Hooverizing Daylight 



Not advocating a bedless day, but 

 suggesting the readjustment of hours 



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THE project of advancing the clock 

 in summer in order to persuade 

 slothful humanity to keep early 

 hours at that season, after nearly a dec- 

 ade of unsuccess in getting itself taken 

 seriously, has suddenly come to fruition 

 under the stress of war conditions, and is 

 an accomplished fact over the greater 

 part of the civilized world. 



A certain modest representative of the 

 building trade, now deceased, must have 

 chuckled in his grave when Represent- 

 ative Borland referred to him the other 

 day, in Congress, as "the late William 

 Willett, the noted scientist of England." 

 Willett put forth his daylight-saving 

 scheme, in a form somewhat different 

 from that eventually adopted by the 

 British Government, in the year 1907. 

 The first daylight-saving bill was in- 

 troduced in the House of Commons in 

 the year 1908. Presently similar projects 

 began to crop up all over the world. Most 

 scientific men ridiculed them, but many 

 of these authorities have now been con- 

 verted. Then came the war, and daylight 

 saving was one of its many startling 

 products. 



It would be quite impossible within 

 the limits of a brief article to set down all 

 the pros and cons of this scheme. The 

 pros are generally familiar, because they 

 have been embodied in numerous circulars, 

 widely disseminated by chambers of com- 

 merce, and faithfully reflected in our com- 



These timepieces from 

 Grandfather to Baby Ben, 

 will all have to be reset 

 if we adopt the daylight 

 saving measure. In this 

 article the whole subject is 

 discussed. Daylight saving 

 has been advocated ever 

 since the days of Benjamin 

 Franklin, when that wor- 

 thy scored the citizens of 

 Paris for their slothfulness 



mercial-minded press. The cons are less 

 well understood; but more will be heard 

 of them when America is undergoing 

 her first summer of dislocated time. A 

 year or two of experience will be worth 

 centuries of academic discussion in en- 

 abling us to decide whether we wish to 

 save daylight indefinitely. 



Western Europe has now had two years* 

 experience with the plan, and the results 

 are those that might have been expected 

 under existing conditions. They depend 

 to some extent upon latitude. In far 

 northern countries there was really no 

 good reason for adopting the scheme, 

 except to bring their time-schedules into 

 agreement with those of their southern 

 neighbors. In high latitudes it is im- 

 possible in summer to limit sleeping 

 time to the hours of darkness, because 

 daylight prevails through the greater 

 part of the night, or all of it, according 

 to date. Hence the Norwegian Govern- 

 ment reports the plan a failure, and sim- 

 ilar but unoflftcial reports have come from 

 Scotland. 



Elsewhere the plan has undoubtedly 

 saved fuel, and it seems to have con- 

 duced to the health and comfort of a 

 considerable part of the population. In 

 the United Kingdom it is claimed that in 

 the four and a half months that "summer 

 time" was effective in 191G, the saving in 

 gas alone represented 2G0,000 tons of 

 coal, and reduced the expenses of con- 



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