THE TIME MACHINE

Hokitika Guardian, 29 February 1928, Page 4

THE TIME MACHINE

(Lyttelton “Times.”) The little argument that has been going on concerning daylight saving serves to show what creatures of habit we all are. The clock is an arbitrary arrangement for measuring time. It was not invented to regulate our lives, our sleeping, eating, working and playing. It was designed for the convenience of men—a sort of mechanical servant whose purpose was to synchronise actions that needed synchronisation—and it. remained so for centuries. But to-day it is the world’s master, it has the whole civilised population in chains, and there is not the remotest hope of mankind recovering its freedom. The beasts of the field may rise when they will, eat when they need food, sleep as they will, leading a peaceful and apparently happy existence whose only disturbances are those of inexorable Nature. Man. on the other hand, must rise by the clock, cal by the clock, work by the clock, and sleep by the clock. The clock is a kind oT superJunitcr. a Baal and a Moloch all in one, pitiless, inexorable. Me measure our work by the clock, no longer by the job. The conscientious man is driven hv it (o fiercer oxer!lons; (he slacker lives in everlasting fear that the clock will find hint out. Tt was pure imagination that inspired the poet to write: “Wo live in deeds, not years; in heart-beats, not in figures on a dial.' That may have been true centuries ago. It is not true to-day, for the figures on the dial are the whole life of the civilised world. Time was when architects and builders could spend hundreds of years on a cathedral, and probably the only clock they knew was the hell of the nearest religions institution. Nowadays we should have a time limit set to every phase of the work, the contractor would bo under a penalty clause in regard to dates of beginning and ending; and the workers would labour strictly by the clock. It might even be that a check would he kept on the number of bricks laid per hour. Modern industry is run by the clock. The time spent on every job is recorded, the salesman is measured by his sales per hour, the printer and the motor mechanic estimate their hour costs, the painter and the carpenter are paid at an hourly rate, .steamers trover knots per hour, motor ears miles per hour, trains must start and stop to time schedule, and the world wags in time with the pendulum. Once the sun itself measured out the day by throwing a vague shadow on a rude dial, or inaccurate sands trickled at a varying rate through the neck of an hour-glass; now every individual must have a time-piece, guaranteed to keep perfect time and every timepiece must have its special hand to show the rush of the seconds. We have even split the seconds, first into halves, then quarters, then fifths, then tenths, and now hundredths. The slave-driver goads us on to crowd more and more work, not into a lifetime lint into an hour. And this inhuman tiling, without feelings or understanding. lias come to he regarded as natural! Only the other day its arbitrary divisions of time were desrrilvel as a law of Nature'. Daylight saving by an alteration of clocks may nr may not lie desirable, but (lie guild people who oppose il as a wi.-ked interference with a heneI'ccui instil id ion are surely basing l.lieir arguments on a ludicrously illogical misconception. And 1 hose who supper! it on the ground that a mere alteration of the bands can add to the sum of 1 111 ill all happiness are equally the victims ol delusion. Iliev are all, we ale all. enslaved hv a superstition, possessed hv a strange inferiority complex. We could (ind il in our hearts to argue that tlie' clockmakers are tln- worst of all the enemies of mankind and their products the must potent of all the engines of Satan.