Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/563

 Popular Science Monthly

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��sumers by $2,375,000. Electric light companies reported a reduction of out- put averaging about 20 per cent. The saving in illuminating oils was reported at 2^4 per cent, of the annual consump- tion. In France the saving in fuel used for illuminating purposes was estimated at ten per cent, of the annual consump- tion. In Germany the municipal gas works at Berlin reported a decrease dur- ing May and June, 1916, of 508,500 cubic meters, in spite of the fact that 18,000 new gas meters were installed during the first six months of the same year, and the records from January to April showed an increase of 2,400,000 cubic meters of gas as compared with 1915.

Estimates vary as to the saving of fuel we may hope to effect by the adoption of the daylight-saving plan in the United States. When this phase of the question was discussed in hearings before a Con- gressional committee, Mr. R. I. Brunet, of the Rhode Island Committee on Public Safety, declared that in the city of Providence alone an annual saving of $60,000 was anticipated, and that in the country at large the saving would amount to something like $40,000,000. The Bos- ton Chamber of Commerce estimates that the country will save $100,000,000 annually in the use of artificial light, on the basis of extending the plan to the

��entire year. The city of Cleveland is said to have saved $200,000 during the first six months after changing from Central to Eastern Time (thus permanently ad- vancing the clocks by an hour).

By beginning their day an hour earlier than has heretofore been customary, people gain an extra hour of daylight after the rejular day's work is over. This affords greater opportunities for out-of-doors recreation, and the change seems to be popular in middle European latitudes, except with the agricultural population, which has expressed some dissatisfaction at being obliged to ad- vance a working schedule which was al- ready well adjusted to the daylight period. Workers in other lines have, in some cases, enthusiastically described the effects of the plan as "giving them a Saturday half -holiday all the week."

It is also reported in England that the extra daylight in the afternoon has en- couraged the cultivation of gardens. Much stress has been laid upon this fea- ture of the scheme in the United States, where it is hoped that daylight-saving will increase the general food supply and also help the individual citizen to solve the problem of high prices by raising part of the food needed for his own table. It is not at all clear, however, v/hy the advancing of the working hours in

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