Summer-Time.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19140, 25 October 1927, Page 10

Summer-Time.

With the approach of the first Sunday in November there is beginning to be some anxiety—it is a little more than curiosity—about the social, industrial, and other practical consequences of summer-time when it actually begins to operate. So far as ordinary working conditions are concerned, and ordinary working days, there is certainly no need for anxiety, since the only change will be the jump made once by the hands of the clock. The working day will begin sooner and end sooner by the sun, but remain precisely as it has always been in other respects, except for those people whose day is an irregular one now. In the case, however, of special services—transport most of all, but devotion, also, and entertainment—there may be an appreciable difference for everybody under the new order, and even some appreciable difficulties. It

was mentioned, for example, in yesterday's Press that the Tramway Board may find it necessary to extend its timetable. The first tram in every case will of course have to start an hour earlier by the sun, but "if the people are going to stay "out an hour later at night," the Manager says, it may be necessary to ran a late tram, which will extend the present tramway day to nineteen hours, and perhaps call for additions to the staff. And if people are twt going to stay out later at night they are either going to curtail their evening amusements or spend no more time in the open air than they spend now. The purpose of summer-time is to provide a longer .playing day for cricket, tennis, golf, and other daylight sports, and unless evening entertainments wait for the conclusion of those games, or in other words for the hour, by the sun, at which they begin now, their promoters will suffer loss, and the public much inconvenience. Church services are of course in a class by themselves, since there is no outward reason in New Zealand, where we frown on the Continental Sunday, why they cannot follow the clock. Indeed those congregations which especially condemn Sunday pleasure-making might find it definitely advantageous to have their evening service begun in daylight-, since it would reduce the period of temptation. But it is by no means certain that all, or any, of the churches will find it convenient to follow the clock indefinitely, and whether they do or do not, summer-time is going to provide them with a delicate problem, and students of morals and religion with an interesting test.