Paul Taybi, age 12, of Tiburon, California, for his question:
What are the advantages of Daylight Saving Time?
Most people would choose Benjamin Franklin to head the list of the busiest and the most sensible Americans who ever lived. Old timers quote a statement that reveals what manner of man he was: "Just give me one more hour in each day, and I will find a way.
On the last Sunday in April, we set our clocks one hour ahead of the usual Standard Time. For a week or so, we ordinary folk can find nothing good to say for this system of Daylight Saving Time.. Our eyes refuse to open when the hands of the clock point to the proper time to get out of bed. After supper, we feel too drowsy to stay alert for our last favorite TV show. Later, our bodies get adjusted to the changed time routine. We relish that extra hour of daylight tacked onto the summer evenings. Getting out of bed in the morning no longer makes us feel put upon and we notice that the sun also rises earlier.
So far as we know, the first man in history who thought of this clock switching' was our own busy, beloved Benjamin Franklin. But it is not likely that he had the idea in order of gain an extra hour of entertainment and recreation at the end of the long summer evenings which is how most of us tend to think of Daylight Saving Time now. Ben was a busy man. The details of the varied and astonishing activities of his busy life could not be crammed into a dozen fat books.
When our Founding Fathers were planning, this land of ours, Ben was an elderly gentleman. But those high minded young men turned to him for his wise, mature judg¬ment time after time. The abiding love and respect between the wise old man and his idealistic young friends helped to model one basically sound system of government.
Busy Benjamin enjoyed tackling the astonishing assortment of jobs he undertook. He did them with all his heart and naturally he did them well. But Franklin never had time to perform all his exciting activities. The old timers who claim that he said, "Just give me one more hour in each day and I will find away" knew just how he felt. History has nothing more exciting to offer mankind than the making and shaping of a brand new way of life, a noble new system of government for a new land. In these exciting days, nobody would have questioned the advantages of that extra summer evening hour. But, sad to say, the sensible Daylight Saving idea was not adopted by our nation until almost two centuries later.
By this time, the early excitement had worn thin. Government problems had tended to become wordy hassles. The advantages of. Daylight Saving were presented as extra time for doing various kinds of chores. Many sections of the country plumb refused to switch their clocks. For a time, train schedules and many other procedures were a bodge podge of confusion. Then, in 1966 the Congress put the Daylight system on a national basis from April to October. By mid May, most of us are all set to crowd that extra hour of summer daylight with bright eyed and bushy tailed work and play.