ILLINOIS: Children of Darkness

The chambers of Chicago’s City Council were packed. A reading clerk chanted: “. . . Now certain special interests—the bankers, the stock exchange brokers, a morning newspaper [Chicago Tribune’] and undoubtedly the electric light monopoly—all of whom will benefit financially, are attempting to railroad through the City Council an ordinance. . . . [They are] sponsors of this vicious attempt to compel school children to get up two hours before sunrise in the cold winter months. . . . We, the Chicago Federation of Labor, in regular meeting assembled, do hereby reiterate our opposition to fooling with the clock. . . .” Cried Alderman Oscar Fred Nelson: “When mothers and fathers get their children up in the dark, splash cold water in their faces to wake them up, and send them off to school in zero weather an hour before sunrise, they won’t like it, and you’ll hear from them in no uncertain terms.” Retorted Alderman Jacob M. Arvey: “I’d rather have my children in school in the darkness than playing in the darkness in danger of automobiles. This seems to be a big fuss about something relatively unimportant. God made the sun to rise and set, but man made time and he can change it.” About the bigness of the fuss last week there was no question. For a fortnight Chicago had no more lively topic of dispute than a proposed ordinance to take Chicago off Central Standard Time and put it on Eastern Standard Time. Chief backer of the proposition was Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune. Such a change in city time, he knew, would give his Tribune, a morning paper, a dollars & cents advantage over the Chicago Daily News and other evening papers. Stock market reports and all other non-local news would, as a result, reach Chicago an hour later, thus depriving evening papers of one hour’s salable news every day and leaving one hour’s more news for the next morning’s papers. To his Democratic friend Mayor Kelly, for whom he has done many a political favor, Republican McCormick appealed. The Mayor obligingly swung his machine into action and over the protests of milkmen, mailmen and other early rising laborers, who cried in vain for a popular referendum, the ordinance was passed last week by a steamroller vote, 44-to-3. On March 1, 1936 Chicago’s clocks will be set ahead one hour and presumably never set back again. Freely the embittered opposition predicted that when summer rolls around daylight savers would try to set the clock ahead another hour to keep Chicago time even with time on the Eastern Seaboard. Although schoolteachers and children’s doctors led the procession of advocates for daylight-saving-all-year-round inChicago, it was no secret that bankers, brokers and other businessmen dealing with the East were thinking of the advantages Eastern Standard Time would bring them. The airplane having brought Chicago within five hours distance of Manhattan and the telephone having brought Chicago within instant speaking distance, the No. 2 financial centre of the U. S. found that it would be a decided convenience to have its business hours exactly coincide with the business hours of the No. 1 financial centre. Putting Chicago clocks on Eastern Standard Time will put them out of step with those of St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Paul; but, except for the five months a year of daylight saving, it would put them in step with those of business in Manhattan, Boston, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, put them in step with those of politics in Washington (which has no daylight saving) all year round. But in the name of health, not business, was this clock magic adopted last week. Sun time, in which noon is the hour when the sun crosses the meridian, is different in all places except those which have the same longitude. Until 1883 nearly every town in the U. S. had its individual time. Then, largely for the convenience of railroad travel, the U. S. was cut into four zones—Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific—and all places within each zone were given a uniform time (TIME, Nov. 27, 1933) Chicago is the first city near the middle of a time zone to decide to adopt the time of another zone. By sun time Chicago’s sun would set about ten minutes later than it does under Central time.— To compensate Chicago children for this lost ten minutes of after-school sunlight was one argument for going on Eastern time. As a bonus they would get the other 50 minutes of the one-hour time change.

Assuming that opponents cannot succeed in reversing the City Council’s decision, Chicago children on Dec. 21, 1936 will go to school at 8:30 a. m. and return at 3:30 p. m., as now, but the sun will rise at 8:08 a. m. and set at 5:28 p. m. instead of an hour earlier.

*Some other cities have a still greater difference between sun time and standard time. Atlanta is 23 minutes behind its sun time. Cincinnati on Eastern time is 37 minutes ahead of its sun time.