Show Old Timeand New Time SALT LAKE CITY May 3d 84 Editors Herald I Will nobody say a word in favor I of the old time It seems altogether too bad to cast off without a grate I ful or an appreciative word an old friend a very old faithful and once highly valued friend a friend r for generations after generations past This must be a fast age People are certainly getting very fast They do not sing Backward turn backward 0 time in thy flight Oh no JSut this is more like the way of things nowadays Time fly with greater speed way Add swiftness to thy wings Yet why should he Has ha not celerity enough already I dont want himto fly any faster than of yore Tempus fugit and I do not see any necessity for him to fugit any faster than his usual pace We shall all get to the end of our jour nev eooa enough for us But if he wcnt go any faster there are ac tuaUy those who are ready to give him a kick behind to help him along Indeed they have done that very thing already and advanced him 1 thereby half an hour or nearly that wHit us Aa a Dutchman might say what far id they do that I dont know It fs a notion a hobby with some pec pie There are people many people who could not get up eoon enough with the old time and how they are going to get up and keep up with the new time especially in the short cold stormy days of winter is not for me to say Perhaps that class think to humor their takeiteasy dispositions in this wayto get up and go to work by the old time and to quit work and go to supper and bed by the new time 1fo doubt many sly and dilatory raccals would be glad to cheat time and other people in that cunning and underhand under-hand way But it ought not to be allowed Well what of the new time Many people say they cannot understand under-stand it Al the people on and from an imaginary north and Fouth pole line situated a few miles east of Denver thence a thousand miles or lees westward are to have one time and that the time of that said line tother side of Denver Den-ver At that imaginary line there is a riee of an hour all at once in the time for all people thence eastward a thousand miles or less At another an-other imaginary line a thousand miles or less west of Denver there is a step down of an hour for all the people thence to the Pacific coast 0 what a fall is the e my countrymen country-men 1 Then you and I and all of us do fall or should be likely to do so if we sat astride of that sharp edged western line like a doubting politician politi-cian on a fence unless we were most accomplished balancers This new time is called standard stan-dard mountain time Who cares about mountain time one way or the other ao a name I But this word standard is a rank I misnomer This new time Is no I standard at all to us nor to anybody else except to those fortunate or unfortunate beings who live on that imaginary north and south pole line ouu mues east or us that Jong thin streak of longitude and even they must be exactly on that line for being a purely imaginary line and like a mathematical line having length but neither breadth nor thickness they must not be on either one side or the other By the by we may in some sort concede con-cede thickness or depth purely imaginary im-aginary though but not breadth to this imaginary line for while it does not matter as to the time of day or night whether people stand on the line on the earth or on the same line miles above the earth it does decidedly matter horoloefieally whether they stand on the line or a distance east or west of it and especially east of it or on which side of that finer than gossamer line they stand It will make a difference of an hour in the new time to them whether they stand a foot east or a foot west of that line yea an inch or less will do it It may as to dates make a difference of a day a week a month or a year to people whether they stand east or west of that bee line or rather it may cause quarrels j f r1 involving questions of that kind The lease difference it will make will oe an hour in aU that peope do or that happens to them when they are near that extraordinary dangerous mischiefmaking line so supremely ridiculous in this aspect does this newfangled time this standard time appear How people are to manage under such circumstances to maintain their equilibrium and have things happen just at the right time and not an hour out of time and to know that everything is happening correctly Is a prodigious puzzle It all depends de-pends upon this breatlthless line whether a man comes into this world or goes out of it on time or an I hour before or behind time wheth er just in the nick of time or an hour too soon or too late So you see what a very serious thing this new time business is going to be not only astrologically but in every other way nearly for illustrations of the awkwardness of the thing might be multiplied and amplified indefinitely I said this new time was no standard time to UB Nor is it one bit It is the standard time of another an-other place or line of places on an another line longitude It is their true standard time and not ours The real standard time for anyplace any-place is the local natural true time of that place astronomically and mathematically observed calculated calcul-ated and determined with correctness correct-ness This newspaper time instead of being called standard time and of necessity falsely ao as regards all places but those on the longitudinal longitud-inal line of its Initiation nnnatur a and artificial time and should be so designated and known For popular pop-ular use and convenience and especially es-pecially as it is largely a railroad conceit this new time mIght very appropriately be known as railroad time but confined to railroad business busi-ness to which use so long as the railroads wanted it there could be no serious objections to its use fcr all varieties of local events The city clock being set to the I new time thus carries a falsehood I nn its fanft all the xohilfi nnrl nil oar clocks and watcher so set will tell the same falsehood So far as they aio good timers they will tell this alt > ehood and stick to it like some stubborn humans of mendacious disposition Our > 12 oclock used to be noon or midnight the beginning or the middle of the day Now it is neither the one nor the other but something inconveniently inconven-iently betwixt and between Hereafter Here-after a man wont know when he was born Ask him Oh I was born at ten minutes after 4 oclock in the afternoon 0 fibber you were nothing of the kind You were born at eighteen minutes before be-fore four Again I was born at i twenty minutes past 12 oclock in the morning of the first of January 1885 0 fibber again you were not born at that hour nor on that day nor in that month nor in that vear Von were born I eight minutes before midnight on the last day of Decem ber 1881 That is where you are left by this new standard time and so of every other circumstance Who will know what hour day week month or year and it might come to what century or thousand years anything happened Excepting Except-ing the same is scientifically stated as to time and he who knows human hu-man nature knows that this will not be done by ordinary people once in a thousand times Thus historically this Innovation will become a fearful thing This new tangled time will create interminable i in-terminable and indescribable confusion confu-sion and cause millions of errors in the future records of millions of people and thousands of cities towns and villages filling history with innumerable falsities In every place then the true and correct and proper standard time for that rtlace and the time to hn noted in the occurrence of all local circumstances circum-stances in order to secure historical accuracy is the real local time of that place Let the railroads use what time they like Very properly the Signal Service Department rejects re-jects the new time and adheres to the local time It is also said that in the State of Maine the sentiment grows strong in favor of returning to local time Let the local natural true time of the place be used for all purely local concernments It Is the only proper standard for them and therefore how can I do other than vote in fay r of ofLOCAL LOCAL TIME |