Weights and Measures in the Colonial Sugar Trade: The Gallon and the Pound and Their International Equivalents

G REAT BRITAIN is going metric. The United States must do so also, sooner or later, finally following the urgings of such early leaders as Thomas Jefferson. Before the end of the twentieth century, the use of the metric system will no doubt have become universal. The economic historian wishes this had happened centuries ago because one of his most perplexing problems rises, in the words of James Madison, from "the inconvenience of . . . using different