The Washington herald. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1906-1939, 1914-04-16
The Pail Of the Night.
BY EMORY J. HAYNES.

The number of night workers is rapidly increasing
At recent anniversary of club of night workers
it said that the force of manual laborers and
professional workers engaged at night had probably
increased IS per cent in the last decade. Many Ia
boring men take quite complacently to the idea of
working by night rather than by day. especially as
the wages are higher Indeed the readiness to work
night has rather affected the advanced wage of late
years, though among clerks and Office employees, fac
tory shifts and that class of help lying midway between
manual labor and the professions there seems to have
been less reconciliation to night work.
Professional who can command their own
time are decidedly pushing larger part of their
labor into the quiet hours of the night
There seems be pathologically very little obec-
tion to the night hours. The old notion about the
need of sunlight for healthy toll does not prove up
very strong. Other things being equal mans health
hardly be said to suffer by substitution of night
for day Probably the only substantial difference is
it, the fidelity with which man resists the social
surroundings of the day and keeps the hours of
sleep. 1t is certain that just good sleep is possible
by day by night. Sleep is sleep matter when you
take it. Sleep in the broad sunlight of the tropics is
the cornmonest spectacle of those regions Toll in
the extreme heat of the day is out IT the question
work must be done, if done at all, when the is
low or departed
Perhaps il you have never done you would find
it interesting to converse with man who for the
last years has been a night worker. He might
surprise you with the view he takes OF darkness.
There are many people who have an extreme dis
like of darkness. Children are aversc TO it and are
neTvously disturbed by it, especially il they do not
sleep well Few things more tyrannous than the
full recognition of great blanket of blacness falling
like pail over hemisphere for a set number of
hours.
One seems not TO pay much attention to light in
the thoughts of days work. Light is friendly and
misunderstanding with your endeavor lending itself
like great comforter which expects no thanks. You
do not have 10 fight against the light Blu, you do have
to against the darkness and offended by it.
Ii could only forget the darkness by being
pied with his duty he would to be the gamer.
Countless thousands of unrestrained minds, fret
ted into continued wakefuness as the eaden hours
creep anathematize the night. Nerves that up
in count the laggard strokes of midnight clocks
The browning torture OF seeplessncss is the dark
ness-so many every night desperately holding
and, like ST. Paul in the storm-beaten corn ship.
wish for the day" So many at last fell asleep be-
the east grows rosy with another morning and
the light will soon be here Doubtless better
laon could not be given to those old and familiar
lines of Scripture. Weeping may endure for the
night, but JOY cometh with the morning
1t is in man to criticise wisely the weather.
The great phases OF nature. like the inclined pole
that gives us summer and winter pay no heed TO
anything that we say-but would it be necessarily
impiouS say that dark December is less pleasant
than glorious June: And that if we could have our
way would have shorter nights the year around
and longer sunlight? And that we would have more
moons for the night and all of them full moons?
Is man necessarily prnfane because he thinks if
he could have his way there would be typhoid fever
and with all his wits he goes work drive the
white plague OF the earth:
The fact is, may be very revereut and thought
ful for this world but the time feel confident
that he could suggest some Improvements.
Probably nothing IS more certain if popular
vote of the intelligent people OF the globe could
be taken, there would be deep darkness-no
rayless gloom in which lions creep forth and men
who love darkness rather than light because their
deeds are evil