Great Falls daily tribune., 1919-03-06

| pie expedient of changing our clocks had Old Sol
appearing and disappearing an hour later than
he would have come and gone had congress kept
it's hands out of Father Times business. Now
we have much more radical and apparently
just as reasonable a movement directed against
the present calendar with the announced inten-
| ton of standardzing our months and giving us
thirteen months where there are now but twelve.
A bill, H. R. 15,946, has already been intro
duced in congress looking toward discarding the
| Gregorian calendar in present use and substitute
ing the Liberty" calendar. The movement, we
are told originated in Minneapolis where an as
| sociation known as the American Equal Month
Calendar association has been formed for an
educational campaign over the country. Wheth-
er they will be able to generate public interest
broad enough>t to put the change overs will be
an interesting point to watch, but aside from the
| inertia any movement of this sort has to over
come, there is only one source which occurs to
mind at once from which active opposition can
be expected. This is from the calendar printers
and manufacturers. If the new calendar form
should be adopted, annually changing calendars
would hardly be needed, since this years caen-
dar would do for next year and all succeeding
years. This gives the prompters of the new
calendar an economy argument in favor of their
project.
In the proposed calendar there are thirteen
months of exactly four weeks each, all the
months commencing with Monday In con-
structing the calendar the most radical depar-
lures from the present Gregorian form are
three: First, New Year day is made an inde-
pendent legal holiday, placed between the last
day of December and the first day of January.
1t is not included in any week Or month. Sec
ond, another independent legal holiday called
correction day is provided for leap years,
and is likewise placed between the last day Of
one month and the first day of another and not
included in any week or month. Then, in addi-
ton to making each month uniform with %
days, a new month to be called Liberty is
placed between February and March, the months
Of the year running January, February, Lber-
ty, etc
The proposed law places Easter Sunday and
Good Friday on certain fined dates. This, it
can safely be assumed would be welcomed by
certain classes of manufacturers who prepare
for the big trade in Easter bonnets and other
raiment.
This bill, if becomes law, will send to the men,
tai scrap-heap the very interesting little verse
which is tucked away in the corner of most
minds and which many of us are forced to drag
forth frequently to strengthen our grasp of the
present calendar. 1t isn't much of verse any
way as verses go, and probably we should be
just as we'll off without it, although it would
probably take quite little time for us to free
our minds from
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one
Except the second month alone.
And that hath twenty-eight in fine
Til leap year gives it twenty-nine"
1t may take congress some time to consent to
the proposed change. 1t certainly will if the
conservative attitude of the British parliament
early in the eighteenth century can be taken as
illustrative of the reaction of the Anglo-Saxon
mind to attacks on its established calendar
Most European states abandoned the old Julian
calendar at the dawn of that century but in
England the old form persisted until 1852 when
parliament abolished the old style of year div-
sion and adopted form that rendered the dates
used in all public transactions coincident with /
those in vogue in continental Europe. The oh, |
style is still adhered to in Russia and in coun- /
tries following the communion of the Greek /
church. Although the Gregonian calendar mod /
flied a system which intended to conform with |
some regularity to periods of the moons revolu-
29It days-it still falls |
considerably apart from following changes of |
the moon, or other natural laws, so after all it |
is only an arbitrary system which could easily |
be changed by action just as arbitrary