1S<4 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



39 



The ox kiiowi'tli his owner, atid the ass his iiias- 

 r's crib; but Israel cloth not know, my people doth 

 :)teuiisick'r.— ISA. !:;{. 



Very likely I shall be accused again of qiiot- 

 ig texts that were intended to be used in a 

 )iritaal sense, and of applying them to prac- 

 cal every-day business matters, using tliem in 

 business sense, or, I should like to say, in a 

 nniiioa-setise way. Perhaps some of you may 

 ;k how it comes that I, A. I. Root, possess 

 ore common sense than the rest of tlie world. 

 (^cll, it may look that way to some of you. but 

 am going to appeal to your reason. If what I 

 ly is not true, will you be good enough to tell me 

 herein both truth and common sense are not on 

 y side ? May the great Father above give me 

 •ace and wisdom to present kindly and fairly 

 yes, even lovingly — what I have in mind. 

 The thing that disturbs me is simply this 

 atter of keeping the time— of setting our 

 ocks and watches. I presume there are few 

 aces where Gleanings goes, wherein this 

 atter of local (or sun) time and standard time 

 is not been discussed and compared. On the 

 •St of April last, the State of Ohio declared in 

 vor of having one standard lime — at least, to 

 e extent of requiring all the public buildings 

 set their clocks by standard time and not by 

 cal time. I do not know how far this law 

 IS b(!en complied with. I do know, however, 

 lat almost everybody seems to be fighting 

 jainst it. A great and needed reform was 

 ggested by our State; and 1 for one not only 

 joiced, but really enjoyed having all the 

 ocks in our factory and in our respective 

 jmes set to standard time. In our own home, 

 even objected to having any timepieces put 

 ick on the old fashioned time. 

 Away back in the dark ages, people used to 

 ckon time by the setting of the sun. I do not 

 low but there are remnants of this old-time 

 shion existing even now, but we shall not 

 ;ed to stop to discuss it here. When people 

 und out that the sun sets in the winter time 

 ast night, Wednesday, Dec. ;30, it set at 4:10 

 andard time) at 4 o'clock, say, and in the 

 immer at 7 — a difference of 3 hours, as civili- 

 ,tion and business progressed they decided It 

 ould not do. Starting at sunrise would be 

 ist as bad, and accordingly somebody must 

 ive suggested midday and midnight. They 

 ould eall the one noon. Then came the ques- 

 on. '■ What is noon ■?" They soon found that 

 lis was not a very easy matter to settle. Of 

 (urse, sun-dials were better than nothing at 

 1; but any old almanac — even a patent-medi- 

 ne almanac — tells us the sun is half way over 

 ; noon only four times a year. There area 

 )od many people who seem to be ignorant of 

 lis, although any watchmaker or jeweler, or 

 ly one who has to do with accurate time, can 

 U you at once. The day before Christmas, 

 le sun is half way over exactly at noon; while 

 ov. 1 it is 11! minutes out of the way. If you 

 id your clock set exactly right with the sun 

 1 the above day, it would be more than a 

 larter of an hour away from noon. Well, by 

 jpt. 1 the sun is exactly right — no minutes 

 St and no minutes slow. By going back to 

 ug. 1st, however, we Hnditsix minutes over 

 1 the other side fi'om what it was on Christ- 

 as. By the middle of June it is right again, 

 olng back to April 1 we find the sun 14 min- 

 es slow. Now, add this 14 minutes slow to 

 e 16 minutes fast which we had just before 



Christmas, and we have just half an hour's 

 variation. What do you think of fiitn time, any 

 way V 



All this is owing to the fact that the earth 

 moves much faster in its orbit around the sun 

 from July 1 to .Ian. 1; but just while you are 

 reading this the earth will be leaving the sun. 

 and will go slower and slower till July], and 

 then it will •'slide down hill" again, as tii(! 

 boys might say, Th(^ orbit of the earth is not 

 round, but like a hoop slightly (lattened; and 

 this, of course, causes the earth to move two 

 miles a second faster at Christmas than it does 

 on tlie 4th of July. Now. all those who talk 

 about sun time, and the " time that God gave," 

 as some have fondly expressed it, fail to take 

 this matter into consideration.* The sun is 

 really no guide atall for (K^aurate time-keeping. 

 It would hardly do, in fact, to tell by it a man 

 of regular habits when it is dinnertime. If he 

 lived out on an island, as did Robinson Crusoe, 

 he might have his dinner when the shadow 

 pointed to noon; but if anybody else lived on 

 his island, and they two were working togeth- 

 er, they would be liable to lose from 1.5 minutes 

 to half an hour— that is. if one had a tolerable 

 clock and the other went by sun time. This 

 state of affairs did not make very much trouble 

 while people were mostly fanners. When, 

 however, " in the course of human events," it 

 became necessary to run factories, and have 

 gangs of men congregate together, some abso- 

 lute method of keeping time was really a ne- 

 cessity, and each factory had its clock. To keep 

 this clock right, some sort of sun-dial, with the 

 aforesaid medicine almanac to tell when the 

 sun was fast or slow, did very well. When 

 people traveled by stage-coach, the difference 

 in time in different towns and cities did not 

 create very much disturbance; but with the 

 advent of railroads— especially those running 

 east and west, as the main lines do — and the 

 greater speed that came in with these new 

 methods of travel, something " had to be did." 

 Unless the railroads had some sort of agreed 

 standard time, they would be liable to prosecu- 

 tion for endangering human life. 



Previous to 1883 they had a system of keeping 

 time that came up under the forces of circum- 

 stances. At the time, nobody seemed to have 

 the matter much under consideration, and it 

 was a sort of make-shift. If I remember cor- 

 rectly, we had New York time, Chicago time, 

 and San Francisco time. Then it became nec- 

 essary to have the time change from one kind 

 of time to another kind of time at some special 

 point. Travelers, in passing this point, were 

 notified to change their watches so many hours 

 and so many minutes. This was rickety and 

 loose; but it was belter than no system at all. 

 In 1883, by general consent there was an agree- 

 ment to have all changes of exactly one hour. 



*As an evidence of the futility of attemptiriff to 

 fix the hour of ncx.n by the sun, please notice that, 

 during these short wintry days, the sun sets eai'liest 

 at some point during the tlrst week in December. 

 Now, if the sun were atall regular (>r accurate in 

 Ills habits, he ought, in fairness, to rixc latest at 

 abf)tit the same Time. Instead of this, however, he 

 keeps rising later and latei' through the month of 

 Decemlier. thus throwing the noon-mark to the 

 east, or making the sun slow ; and it is not until 

 atiout the first week in Januafythat he gets to his 

 limit as a lard.v risi'r, and commences getting u)> 

 earlier. You can verify this by your clock or 

 almanac, or both. With such a state of affairs, pray 

 tell me where noon otialif to b(>; in other woi'ds, the 

 old-fashioned noon, oi' 13 o'clock, according to sun 

 time, is constantly changing; and if noon time is 

 constantly changing, so, of course, ai-e all the other 

 hours in tlie day, and the old-fashioned sun time 

 really amounts to nothing at all. We might almost 

 as well regulate our time by the moon, as did the 

 Indians when America was discovered by Columbus. 



