DARKENING COUNSEL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18459, 24 July 1923, Page 6

DARKENING COUNSEL.

The Electric Power Board appears in a new light;. It is established to purvey a particular commodity. Yet it seriously proposes that, by a change of standard time in New Zea>land, the demand for that commodity shall be reduced. It is an odd proposal, coming from such a source. Give the Dominion half-an-hour more of daylight every day, pleads the Board, so that our obligation to provide artificial light may be lessened. Of course the Board is pressed for means to discharge its duty to the community: it has. been concerned to curb that community's demand for electricity, refusing to consent to the installation of new appliances for its use and banning the employment of devices hitherto sanctioned to utilise it. These artifices of the Board have naturally made its customers wonder whether it has a proper sense of its functions. Frantic efforts to reduce consumption hardly befit a Board set up to increase production. To discourage electric installations and to put a ban on radiator)* were simpleminded methods to make ends meet. But this last proposal has a touch of genius. It would bo interesting to know who gave the Board the brilliant idea. He deserves a statue, in the pose of Ajax defying the lightning and mounted on a radiator couduitut, w..th a group of symbolic figures representing the public—relatively small .'sculptures, but rampantencircling the base. All previous efforts to -educe the Board's business are outclassed by this latest biain-wave: it is the reductio ad absurdum. But why stop at half-an-hour for the sake of the peak load of winter's cheerless eve? Why not reinstitute the curfew current turned - off at sundown? It would mean a wonderful saving of current. Or insist that all human activities begin and end with daylight There were no filament lamps or power-points in perfectly primitive Eden. To be logical,' the Board should enter on a vigorous campaign to abolish wholly the use of electricity ; - then, succeeding, it might altogether go on holiday. The example of this proposal of the Board may prove unexpectedly infectious. Milk vendors will bid us take to water unalloyed, bakers seek to dissuade us against bread, butchers urge us to become vegetarian, hatters preach a ; hatless crusade, clothiers decry dress, and bootmakers teach us that after all their assertions that there is nothing like leather we may quite well do with less of it. Perhaps, in spite of appearances, there is method in the Board's project; but it should have a care lest it breed ' a ccmmunitv caring so much for daylight that it is prepared to consign the Board to outer darkness.