TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. FRIDAY, 17th JULY, 1936. SHIFTING THE CLOCK.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3783, 17 July 1936, Page 6

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. FRIDAY, 17th JULY, 1936. SHIFTING THE CLOCK.

MANIPULATING the clock in an eflort to regulate human conduct, Governments in New Zealand reveal a condition bordering on the burlesque. Somebody once described the law as an ’hass —and that somebody was a .prophet who might have lived in these modern times. However, to the clock. A few years ago there came by Statute an innovation known as Daylight Saving. Its ostensible purpose •vas the provision of greater daylight leisure for the health and well-being of the people. As such it was accepted as a good lalv by the majority of citizens. It was a simple device, attainable by a mere manipulation of the clock to set forward or backwards the hours of work in the different seasons. Nowadays the Government has gone a step further in the pursuit of leisure and public health. A new industrial code has been drawn providing for what is termed the Forty-hour Week. This new law is under process of adjustment, and it is left to the shopkeepers to apportion the calendar hours into the working day. In only a few towns yet has decision been announced, but there is a definite indication of a leaning in favour of 8.30 a.m. becoming the beginning of the business day. The effect is obviously the complete annulment of the theoretic benefits of summer time. Having manipulated the clock in compliance with the Daylight Saving Act the shopkeepers exercise their prerogative under the Shops and Offices Act and decree that the business day shall commence at what standard time declares to be 8 a.m. So that, after all the care and consideration that the Legislature has bestowed, it is “as you were before you started.” And from it all there is a moral that suggests the utter futility of a good deal of the machinery of Government. Political intent may, in theory, be worthy and can very probably strive for high ideals. But in a practical way there is a limit to public acceptance in legislative disciplining. Instances abound on every hand of humbugging legislation — codes which Parliament prescribes but which no Government can ever enforce, for the very reason that the people set a limit to the degree of statutory regulation of human conduct. The anti-gambling laws are famous because of their non-observ-ance and timid enforcement. So also is a good deal of the statutory intent to arbitrarily define conscientious or moral conduct. The only effect is to drive certain traffics underground and to encourage people in new habits—new vices, maybe,—which circumvent the law. The Government might very well pause in its legislative pace before it makes these habits more universal. The manipulation of the clock may be a small thing. But behind it there is a very big meaning—that the intentions of a mandatory law will be nullified by communities, whose concern in life is merely the 'practical application of acceptable standards.