CONNECTICUT: A bill is before the Legislature to make public display of a clock showing any time save Eastern Standard punishable by $100 or ten days in prison. Departments of the State and all institutions receiving State aid would be prohibited from altering their schedules to conform in effect to daylight-saving time.
This is another step in the fight of Connecticut farmers against city dwellers to prevent daylight saving. A year ago, having a majority in the Legislature, the farmers passed a bill against daylight saving, but provided no penalties for failure to comply with the law. The mayors of several cities forthwith issued proclamations recommending the townspeople to advance their clocks. The Legislature angrily protested and threatened to suspend the charter of Hartford, the State Capital. On the day agreed upon for putting daylight saving into effect the merchants turned their clocks ahead. At noon the whistles blew an hour early, and the clerks walked out of the Legislature, leaving the farmer members, unable to continue business, angrily sputtering in their chairs. Later a member from a city constituency offered a bill to provide four commissioners at salaries of $10,000 a year to go about the streets, examine the watches of citizens and take those to jail who used daylight saving time.
The outcome of the whole matter was that the cities used daylight-saving time, while the executive and judicial departments of the State and the railroads kept their clocks at Standard time, but moved their schedules an hour ahead.
Now the farmers intend to put “teeth” into the law.
OKLAHOMA: A bill is before the Legislature to divide the state into two parts once more. In 1907 Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory united to form the state of Oklahoma. Now antipathy of the farmers and the oil interests to each other threatens to divide the state by a north and south line through its center, making one “farming state” and one “oil state.” While the measure is hardly likely to succeed, it is noteworthy because Oklahoma is the fourth crop state in the Union and the first state in oil production.
PENNSYLVANIA: The Legislature passed and Governor Pinchot signed a new state prohibition law, by which the system of licensing saloons is abolished. The previous Woner enforcement law did not permit the sale of beverages containing over half of one per cent of alcohol, but licensed saloons for the sale of drinks having a lesser alcoholic con-tent. The result was that saloonkeepers were tempted everywhere to violate the prohibition law in order to make profits large enough to pay their license fee.
There was much opposition to Governor Pinchot’s law because local politicians were reputed to have made handsome profits from “shake-downs” of saloonkeepers selling illicit liquor. Governor Pinchot was highly elated over his success in securing the new enforcement act which, of all his proposed reforms, was considered the most likely to fail.
UTAH: After April 20 former service men will have the privilege of taking up homesteads on 400,000 acres of land in Emery and Grand counties. Land not taken up by July 20 will be opened to the general public. Mineral rights will not be included in the propsed homesteads.