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On March 19, 1918, the US Congress authorized time zones and approved daylight saving time. From the article:
"Proposals for Extension of Daylight Saving
Passage of legislation authorizing the President to institute daylight-saving time, upon a regional or national basis for all or part of the year, was urged upon Congress by President Roosevelt, July 15, as a measure for the conservation of electricity, which is “to a large extent the prime energy of our national defense effort.” Daylight saving was first adopted, during the last war, in Europe and the United States, primarily as a means of conserving coal, then the principal industrial fuel. Although “summer time” became an established institution in Western Europe after the war, opposition of farmers led to repeal of the federal statute under which it was applied throughout the United States in 1918 and 1919, and it was continued here only in certain states and localities.
Potential Power Savings by Use of Daylight Time
The fact that daylight saving is already practiced for five months of the year in many thickly populated areas of the Eastern and North Central sections reduces the savings of electric energy that would otherwise be obtained by adoption of the President's proposal. The Federal Power Commission has estimated, however, that extension of daylight saving to the whole nation, and its application throughout the year, would probably result in an annual saving of over 736,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy.1 While that total amounts to less than 1 per cent of the 145,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy produced in 1940, the President declared in his communication to Congress that “in these times of emergency it is…essential for us to ensure the conservation of electricity in all possible ways.” He added:
The government agencies primarily interested in the fullest utilization of electricity for national defense—the Federal Power Commission, the Department of the Interior, and the Office of Production Management—have advised mo that there is immediate need for the extension of this daylight-saving time to other parts of the country, including-in particular the Southeastern states, and that there is also a need for the establishment in various parts, or all, of the country of year-round daylight-saving time.
Owing to the regional variations in potential savings from adoption of daylight time and to other factors, Roosevelt suggested that the President be given authority in sufficiently flexible terms to enable him “to provide daylight-saving time upon such a regional or national basis, and for such part, or all, of the year as he might deem necessary in the interest of our national defense.” The bill submitted by the administration would authorize the President to order clocks set forward by as much as two hours. Under bills independently introduced in the House earlier in the present session, the clocks would be advanced one hour from the end of March or April to the end of October. Most areas now practicing daylight saving observe it only from the end of April to the end of September.
Adoption of Daylight Saving in Southeastern States
At the time he recommended passage of federal daylight-saving legislation, President Roosevelt wrote to the governors of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, urging them to put daylight saving into immediate effect in their states by proclamation, if legally possible, in view of a particularly acute power shortage in the Southeast.2 In response to this request, clocks were moved forward one hour in Alabama and Tennessee, July 21, in Mississippi, July 31, and in North and South Carolina, August 1. Daylight saving is to go into effect in Virginia on August 10.
Florida and Georgia failed to adopt the President's suggestions. Florida's governor considered the change unnecessary, since the state's electric power plants were producing far under capacity. Governor Talmadge of Georgia thought the change would cause too much confusion, since the western part of his state only Hast spring changed from Central to Eastern Standard time.
American Standard Time and Time Zones
It was not until 1918, when national daylight saving was adopted, that standard time, and the four time belts into which the continental United States is divided, received the sanction of federal law. For 35 years prior to 1918, time standards had been unofficially regulated by the railroads. Before 1883, sun time, or an approximation of it, was commonly observed, and it has been said that the railroads of the country operated on as many as 77 varieties of time. Frequent changes of time along a railroad line, keeping of different times by separate railroads operating in the same territory, and variations between railroad and local time produced so much confusion that the railroads eventually resolved to seek a remedy.
Creation of Standard-Time System by Railroads, 1883
The plan devised by the American Association of Railway Managers, effective November 18, 1883, divided the country into four time zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific—each covering 15 degrees of longitude (approximately 900 miles) and representing one hour of time. The time to be observed throughout each zone was the mean astronomical time of the meridian of longitude bisecting it—the 75th meridian in the Eastern zone, the 90th in the Central zone, the 105th in the Mountain zone, and the 120th in the Pacific zone. Since standard time was the mean astronomical time of the meridian running through the center of a particular zone, it followed that standard time for places along the eastern edge of the zone was half an hour behind local mean astronomical time, and for places along the western boundary of the zone half an hour ahead of local mean astronomical time.
This zone system was readily adopted by the entire country, although its observance was voluntary except in a few states which gave it statutory recognition.3 In practice, the railroads did not change their time, from that of one zone to that of the next, at the exact point at which they crossed the boundary meridian, but at the nearest city or junction point. Consequently, the actual boundaries between time zones followed irregular lines.
Legalizing of Standard Time in 1918; Powers of I. C. C.
The Standard Time Act, approved March 19, 1918, gave the force of federal law to the time-zone system put into practice by the railroads4. The time to be observed in the respective zones was based, as formerly, on the mean astronomical time of the meridians originally designated by the railroads. The act provided that “the limits of each zone shall be defined by an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, having regard for the convenience of commerce and the existing junction points and division points of common carriers engaged in commerce between the several states and with foreign nations, and such order may be modified from time to time.” It was stipulated that the standard time of the respective zones should govern the movement of all common carriers engaged in interstate commerce, and that it should be considered the time intended in all statutes, orders, rules, and regulations relating to the time of performance of any act by any federal court, department, or officer, or any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
It is to be noted that the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to establish standard time extends only to federal activities and activities related to interstate commerce. The I. C, C. can thus control railroad time but is powerless to compel observance of standard time by states or communities which choose to adopt daylight saving or to operate on the time of another zone than that in which they are situated. The I. C. C. from time to time has made changes in the boundaries of the time zones, in response to petitions by railroads or states or municipalities, but, except in the case of the railroads, denial of such petitions has not always served to prevent the proposed changes in time.
Michigan provides an example of the latter situation. A petition to shift that state from the Central to the Eastern time zone was denied by the I. C. C. in 1932. In the meantime, however, a state law, enacted in 1931, had made Eastern time the legal time for the entire state. In 1936 the I. C. C. ordered the Lower Peninsula included in the Eastern zone. Although the Upper Peninsula was left in the Central zone, Eastern time is observed in a portion of that region throughout the year, and in a part of the remainder during the summer months. Similarly, in August, 1936, the I. C. C. rejected a petition for inclusion of Chicago in the Eastern zone, but Eastern time remained the official time for transaction of all city business until an ordinance to that effect, in force since March 1, 1936, was repealed in November of that year.
Defects of Standard Time Act; Advocacy of Wider Zones
Annually since 1931, the I. C. C. has directed attention to the failure of the Standard Time Act to accomplish its stated purpose of providing standard time for the United States. While at first urging that the legislative field be fully occupied by act of Congress or left entirely to the states, the Commission since 1936 has recommended only the former alternative. In its 1936 report it said:
As we have repeatedly pointed out, the fixation of standards of time cannot be left to the Individual states or to their subordinate municipal agencies, except at the cost of complete lack of uniformity. The shifting about of time standards to suit the supposed needs of individual states or communities, either the year round or for the summer months, compels neighboring less powerful states or communities to yield their equal rights of sovereignty, and to concede to the powerful community the domination over time standards, regardless of the effect upon their interests, with no respect for their desires, and heedless of the effect upon operations in interstate commerce or the laws of the United States governing interstate carriers and government officers…
We find it growing exceedingly difficult to adhere to time-zone boundaries which represent our untrammeled judgment as best suited to the convenience of commerce and the needs of all the communities affected. The independent local change of time standards has forced us into the impotent position of considering chiefly in these proceedings whether the confusion, inconvenience, irritation, and, in some cases danger, created by the resulting differences in time standards, can be removed by bringing the federal time standard into conformity with local law, without doing violence to the authority reposed in us by Congress in the Standard Time Act.
Observance of daylight saving on a state or local basis has been largely responsible for the existing confusion. At the same time, the desire of such states as Michigan and Ohio to adopt Eastern time5 has reflected changes in conditions of transportation and communication which in effect have brought sections of the country closer together and made it advisable for them to minimize, so far as possible, differences in time standards. In the House of Representatives, June 5, 1941, Rep. McLean (R., N. J.) asserted that present-day conditions required a widening of the time zones. He suggested that business would be expedited and the general convenience served if the country were divided into three, instead of four, zones. The executive director of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce made a similar proposal last March, suggesting that all states east of the Mississippi River be placed in one time zone, all states between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains in a second zone, and all states west of the Rooky Mountains in a third zone.
Daylight Saving During and Since World War
The Standard Time Act of 1918 provided for national daylight saving by a separate section, which stipulated that from 2:00 A. M. of the last Sunday of March until 2:00 A. M. of the last Sunday of October of each year, the standard time of each zone should be one hour in advance of the mean astronomical time of the degree of longitude governing that zone. As originally approved by the Senate, this section of the bill called for observance of daylight-saving time only from the last Sunday of April to the last Sunday of September. The House adopted an amendment to extend the period of daylight saving by two months.
Origin of Dayijght Saving and Adoption in Europe, 1916
When daylight saving was being urged upon the country 25 years ago, it was recalled that Benjamin Franklin had written in his autobiography:
In walking-through the Strand and Fleet Street one morning at seven o'clock I observed there was not one shop open, though it had been daylight and the sun up above three hours; the inhabitants of London chasing voluntarily to five much by candlelight, and sleep by sunlight, and yet often complain, a little absurdly, of the duty on candles and the high price of tallow.
Franklin, however, does not appear to have suggested the idea of saving daylight by advancing the clocks. Credit for originating that scheme belongs to William Willett, a London builder, who around 1907 initiated a one-man campaign to set the clocks ahead by 80 minutes, in four moves of 20 minutes each, during the spring and summer months. A bill was introduced in the House of Commons in 1908, and a committee of the House reported favorably a measure to advance the clocks by one hour from April to September. Although the project was kept before the House of Commons from that time forward, it was not accepted until 1916, when an expert committee on fuel economy urged its adoption as a war measure.
Daylight-saving time first went into effect in Great Britain on May 21, 1916. It had already been put in force by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands on April 30, 1916, and by Denmark on May 15, 1916. France, Italy, Norway, and Portugal followed suit within a few weeks. Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey adopted summer time in 1917. In that year daylight saving spread also to Australia, Iceland, and some of the provinces of Canada. In 1918 it was put into effect throughout Canada by a Dominion law.6
Adoption of Daylight Saving in the United States, 1918
A movement for adoption of daylight saving in the United States was launched in 1916. One of the most prominent proponents of the plan was Marcus M. Marks, New York merchant and president of the Borough of Manhattan, who organized a National Daylight Saving Association to work for passage of a federal daylight-saving law. The movement was actively supported by the Merchants Association of New York, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and many local chambers of commerce. It was endorsed by President Wilson and advocated, after the United States entered the war, by the Council of National Defense, numerous state defense councils, the United States Food Administrator, the United States Fuel Administrator, the chairman of the United States Shipping Board, and the Director General of Railroads. The American Federation of Labor gave the proposal its approval. Curiously, in view of their subsequent vigorous opposition to daylight saving, farm organizations seem to have remained silent on the subject.
Daylight saving was advocated on numerous grounds. The Fuel Administrator estimated that it would result in a direct annual saving of from 800,000 to 1,000,000 tons of coal. The United States Chamber of Commerce estimated that the saving of coal would exceed 1,500,000 tons a year, and it pointed out that consumers would be immediately benefited by a reduction of expenditures for light and heat. Daylight saving was urged also as an aid to the war-garden movement, which was being promoted to increase the nation's food supplies and as a means of relieving the strain on transportation facilities. The president of the National War Garden Commission asserted that the extra hour of daylight given to the war gardener to cultivate his back yard or vacant lot “will raise food equivalent to the ration of 1,000,000 soldiers for six months.”
Various other benefits were claimed on behalf of daylight saving by advocates of the proposal. It was contended, for example, that the health, morals, and general efficiency of workers would be improved by the added hour made available for outdoor recreation. It was suggested that in certain months there would be less risk of industrial accidents when there was a light hour, instead of a dark hour, at the end of the working day at the time of greatest fatigue. Such factors as the foregoing were counted upon to result in a general increase in production. The additional hour of daylight was looked to also to facilitate the training of Home Guards and similar military organizations whose members had other regular occupations. A committee of the Chamber of Commerce which reported on the subject advocated year-round daylight saving. It recommended, if that should not prove feasible, observance of daylight time from the beginning of April to the end of November.
The bill providing for statutory recognition of standard time and observance of daylight-saving time from the end of April to the end of September was taken up in the Senate, June 27, 1917, and passed unanimously the same day after a brief debate. The House delayed consideration of the bill until March 15, 1918. In a somewhat protracted debate that day, opposition to the measure was expressed only by one or two members who thought that “tinkering with the clocks” would not make people get up earlier or go to bed earlier. The bill was passed by a vote of 253 to 40, after it had been amended to make daylight-saving time applicable from the end of March to the end of October, in order to increase the potential savings of coal. The Senate promptly concurred in the House amendment, and President Wilson signed the bill March 19. Daylight saving went into effect March 31.
Daylight Saving in Eukofe Since 1918 and in Present War
The British daylight-saving act of 1916 expired by limitation at the end of the war, but summer time was continued by a series of acts of Parliament. A permanent law enacted in 1925 provided that summer time should begin each year on the day following the third Saturday in April and end on the day following the first Saturday in October. France adopted summer time as a permanent institution in 1923, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1925, Spain and Portugal in 1926. Daylight saving was not continued after the war, however, in Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries.
In the present war, on the other hand, daylight saving again is being generally observed throughout Europe, and not only for the summer months but the year round, with double daylight saving or its equivalent in effect in certain countries during the longest days of the year. Great Britain and unoccupied France kept their clocks on daylight-saving time all last winter and advanced them an additional hour in the first week of May, 1941.7 According to a recent survey by the Merchants Association of New York,8 other countries now on year-round daylight saving include Germany, the German-occupied countries, the Baltic countries, Italy, New Zealand, Mexico, and certain communities, including the principal cities, of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada.9 Occupied France and Belgium are reported to be operating on the same time as Germany. This is equivalent to double daylight saving, since German standard time is an hour ahead of French and Belgian standard time and Germany is now observing daylight saving.
Opposition of American Farmers; Repeal of Wartime Act
Daylight saving in the United States in the last war did not prove sufficiently popular to insure its continuance on a nation-wide basis. A month before the end of the war, on the recommendation of the chairman of the War Industries Board, the Senate passed a bill to require permanent national observance of daylight-saving time the year round, but congressional leaders decided not to push the measure to final passage. As soon as the war was over, opposition to continuance of daylight saving was widely voiced by representatives of the farmers. It was contended that farmers lost at least an hour from their work in the morning while waiting for the dew to dry off the fields, and that this time could not be made up in the afternoon because farm laborers insisted on quitting at the same time as workers in factories. Dairy farmers and truck gardeners were said to find it difficult to get their produce ready for shipment to the cities on schedule. It was asserted also that farmers could not finish their work at night early enough to get to the village store before it closed or to attend the movies or participate in social events.
Efforts were made in Congress to repeal the daylight-saving law before the clocks were due to be set ahead at the end of March, 1919. Although that attempt failed, the Senate on June 18, 1919, by a vote of 56 to 6, attached a rider to the Agriculture appropriation bill repealing, as of the last Sunday in October, 1919, not only the daylight-saving section but the whole Standard Time Act, The House accepted the amendment, but President Wilson vetoed the bill and his veto was sustained. In his veto message, July 11, 1919, Wilson declared that daylight saving had resulted “in very great economies of fuel and in substantial economies of energy,” and that the plan had given “all but universal satisfaction.”
On the same day that the Senate attached the repeal rider to the Agriculture appropriation bill, the House passed, by a vote of 232 to 121, a separate bill to repeal the daylight-saving section of the Standard Time Act as of the last Sunday of October, 1919. This bill was passed by the Senate, August 1, 1919, by a vote of 41 to 12. On August 15 President Wilson sent up another veto message. The President said he realized that daylight saving subjected the farmers to “very serious inconveniences,” but that he was obliged “to balance one set of disadvantages against another and to venture a judgment as to which were the more serious for the country.” Pointing out that the immediate need was for increased production in all lines of industry to supply needs when could not be postponed, he asserted that daylight saving “ministers to economy and efficiency.” And he concluded that the life and methods of the farmer were more easily adjusted than those of the manufacturer and merchant. Despite these admonitions, the House overrode the veto by a vote of 223 to 101, the Senate by a vote of 57 to 19, and the repeal bill became law August 20. National daylight saving accordingly ended on October 26, 1919.
Observance of Summer Time on State and Local Basis
Repeal of the federal law, however, by no means ended the practice of daylight saving, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. At the end of March, 1920, New York clocks were set ahead under a state law which had been previously enacted to conform with the federal law. Although the New York statute was repealed in 1921, municipalties of the state were specifically authorized by the repeal act to adopt daylight-saving ordinances. Massachusetts enacted a daylight-saving law in 1920, and clocks throughout that state were set ahead at the end of April of that year. New Jersey communities voluntarily went on daylight-saving time, and the same practice was followed in various other states.
In 1923 the farmer-controlled Connecticut legislature made a novel attempt to stop the observance of daylight saving by passing a law penalizing the display of other than standard time on public clocks. The law was completely ineffective. Public clocks remained on standard time, but most communities of the state continued to observe daylight-saving time. In 1935 the legislature finally repealed the 1923 act. An attack by the Massachusetts State Grange on the legality of the Massachusetts daylight-saving act came to naught, when the United States Supreme Court held, November 23, 1926, that the state statute was not inconsistent with the Standard Time Act.10 Following this decision, a growing tendency toward local adoption of daylight-saving time was noted.
Observance of daylight saving is now required by state law in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. According to the Merchants Association of New York, daylight saving is being practiced this summer, by local ordinance or on a voluntary basis, in the following additional areas in the United States: Connecticut; Maine (all cities and many towns); Rhode Island (all cities and most towns); “Vermont (most communities); New York (all cities and many towns); New Jersey; Pennsylvania (principal cities and many towns); Delaware (Wilmington and nearby towns); Illinois (Chicago metropolitan area); and Indiana (northern counties). Michigan, Ohio, and the western part of Georgia in effect have year-round daylight saving by observance of Eastern Standard time. In addition, as previously noted, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia have adopted daylight-saving-time at the President's request. The number of persons observing daylight-saving time, or its equivalent, in the foregoing states exceeds 65,000,000, or roughly half the population of the United States.
A Gallup poll, reported July 18, 1941, showed a majority in every section of the country for summer daylight saving. In New England and the Middle Atlantic states, where summer time is already generally followed, 78 per cent of those questioned favored national daylight saving. The lowest majority for the proposal was 56 per cent in the West Central section. For the nation as a whole the vote was 67 per cent, which compared with votes of 57 and 60 per cent in favor of daylight saving in Gallup polls on the question in 1937 and 1940, respectively. However, in the most recent poll, year-round daylight saving was favored by a majority (54 per cent) only in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Farm organizations continue to express opposition to daylight saving. Rep. McLean said in the House, June 5, 1941, that motion-picture interests and entertainment enterprises appeared to be the only other objectors.
Special Measures for Conservation of Energy
Diversion to British service of tankers formerly engaged in transporting petroleum products from Gulf ports to the Atlantic seaboard has created serious danger of a shortage of gasoline in the Eastern states. Failure of appeals by Secretary Ickes, Petroleum Coordinator, for a voluntary one-third reduction of gasoline consumption in those states was followed, July 31, by a recommendation that filling stations, beginning August 3, remain closed from 7:00 P, M, to 7:00 A. M. The recommendation was backed by a threat to withhold supplies from non-complying stations. Night and Sunday sales of gasoline have been prohibited since July 21 in Canada, where motorists have been urged to cut their consumption of gasoline and oil by 50 per cent. It has been suggested that “gasless Sundays,” or even direct rationing of gasoline to motorists, may eventually be necessary to meet the potential shortage on the Atlantic seaboard.
Seven gasless Sundays were observed during the last war, in September and October, 1918, in response to a request by the Fuel Administrator to people east of the Mississippi River to refrain from using automobiles, motorcycles, and motor boats on Sundays until depleted supplies of gasoline on the Atlantic seaboard, for shipment overseas for war purposes, had been replenished. Exception was made of trucks transporting freight, physicians' automobiles, ambulances, fire and police vehicles, and funeral conveyances. Although compliance with the request was not made compulsory, the Fuel Administrator reported that it was universally observed. Today, with people having become much more dependent on automobiles than they were a generation ago, and with the country not actually at war, voluntary compliance with such a request might not be so readily obtained.
Steps to Meet Acute Coal Shortage in 1918
In 1918, as in the present emergency, householders were urged to lay in their supplies of winter fuel in the spring or summer, in order to relieve the strain on transportation facilities.11 A severe coal shortage in the winter of 1918, caused mainly by congestion on the railroads, led to a drastic order by the Fuel Administrator, January 17, 1918, shutting down all but the most necessary war industries for the succeeding five days and on Mondays through March 18. The respite thus given enabled the railroads to clear their lines so expeditiously that “workless Mondays” were discontinued after February 11, 1918. As a direct conservation measure, the Fuel Administrator in the spring of 1918 ordered various nonessential industries to curtail their use of fuel by from 15 to 50 per cent. Orders restricting use of light for advertising, display, and unnecessary outdoor lighting on certain “lightless nights” of each week were in effect from November 9, 1917 to April 24, 1918, and again from July 24 to November 23, 1918. Voluntary measures included reduction of heat and light in street cars and installation of the “skip-stop” system, appeals to heat dwellings to a temperature of no more than 68 degrees, and appeals to substitute firewood for coal.
After the war the Fuel Administration estimated that the various conservation measures had resulted in a saving of 32,200,000 tons of coal from October 19, 1917, to February 21, 1919. The largest item listed was a saving of 9,000,000 tons at stationary steam plants. Industrial restrictions were estimated to have produced a saving of 6,000,000 tons, A figure of 4,000,000 tons was estimated for domestic savings, and an additional 4,000,000 tons from substitution of wood for coal. The railroads were listed for a saving of 5,800,000 tons, the street railways for 900,000 tons, lightless nights for 250,000 tons. It was estimated that observance of daylight-saving time for seven months in 1918 had saved 1,250,000 tons of coal.12"
On March 19, 1918, the US Congress authorized time zones and approved daylight saving time. From the article:
"Proposals for Extension of Daylight Saving
Passage of legislation authorizing the President to institute daylight-saving time, upon a regional or national basis for all or part of the year, was urged upon Congress by President Roosevelt, July 15, as a measure for the conservation of electricity, which is “to a large extent the prime energy of our national defense effort.” Daylight saving was first adopted, during the last war, in Europe and the United States, primarily as a means of conserving coal, then the principal industrial fuel. Although “summer time” became an established institution in Western Europe after the war, opposition of farmers led to repeal of the federal statute under which it was applied throughout the United States in 1918 and 1919, and it was continued here only in certain states and localities.
Potential Power Savings by Use of Daylight Time
The fact that daylight saving is already practiced for five months of the year in many thickly populated areas of the Eastern and North Central sections reduces the savings of electric energy that would otherwise be obtained by adoption of the President's proposal. The Federal Power Commission has estimated, however, that extension of daylight saving to the whole nation, and its application throughout the year, would probably result in an annual saving of over 736,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy.1 While that total amounts to less than 1 per cent of the 145,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours of electric energy produced in 1940, the President declared in his communication to Congress that “in these times of emergency it is…essential for us to ensure the conservation of electricity in all possible ways.” He added:
The government agencies primarily interested in the fullest utilization of electricity for national defense—the Federal Power Commission, the Department of the Interior, and the Office of Production Management—have advised mo that there is immediate need for the extension of this daylight-saving time to other parts of the country, including-in particular the Southeastern states, and that there is also a need for the establishment in various parts, or all, of the country of year-round daylight-saving time.
Owing to the regional variations in potential savings from adoption of daylight time and to other factors, Roosevelt suggested that the President be given authority in sufficiently flexible terms to enable him “to provide daylight-saving time upon such a regional or national basis, and for such part, or all, of the year as he might deem necessary in the interest of our national defense.” The bill submitted by the administration would authorize the President to order clocks set forward by as much as two hours. Under bills independently introduced in the House earlier in the present session, the clocks would be advanced one hour from the end of March or April to the end of October. Most areas now practicing daylight saving observe it only from the end of April to the end of September.
Adoption of Daylight Saving in Southeastern States
At the time he recommended passage of federal daylight-saving legislation, President Roosevelt wrote to the governors of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee, urging them to put daylight saving into immediate effect in their states by proclamation, if legally possible, in view of a particularly acute power shortage in the Southeast.2 In response to this request, clocks were moved forward one hour in Alabama and Tennessee, July 21, in Mississippi, July 31, and in North and South Carolina, August 1. Daylight saving is to go into effect in Virginia on August 10.
Florida and Georgia failed to adopt the President's suggestions. Florida's governor considered the change unnecessary, since the state's electric power plants were producing far under capacity. Governor Talmadge of Georgia thought the change would cause too much confusion, since the western part of his state only Hast spring changed from Central to Eastern Standard time.
American Standard Time and Time Zones
It was not until 1918, when national daylight saving was adopted, that standard time, and the four time belts into which the continental United States is divided, received the sanction of federal law. For 35 years prior to 1918, time standards had been unofficially regulated by the railroads. Before 1883, sun time, or an approximation of it, was commonly observed, and it has been said that the railroads of the country operated on as many as 77 varieties of time. Frequent changes of time along a railroad line, keeping of different times by separate railroads operating in the same territory, and variations between railroad and local time produced so much confusion that the railroads eventually resolved to seek a remedy.
Creation of Standard-Time System by Railroads, 1883
The plan devised by the American Association of Railway Managers, effective November 18, 1883, divided the country into four time zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific—each covering 15 degrees of longitude (approximately 900 miles) and representing one hour of time. The time to be observed throughout each zone was the mean astronomical time of the meridian of longitude bisecting it—the 75th meridian in the Eastern zone, the 90th in the Central zone, the 105th in the Mountain zone, and the 120th in the Pacific zone. Since standard time was the mean astronomical time of the meridian running through the center of a particular zone, it followed that standard time for places along the eastern edge of the zone was half an hour behind local mean astronomical time, and for places along the western boundary of the zone half an hour ahead of local mean astronomical time.
This zone system was readily adopted by the entire country, although its observance was voluntary except in a few states which gave it statutory recognition.3 In practice, the railroads did not change their time, from that of one zone to that of the next, at the exact point at which they crossed the boundary meridian, but at the nearest city or junction point. Consequently, the actual boundaries between time zones followed irregular lines.
Legalizing of Standard Time in 1918; Powers of I. C. C.
The Standard Time Act, approved March 19, 1918, gave the force of federal law to the time-zone system put into practice by the railroads4. The time to be observed in the respective zones was based, as formerly, on the mean astronomical time of the meridians originally designated by the railroads. The act provided that “the limits of each zone shall be defined by an order of the Interstate Commerce Commission, having regard for the convenience of commerce and the existing junction points and division points of common carriers engaged in commerce between the several states and with foreign nations, and such order may be modified from time to time.” It was stipulated that the standard time of the respective zones should govern the movement of all common carriers engaged in interstate commerce, and that it should be considered the time intended in all statutes, orders, rules, and regulations relating to the time of performance of any act by any federal court, department, or officer, or any person subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.
It is to be noted that the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to establish standard time extends only to federal activities and activities related to interstate commerce. The I. C, C. can thus control railroad time but is powerless to compel observance of standard time by states or communities which choose to adopt daylight saving or to operate on the time of another zone than that in which they are situated. The I. C. C. from time to time has made changes in the boundaries of the time zones, in response to petitions by railroads or states or municipalities, but, except in the case of the railroads, denial of such petitions has not always served to prevent the proposed changes in time.
Michigan provides an example of the latter situation. A petition to shift that state from the Central to the Eastern time zone was denied by the I. C. C. in 1932. In the meantime, however, a state law, enacted in 1931, had made Eastern time the legal time for the entire state. In 1936 the I. C. C. ordered the Lower Peninsula included in the Eastern zone. Although the Upper Peninsula was left in the Central zone, Eastern time is observed in a portion of that region throughout the year, and in a part of the remainder during the summer months. Similarly, in August, 1936, the I. C. C. rejected a petition for inclusion of Chicago in the Eastern zone, but Eastern time remained the official time for transaction of all city business until an ordinance to that effect, in force since March 1, 1936, was repealed in November of that year.
Defects of Standard Time Act; Advocacy of Wider Zones
Annually since 1931, the I. C. C. has directed attention to the failure of the Standard Time Act to accomplish its stated purpose of providing standard time for the United States. While at first urging that the legislative field be fully occupied by act of Congress or left entirely to the states, the Commission since 1936 has recommended only the former alternative. In its 1936 report it said:
As we have repeatedly pointed out, the fixation of standards of time cannot be left to the Individual states or to their subordinate municipal agencies, except at the cost of complete lack of uniformity. The shifting about of time standards to suit the supposed needs of individual states or communities, either the year round or for the summer months, compels neighboring less powerful states or communities to yield their equal rights of sovereignty, and to concede to the powerful community the domination over time standards, regardless of the effect upon their interests, with no respect for their desires, and heedless of the effect upon operations in interstate commerce or the laws of the United States governing interstate carriers and government officers…
We find it growing exceedingly difficult to adhere to time-zone boundaries which represent our untrammeled judgment as best suited to the convenience of commerce and the needs of all the communities affected. The independent local change of time standards has forced us into the impotent position of considering chiefly in these proceedings whether the confusion, inconvenience, irritation, and, in some cases danger, created by the resulting differences in time standards, can be removed by bringing the federal time standard into conformity with local law, without doing violence to the authority reposed in us by Congress in the Standard Time Act.
Observance of daylight saving on a state or local basis has been largely responsible for the existing confusion. At the same time, the desire of such states as Michigan and Ohio to adopt Eastern time5 has reflected changes in conditions of transportation and communication which in effect have brought sections of the country closer together and made it advisable for them to minimize, so far as possible, differences in time standards. In the House of Representatives, June 5, 1941, Rep. McLean (R., N. J.) asserted that present-day conditions required a widening of the time zones. He suggested that business would be expedited and the general convenience served if the country were divided into three, instead of four, zones. The executive director of the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce made a similar proposal last March, suggesting that all states east of the Mississippi River be placed in one time zone, all states between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains in a second zone, and all states west of the Rooky Mountains in a third zone.
Daylight Saving During and Since World War
The Standard Time Act of 1918 provided for national daylight saving by a separate section, which stipulated that from 2:00 A. M. of the last Sunday of March until 2:00 A. M. of the last Sunday of October of each year, the standard time of each zone should be one hour in advance of the mean astronomical time of the degree of longitude governing that zone. As originally approved by the Senate, this section of the bill called for observance of daylight-saving time only from the last Sunday of April to the last Sunday of September. The House adopted an amendment to extend the period of daylight saving by two months.
Origin of Dayijght Saving and Adoption in Europe, 1916
When daylight saving was being urged upon the country 25 years ago, it was recalled that Benjamin Franklin had written in his autobiography:
In walking-through the Strand and Fleet Street one morning at seven o'clock I observed there was not one shop open, though it had been daylight and the sun up above three hours; the inhabitants of London chasing voluntarily to five much by candlelight, and sleep by sunlight, and yet often complain, a little absurdly, of the duty on candles and the high price of tallow.
Franklin, however, does not appear to have suggested the idea of saving daylight by advancing the clocks. Credit for originating that scheme belongs to William Willett, a London builder, who around 1907 initiated a one-man campaign to set the clocks ahead by 80 minutes, in four moves of 20 minutes each, during the spring and summer months. A bill was introduced in the House of Commons in 1908, and a committee of the House reported favorably a measure to advance the clocks by one hour from April to September. Although the project was kept before the House of Commons from that time forward, it was not accepted until 1916, when an expert committee on fuel economy urged its adoption as a war measure.
Daylight-saving time first went into effect in Great Britain on May 21, 1916. It had already been put in force by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands on April 30, 1916, and by Denmark on May 15, 1916. France, Italy, Norway, and Portugal followed suit within a few weeks. Russia, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey adopted summer time in 1917. In that year daylight saving spread also to Australia, Iceland, and some of the provinces of Canada. In 1918 it was put into effect throughout Canada by a Dominion law.6
Adoption of Daylight Saving in the United States, 1918
A movement for adoption of daylight saving in the United States was launched in 1916. One of the most prominent proponents of the plan was Marcus M. Marks, New York merchant and president of the Borough of Manhattan, who organized a National Daylight Saving Association to work for passage of a federal daylight-saving law. The movement was actively supported by the Merchants Association of New York, the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and many local chambers of commerce. It was endorsed by President Wilson and advocated, after the United States entered the war, by the Council of National Defense, numerous state defense councils, the United States Food Administrator, the United States Fuel Administrator, the chairman of the United States Shipping Board, and the Director General of Railroads. The American Federation of Labor gave the proposal its approval. Curiously, in view of their subsequent vigorous opposition to daylight saving, farm organizations seem to have remained silent on the subject.
Daylight saving was advocated on numerous grounds. The Fuel Administrator estimated that it would result in a direct annual saving of from 800,000 to 1,000,000 tons of coal. The United States Chamber of Commerce estimated that the saving of coal would exceed 1,500,000 tons a year, and it pointed out that consumers would be immediately benefited by a reduction of expenditures for light and heat. Daylight saving was urged also as an aid to the war-garden movement, which was being promoted to increase the nation's food supplies and as a means of relieving the strain on transportation facilities. The president of the National War Garden Commission asserted that the extra hour of daylight given to the war gardener to cultivate his back yard or vacant lot “will raise food equivalent to the ration of 1,000,000 soldiers for six months.”
Various other benefits were claimed on behalf of daylight saving by advocates of the proposal. It was contended, for example, that the health, morals, and general efficiency of workers would be improved by the added hour made available for outdoor recreation. It was suggested that in certain months there would be less risk of industrial accidents when there was a light hour, instead of a dark hour, at the end of the working day at the time of greatest fatigue. Such factors as the foregoing were counted upon to result in a general increase in production. The additional hour of daylight was looked to also to facilitate the training of Home Guards and similar military organizations whose members had other regular occupations. A committee of the Chamber of Commerce which reported on the subject advocated year-round daylight saving. It recommended, if that should not prove feasible, observance of daylight time from the beginning of April to the end of November.
The bill providing for statutory recognition of standard time and observance of daylight-saving time from the end of April to the end of September was taken up in the Senate, June 27, 1917, and passed unanimously the same day after a brief debate. The House delayed consideration of the bill until March 15, 1918. In a somewhat protracted debate that day, opposition to the measure was expressed only by one or two members who thought that “tinkering with the clocks” would not make people get up earlier or go to bed earlier. The bill was passed by a vote of 253 to 40, after it had been amended to make daylight-saving time applicable from the end of March to the end of October, in order to increase the potential savings of coal. The Senate promptly concurred in the House amendment, and President Wilson signed the bill March 19. Daylight saving went into effect March 31.
Daylight Saving in Eukofe Since 1918 and in Present War
The British daylight-saving act of 1916 expired by limitation at the end of the war, but summer time was continued by a series of acts of Parliament. A permanent law enacted in 1925 provided that summer time should begin each year on the day following the third Saturday in April and end on the day following the first Saturday in October. France adopted summer time as a permanent institution in 1923, Belgium and the Netherlands in 1925, Spain and Portugal in 1926. Daylight saving was not continued after the war, however, in Germany, Austria, Italy, and the Scandinavian countries.
In the present war, on the other hand, daylight saving again is being generally observed throughout Europe, and not only for the summer months but the year round, with double daylight saving or its equivalent in effect in certain countries during the longest days of the year. Great Britain and unoccupied France kept their clocks on daylight-saving time all last winter and advanced them an additional hour in the first week of May, 1941.7 According to a recent survey by the Merchants Association of New York,8 other countries now on year-round daylight saving include Germany, the German-occupied countries, the Baltic countries, Italy, New Zealand, Mexico, and certain communities, including the principal cities, of the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in Canada.9 Occupied France and Belgium are reported to be operating on the same time as Germany. This is equivalent to double daylight saving, since German standard time is an hour ahead of French and Belgian standard time and Germany is now observing daylight saving.
Opposition of American Farmers; Repeal of Wartime Act
Daylight saving in the United States in the last war did not prove sufficiently popular to insure its continuance on a nation-wide basis. A month before the end of the war, on the recommendation of the chairman of the War Industries Board, the Senate passed a bill to require permanent national observance of daylight-saving time the year round, but congressional leaders decided not to push the measure to final passage. As soon as the war was over, opposition to continuance of daylight saving was widely voiced by representatives of the farmers. It was contended that farmers lost at least an hour from their work in the morning while waiting for the dew to dry off the fields, and that this time could not be made up in the afternoon because farm laborers insisted on quitting at the same time as workers in factories. Dairy farmers and truck gardeners were said to find it difficult to get their produce ready for shipment to the cities on schedule. It was asserted also that farmers could not finish their work at night early enough to get to the village store before it closed or to attend the movies or participate in social events.
Efforts were made in Congress to repeal the daylight-saving law before the clocks were due to be set ahead at the end of March, 1919. Although that attempt failed, the Senate on June 18, 1919, by a vote of 56 to 6, attached a rider to the Agriculture appropriation bill repealing, as of the last Sunday in October, 1919, not only the daylight-saving section but the whole Standard Time Act, The House accepted the amendment, but President Wilson vetoed the bill and his veto was sustained. In his veto message, July 11, 1919, Wilson declared that daylight saving had resulted “in very great economies of fuel and in substantial economies of energy,” and that the plan had given “all but universal satisfaction.”
On the same day that the Senate attached the repeal rider to the Agriculture appropriation bill, the House passed, by a vote of 232 to 121, a separate bill to repeal the daylight-saving section of the Standard Time Act as of the last Sunday of October, 1919. This bill was passed by the Senate, August 1, 1919, by a vote of 41 to 12. On August 15 President Wilson sent up another veto message. The President said he realized that daylight saving subjected the farmers to “very serious inconveniences,” but that he was obliged “to balance one set of disadvantages against another and to venture a judgment as to which were the more serious for the country.” Pointing out that the immediate need was for increased production in all lines of industry to supply needs when could not be postponed, he asserted that daylight saving “ministers to economy and efficiency.” And he concluded that the life and methods of the farmer were more easily adjusted than those of the manufacturer and merchant. Despite these admonitions, the House overrode the veto by a vote of 223 to 101, the Senate by a vote of 57 to 19, and the repeal bill became law August 20. National daylight saving accordingly ended on October 26, 1919.
Observance of Summer Time on State and Local Basis
Repeal of the federal law, however, by no means ended the practice of daylight saving, particularly in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. At the end of March, 1920, New York clocks were set ahead under a state law which had been previously enacted to conform with the federal law. Although the New York statute was repealed in 1921, municipalties of the state were specifically authorized by the repeal act to adopt daylight-saving ordinances. Massachusetts enacted a daylight-saving law in 1920, and clocks throughout that state were set ahead at the end of April of that year. New Jersey communities voluntarily went on daylight-saving time, and the same practice was followed in various other states.
In 1923 the farmer-controlled Connecticut legislature made a novel attempt to stop the observance of daylight saving by passing a law penalizing the display of other than standard time on public clocks. The law was completely ineffective. Public clocks remained on standard time, but most communities of the state continued to observe daylight-saving time. In 1935 the legislature finally repealed the 1923 act. An attack by the Massachusetts State Grange on the legality of the Massachusetts daylight-saving act came to naught, when the United States Supreme Court held, November 23, 1926, that the state statute was not inconsistent with the Standard Time Act.10 Following this decision, a growing tendency toward local adoption of daylight-saving time was noted.
Observance of daylight saving is now required by state law in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. According to the Merchants Association of New York, daylight saving is being practiced this summer, by local ordinance or on a voluntary basis, in the following additional areas in the United States: Connecticut; Maine (all cities and many towns); Rhode Island (all cities and most towns); “Vermont (most communities); New York (all cities and many towns); New Jersey; Pennsylvania (principal cities and many towns); Delaware (Wilmington and nearby towns); Illinois (Chicago metropolitan area); and Indiana (northern counties). Michigan, Ohio, and the western part of Georgia in effect have year-round daylight saving by observance of Eastern Standard time. In addition, as previously noted, Alabama, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia have adopted daylight-saving-time at the President's request. The number of persons observing daylight-saving time, or its equivalent, in the foregoing states exceeds 65,000,000, or roughly half the population of the United States.
A Gallup poll, reported July 18, 1941, showed a majority in every section of the country for summer daylight saving. In New England and the Middle Atlantic states, where summer time is already generally followed, 78 per cent of those questioned favored national daylight saving. The lowest majority for the proposal was 56 per cent in the West Central section. For the nation as a whole the vote was 67 per cent, which compared with votes of 57 and 60 per cent in favor of daylight saving in Gallup polls on the question in 1937 and 1940, respectively. However, in the most recent poll, year-round daylight saving was favored by a majority (54 per cent) only in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Farm organizations continue to express opposition to daylight saving. Rep. McLean said in the House, June 5, 1941, that motion-picture interests and entertainment enterprises appeared to be the only other objectors.
Special Measures for Conservation of Energy
Diversion to British service of tankers formerly engaged in transporting petroleum products from Gulf ports to the Atlantic seaboard has created serious danger of a shortage of gasoline in the Eastern states. Failure of appeals by Secretary Ickes, Petroleum Coordinator, for a voluntary one-third reduction of gasoline consumption in those states was followed, July 31, by a recommendation that filling stations, beginning August 3, remain closed from 7:00 P, M, to 7:00 A. M. The recommendation was backed by a threat to withhold supplies from non-complying stations. Night and Sunday sales of gasoline have been prohibited since July 21 in Canada, where motorists have been urged to cut their consumption of gasoline and oil by 50 per cent. It has been suggested that “gasless Sundays,” or even direct rationing of gasoline to motorists, may eventually be necessary to meet the potential shortage on the Atlantic seaboard.
Seven gasless Sundays were observed during the last war, in September and October, 1918, in response to a request by the Fuel Administrator to people east of the Mississippi River to refrain from using automobiles, motorcycles, and motor boats on Sundays until depleted supplies of gasoline on the Atlantic seaboard, for shipment overseas for war purposes, had been replenished. Exception was made of trucks transporting freight, physicians' automobiles, ambulances, fire and police vehicles, and funeral conveyances. Although compliance with the request was not made compulsory, the Fuel Administrator reported that it was universally observed. Today, with people having become much more dependent on automobiles than they were a generation ago, and with the country not actually at war, voluntary compliance with such a request might not be so readily obtained.
Steps to Meet Acute Coal Shortage in 1918
In 1918, as in the present emergency, householders were urged to lay in their supplies of winter fuel in the spring or summer, in order to relieve the strain on transportation facilities.11 A severe coal shortage in the winter of 1918, caused mainly by congestion on the railroads, led to a drastic order by the Fuel Administrator, January 17, 1918, shutting down all but the most necessary war industries for the succeeding five days and on Mondays through March 18. The respite thus given enabled the railroads to clear their lines so expeditiously that “workless Mondays” were discontinued after February 11, 1918. As a direct conservation measure, the Fuel Administrator in the spring of 1918 ordered various nonessential industries to curtail their use of fuel by from 15 to 50 per cent. Orders restricting use of light for advertising, display, and unnecessary outdoor lighting on certain “lightless nights” of each week were in effect from November 9, 1917 to April 24, 1918, and again from July 24 to November 23, 1918. Voluntary measures included reduction of heat and light in street cars and installation of the “skip-stop” system, appeals to heat dwellings to a temperature of no more than 68 degrees, and appeals to substitute firewood for coal.
After the war the Fuel Administration estimated that the various conservation measures had resulted in a saving of 32,200,000 tons of coal from October 19, 1917, to February 21, 1919. The largest item listed was a saving of 9,000,000 tons at stationary steam plants. Industrial restrictions were estimated to have produced a saving of 6,000,000 tons, A figure of 4,000,000 tons was estimated for domestic savings, and an additional 4,000,000 tons from substitution of wood for coal. The railroads were listed for a saving of 5,800,000 tons, the street railways for 900,000 tons, lightless nights for 250,000 tons. It was estimated that observance of daylight-saving time for seven months in 1918 had saved 1,250,000 tons of coal.12"
Daylight Saving
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PO1 John Johnson
Unfortunately and regardless if we just pick one and stick to it, you'll still hear half the population bitching and whining about it. There's no way to win on this issue.
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