Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1914-06-12
JUGGLING WITH LrANDARD TIME.
lFrom the official Gnide.l

From the Official Guide.)
The authorities of the city of Cleve-
land and of several other cities in
Ohio having about the same longitude
have recently attempted to change
their official standard of time from
central time, as prescribed by Ohio
state law, to eastern time. The special
reason given for this change has been
the cry of "mOre daylight, " and the
city fathers are posing as successors of
Joshua who made the sun stand still.
The new ordinance, by influencing the
closing of offices, stores and factories
an hour earlier than before by clocks
run by eastern time, ostensibly adds an
hour of daylight to the close of the
day. AT this season of the year and
in the summer this is an apparently
pleasant change, which might, however,
easily have been effected any time in
the last 30 years, by closing offices at
four o'clock, central time, Instead of
five O'Clock. This is exactly what the
new ordinance actually does, though it
purports to do something else, and
equally, as a matter of fact, it is in
tended to get men and women to start
to work at seven in the morning by
making them think it is eight.
Certain unwelcOme features of the
change will inevitably appear later in
the year. The, effect will be that those
who go to their work when the hands
of the clock set by eastern time point
to eight O'Clock will be obliged to
breakfast by artificial light the greater
part of the season between November
and April. If the people of Cleveland
have found that the use of central
standard time seemed incOnvenient, it
would have been very simple matter
for them to change the hours of open
ing and closing their shops 80 minutes,
and, instead of running from eight
o clock to five o 'cIock, run from seven
thirty to four-thirty. That would have
been the honest way to meet the con-
dition, and it has been so met success
fully in many locations. Such an
adaptation of the working day would
have brought them almost exactly in
accord with the mean solar time of
the meridian of Cleveland, and would
not have tended to disintegrate the gen
eral plan of uniform standard time
which has been in effect for the past
30 years. Those wno are old enough
to remember the Inconvenience which
resulted from the isolated individualism
prevailing prior to 1883 will hesitate to
approve any steps that tend backward
toward the confusion Of those days.
II ic lihol unnu Tho .nto1ltoonao sc
the citizens of Cleveland to suppose
that in order to persuade them to rise
at, say, five or six o'clock instead of
six or seven they are so feeble-minded
that they have to be cheated into that
action by setting the hands Of the
clocks one hour ahead, so as to make
them think they are still rising at the
same hour as before. Are they of such
hidebOund conservatism that they
cannot rise unless the hands of the
clock point to the accustomed houri
If the proposed movement should meet
with its greatest possible success, it
would mean that in place of the uniform
lime that is now used by railways and
cities alike throughout the whole state
of Ohio, there would be, inevitably,
numerous points where two different
standards of time would be in use in
that state with resulting Inconvenience
and confusion. These annoyances have
been minimized at the present points of
change, only two of which are in Ohio,
by an experience with them of over 30
years, especially as similar difference
in time had always existed at these