger than a bushel of wheat since the wheat was more valuable than oats. There were dozens of different bushels, gallons and hogsheads in use throughout Europe and the colonies. All of which hindered fair trade between parties.
Many of our present day measures have anatomical origins such as the width of a finger or the width of a thumb. The width of a thumb is one inch and the length of a foot is twelve inches. The width of sixteen fingers also makes a foot. The classic Roman definition of anatomical measure is:
* 4 fingers = 1 palm,
* 4 palms = 1 foot,
* 6 palms = 1 cubit,
* 4 cubits = total height.
Weights and measures varied throughout Europe. Each country had its own system, and there were several sub systems within each country. As trade with other regions increased, so did the need for a universal standard. In 1266, King Henry III of England, introduced the Sterling System for coinage and set the weight of the pound to be 240 pennyweights. This standard would serve for over 700 years. A little later, Elizabeth I set a standard of avoirdupois weights for heavy commerce and maintained troy weights for lighter commerce. She also redefined the mile from the old Roman mile of 5,000 feet to the present length of 5,280 feet. You may wonder why such an odd number. Since most surveying was done with simple math the number "four" was its basis (easy to double, half & multiply).
* 4 grains of barley = 1 finger,
* 4 fingers = 1 hand (or old Roman palm),
* 4 hands = 1 foot.
For surveying or measuring long distances:
* 16.5 feet (5.5 yards) = 1 perch or rod or pole,
* 4 perches = 1 chain (Gunter's chain),
* 40 perches = 1 furlong,
* 8 furlongs = 1 mile.
In order to measure off an acre, all you had to do was measure an area of 160 square perches, such as four perches times forty perches (or one chain by ten chains). It was assumed that one person could work four square perches in one day by hand. There was forty days of work in a single acre. A single acre was also the amount of land that a pair of oxen was able to work in a one day. A square mile (or section) consisted of 640 acres. A township consisted of thirty-six sections. All of this measure was based on the number "four."
In 1601, Queen Elizabeth had the first official yard commissioned out of a brass rod. She then sent out fifty-eight brass copies throughout England with instructions that descriptions be pinned up in every church and read during the service twice a year for the next four years.
Thomas Jefferson wanted our country laid out in metric terms based on the number "ten", but an unfortunate storm dashed the early hopes for a metric measuring system. In 1794, Joseph Dombey set sail for Philadelphia, the City of Enlightenment in the New World with a brass rod and weight. These were copies of the new meter and kilogram from France. Unfortunately, a storm blew the ship off course, and they ended up in the Caribbean. The politics of France in the Caribbean island interfered with the scientific journey of Dombey, and he ended up in a jail cell, where he died. Even though the standards finally made their way to Philadelphia, without Dombey to explain them, they were never even shown to Congress. It would be much later before the metric system of measure made its mark in the New World.
As a result of political pressure to hurry and open up the new lands to the West, the old system based on the number "four" was used to survey the new Western Territories. Once it was put in use, it carried all the way to the Pacific Coast and is still in use to this day.
Jefferson and Hamilton did manage to get the new decimal system based on the number "ten" applied to the new currency. The old system of 240 pennyweights to the pound based on the number "four" was retired early in the United States.
The Coinage Act of 1792 set the value of the dollar at 24.75 grains of pure gold, or 371.25 grains of .999 fine silver (or 412 grains of 90% silver). This resulted in a fifteen to one silver to gold ratio. This was just another of the many weights and standards that the Founding Fathers felt were necessary for carrying out commerce in a fair and equitable fashion. As a matter of fact, this was so important to the new government of the United States that the U.S. Mint Building was the first official building constructed, even before the new White House or U.S. Capitol.
Fortunately, the foot, yard and pound still survive to this day. Their exact dimensions are held in high regard and their use is constantly checked daily by bureaucrats all across the country. Unfortunately, the weights and standards of our money have slowly been eroded, until in 1971, when they were cut loose completely and allowed to float. Imagine the world we would live in if all our measurements changed daily. Can you even imagine Peter Jennings reporting that, "The yard fell today against the meter" and "in other news, it was reported that the pound strengthened this week against the kilogram." But we do hear nightly, the report that the dollar has risen or fallen against the yen or euro, and do not seem to think it strange at all!
Instead of reporting the price of gold in dollars, perhaps we should report the price of the dollar in gold? Such as, "Today the dollar fell slightly and has dropped to xx grains of gold." If you are measuring anything you need a set of measures that does not change. I claim that gold is a much better measure of value than our present day dollars. Over 5,000 years of history is on my side of the argument. All fiat currency has failed in the past and the dollar will be no different. The only question is when it will happen, not if. And when all those IOU's we have spread all over the world come home to roost it will be a sudden and terrible time for those who hold dollars. During that fateful time there will not be time to change fiat dollars into gold. The carnage will come quickly. Now is the time to move out of dollars and into a real store of value. There may not be a better time again.
Larry LaBorde, Silver Trading Company
