The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. TUESDAY, JULY 27, 1926. DAYLIGHT SAVING BY LEGISLATION.

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1787, 27 July 1926, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. TUESDAY, JULY 27, 1926. DAYLIGHT SAVING BY LEGISLATION.

NOW .that tlie "hardy annual." Mr T. K. Sidey's Summer-time Bill, has weathered the joulrney through the House of Representatives, its opponents have awakened to a realisation of the fact that they have in past years underestimated the popularity of the measure. We learn that it is now the intention to deluge the Upper House with petitions that .the (Bill be not placed on the Statute Book. It would seem that the .Bill's enemies have awakened too late, and that they have lulled •themselves into a sleep of false security through the Bill being so regularly and! persistently rejected by Parliament. Their belated, outcry savours somewhat of seeking to shut the door of the stable after the horse has gone. It can certainly be accepted as a surprise to most people .that Mr Sidey's pet Bill has at last won the attention and approval of a parliamentary majority.. The idea of daylight saving by means of a clock adjustment is familiar to everybody, butt, it is the effect of this adjustment that causes ,perturbation. There are very few who have studied the matter to 'find out just the amount of adverse effect 'the adoption of daylight saving will have on the country at large, or on any particular section of the community. It ha s been asserted that the ordinarily hard lot of the farmer avMI be made increasingly hard, but a little analysis of the experience of other countries shows that once adopted there it has won approval and

support, or, at the least, tolerance, and ( the advantages are held to be immeas- \ urably greater than the disadvantages. iFrior to the commencement of the present Isession all local bodies in New Zealand was circularised by Mr Sidey or his most enthusiastic supporters, julst as for years local bodies have been circularised seeking aid for the ißible-reading in schools project, and at each appearance on the order paper of council, board, or chamber member* .have smiled indulgently or shrugged impatiently as the mood .seized them. The measure was formally, and, all too often, mechanically, approved or rejected, and the meeting would resume consideration of more important and more attractive items on the agenda paper. Farmers' organisations leverywhere were also acquainted with the movement, and, while in most cases a tacit acceptance of the idea was the relsult of most considerations of the subject, there were those who eyed the proposal askance. From our observations, acceptance or rejection of the proposal mainly depended on the first speaker —whether 'he favoured it or ! otherwise. The general body of members appeared to know little about its merits, and cared less. Executives of farmers' unions in various parts of New Zealand approved the measure; in other parts they rejected it. Now it would seem the rumblings of the storm are much nearer, and an attack on the Bill seems probable. Farmers' organisations have asked their parliamentary representatives to oppose the Bill when it is referred back to Parliament as it must be if the Legislative Council deals with it as expected, and the latest declared qpponents of the Bill are the representatives of the Dominion Counties' Association at the annual conference last week in Wellington. What a pity Mr Sidey or other warm advocate of daylight saving by legislation did not attend that conference and debate the subject, or at least answer .some of the knotty problems occurring to the delegates. The Counties* Conference was constituted for the most part of farmers or ex-farmers, all of them practical men used ;to sizing up problems affecting the farming industry, be it agricultural, pastoral, or dairying. It has been stated that it is high time that sensible people took a hand in the matter, and the fear has been voiced that the farmer is going to be hard hit by the mere fact of the clock being set 'forward one hour for the summer months. It is a little difficult to understand just how this will come about. Many hundreds of farmers even now work according to a clock that is deliberately set fast by anything up to half an hour, and in isome oases by even more than that. Sawmil'lers and bushmen have the same method—in a sense, fooling themselves, for the alteration in no way adversely affects the followers of other occupations. Employers of labour generally favour the idea for various reasons, perhaps the most noteworthy being that better work is done in the earlier part of this day, when the mind and body are fresh after a night'is rest, than during the hours of a hot, sweltering afternoon. Then, again, by shifting the clock so that all workers are affected, sport and recreation are not so •likely to be so adversely affecting production or encroaching on the night hours when sleep and rest are justly entitled to a fair proportion of the twenty-four hours. 'The rural life usually means " early to bed and iearly to rise," with the resultant clause anent making one healthy and wise—a truism rather than an absurdity. Nobody wants Jack to be a dull boy, through too much work and too little play, but if Jack i s a town or a city dweller he desires sport and recreation, being a healthy, normal individual, and if 'his hours of work interfere with that recreation he cuts shorter the rest hours so as to give fuller play to his deisire for recreation. From somewhere down in the south comes a protest on behalf of the backblocks children whose admittedly unenviable lot, it is claimed, will be in no way improved by tbe necessity for rising an hour earlier, which will result from setting the clock forward one hour. It seems that it does not matter much which end of the day one has the extra hour in which to work or sleep, as the case may be. Many opponents of daylight saving eye it with disfavour on the ground that it is only an attempt on the ,part of the town fraternity to secure more sport for itself. It is suggested that .the city should take its own poison if it wants it, but that no attempt should be made to foilst the proposal on an unwilling rural community. It may be of interest to quote the following comment by the agricultural editor of the Otago Witness on the situation: —

" The mpshot of it all is: 'that the Summer Time Bill is not to have too smooth a voyage through the Upper House. Whether the present antagonism in the north is representative of the farmers in general it would be hard to say, but in relspect to Otago, if past expressions of opinion on the subject are to be taken as genuine, I think that opposition to the Bill will be viewed favourably' by a very small majority. Such an opinion is based on the attitude adopted generally by various district representatives at one time or other."