CORRESPONDENCE.

Hutt News, Volume 1, Issue 15, 6 September 1928, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

DAYLIGHT SAVING IN TOWNS.

(To the Editor). Sir, —Mucli has been written and said recently about " Daylight Saving" in towns. I would be glad to be given space in your paper to explain how the scheme was very successfully worked, in England at least 25 years ago. All the huge tobacco factories, chocolate and stationery firms had noticed that whilst they (the employers) could leave the ousiness and still have several Hours of open air pleasures, their workers were still spending another hour of God's blessed sunshine indoors. They had consulations with the heads of departments, and the result was that instead of eight o'clock the starting hour, .from the first Monday in May, all workers had to commence at 7 a.m. until September (the last Saturday in that month). Oh, the gloomy prognostications, we were '' flying in the face of Providence" —-by the way, one has yet to meet the '' Providence" which one is always outraging in the matter of time; I had always thought that man had invented clocks? The old son-dial is more on the side of "Daylight saving" I think. At the end of the first year's trial of this innovation, the doctors who are paid high, salaries to keep the workers in these big concerns in good health, gave their verdict on the matter. It was that efficiency was increased and the tone of the workers changed decidedly for the better, formerly only the office worker took a continuous and active interest in tennis, croquet, rowing and all the many sports that abound, in the West of England. With increased daylight the factory workers were induced to take up spore, and every night the beautiful sports grounds which are provided by these big firms are happily crowded, and that spirit which the employers had striven for years to develop amongst their people, progressed rapidly. Too much has been said that the measure is only for the benefit of the "sports." They are by no means the great beneficiaries. I have seen many elderly people basking in the evening sunshine, had the clock not been, altered they would have been sweltering indoors by artificial light, having a horror of ''night air." Those who cared to spend a shilling on the train or steamer could have a trip to the sea in daylight. The argument that we have enough sunlight here does not hold, for it is daylight in England for months until ten and eleven o 'clock. Any of our returned soldiers will bear me out in this. One has only to look at the lighting up times at the head of an English newspaper to prove this. I saw one a few days ago —"Lighting up time, 10.45 p.m." I can speak from five years practical working knowledge of "dajlight saving" in a farming district, and, as one correspondent so sensibly remarked in a daily paper "had the clocks been altered while we slept, we would have been none the wiser." Almost the whole of the income from that district was derived from milk and root crops (which reminds me that the dew was sometimes' so heavy that haymaking was postponed for an hour, but every one knows that an hour can always be profitably spent on duties at a farm). If the farmer has to sit down and wait idly till the dew has gone off the grass, well then he has an easier time than we had imagined, and our tender hearts need no longer bleed for him. Finally I enquired from parents what their opinion was as to the effect of the measure on their children's health. I heard no word against it, except that one parent said her children were " tigers "—never tired, always hungry. As to this going to bed business, is not a child better tumbling about the garden or having a royal tima with its companions than tossing restlessly in a bedroom probably with windows closed and blinds drawn to keep out the light and noise? I think so, having not quite a century ago been «übjeeted to that same treatment, and too often wide awake when the older folks came to bed, resentful that I wouldn't go to sleep "like a dear good child" instead of fetching them up and down Btaift for water, etc. I may add that the workers were unanimous in their desire for a continuance of the unofficial Daylight Saving, and those not so fortunate as to work for such firms ware quite delighted when they too, could join in everything. Trusting I have not taken up too much of "our" valuable space.—Yours sunshinily, F. R. JOYCE, Leighton Avenue, Lower Hutt.