Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1919-12-11
COUNCILS DAYLIGHT SAVER
MAKES A BAD THING WORSE
inefficient and Furtve Politicians Are
Responsible for a Condition Under
Which Even the Clocks May
Be Corrupt

Irresponsible TOT OonuItIoH OHueT
Which Even the Clocks May
Be Corrupt
rs AN idea large, picturesque, romantic,
L jejune in its inception and utterly i'm
possible? THEN Mayor Smith will GER
tainly approve it with a grand sweep
of his pen upon the tail Of an ordinance
as he has just approved the daylight
saving scheme of city Councils.
There is, after all, something oddly
wistful and ardent about the Mayor.
Those who know him best assert that he
is bursting with frustrated intentions of
a virtucus and beneficent kind. But he
will be lucky if he does not go down in
municipal history as Aladdin Smith,
since, by signing up with the amateur
daylight savers, he has sent the COM
munity drifting toward giddy and glo-
rious period of uncertainties, of unbe-
lievable complications and bright un-
reality.
Next summer, for example, you will
be able to leave Broad street station at
2 o'clock and arrive at Paoi at 1:45.
Automobile speed liars will call the
Mayor blessed. After we set our clocks
an hour ahead the driver of any motor
car may start for Atlantic City and, ar
irving at Hammonton, swear truthfully
that he did thirty miles in ten minutes
less than nothing. The clocks in Ham
monton will, we believe, run on the old
schedule.
But there is a dark side to the pic
ture. Bitterest among the afflicted will
be the small company of pious conserva-
tives-our pride and our dependence in
times of great decision.
They will have excellent reasons for
believing that the Mayor has played them
foul. They were once the stern oppo-
nents Of gas light They once fought
trolley cars. They regarded the tele-
phone as a disaster and the automobile
as catastrophe before they learned to
find pleasure in both. By thoughtless
sweep of his pen Mr.. Smith threatens to
maneuver these good folk into a position
actually an hour ahead of the times! 1t
is only behind the times that small but
exalted part of Philadelphia can find the
comfort and the tranquility that it loves.
That part may move away! Yet they
will have company in the misery that is
to be theirs.
Black times are ahead for the banker
folk whose businesses are knit into the
national time schedule by the telephones,
the telegraph, the mails and the stock
ticker. Doubtless we shall lose many
bankers through nervous prostration.
Woe to them whose offices are organized
upon municipal time table while their
homes adhere to what might be called
congressional time. If you live in Nor
ristown or Riverton you will almost
surely be an hour late for dinners in
Philadelphia.
If you are in the habit of dining in
the country you will as certainly be an
hour early and an unbearable trouble
to all hostesses.
The irritating thing about the new
daylight saving ordinance just signed by
the Mayor after what appears to have
been a very real soul struggle is not the
action of the Mayor in itself.
The trouble is with mayors in general.
They are all pretty much alike.
In New York and in Jersey City the
municipal authorities have been setting
up independent daylight saving laws, un-
mindful of consequences. 1t is easy to
imagine Mr.. Smith alone with the ordi-
nance, visioning happy workers and
children gamboling in the summer sun
light, and signing the thing while his
soul was filled with the whisper of
grand, sweet song of good will. Perhaps,
after a look back over the last four
years, he felt that he ought to save
something. Daylight is plentiful. The
universe is full of it.
The Mayor is but a mayor. What?
Well, the Mayor is but the occupant of
the Mayors Office, if you will He obeyed
worthy impulse. The blame for
prospective period in which no one will
be able to tell, even by his watch, what
time it is is not upon him. 1t is upon
the school of politics from which he
graduated.
The men who defeated the daylight
| saving bill in Congress, where daylight
| saving laws should have been upheld and
made permanent, are tribal kin to the
| Mayor and to all other mayors. Con-
| gresham Ware, Congressman Costello
and Congressman Graham did not vote
at all when the daylight law was brought
up not long ago for debate and action.
The easiest thing in the world to do is
nothing. In the code of good many
politicians it seems the safest. Any
one who wants to know why an excellent
and rational law was repealed has only
to study the preponderant figures of the
agricultural vote in general elections.
| Mr.. Ware, Mr.. Costello and Mr.. Graham
seem to have studied them. They did
nothing. Now they are exalted like gods,
above praise or blame. Meanwhile other
representative members of their school
of politics are busily making bad thing
worse.