November's That History Column:
City, county had rift over daylight saving time
Did you set your clocks back the first weekend of November?
If you didn’t, you’re probably not amused that you got out of bed a whole hour earlier than you needed to.
 If you did, rest assured that daylight saving time is an old concept that was aimed at preserving candle power long before it was thought of for preserving electrical power.
But it did cause havoc in Kenosha in the 1920s when a person could go to the Kenosha County courthouse at noon and then go down the block to city hall and find the clocks reading one o’clock! That was because the city had embraced daylight saving time and the county didn’t.
But that’s getting ahead of the story ...
Benjamin Franklin first wrote of the idea while he was an American delegate in Paris in 1784. He loved to stay up late at night and play chess, sleeping until noon. He wrote, tongue-in-cheek, that he was amazed to find the sun rising at 6 a.m. and thought about how much money he could save on candles if only the world began conducting business earlier.
In modern times, that feat was accomplished by simply moving the clock hands backward.
In World War I, Germany and Austria implemented daylight saving time to conserve fuel. They were followed in quick succession by Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, France, Portugal and Britain.
It took the United States until March 1918 to join the movement. But the law was so unpopular (mostly because people rose earlier and went to bed earlier than we do today) that is was later repealed in 1919 over President Wilson’s veto.
A few New England states and big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Chicago continued using the concept. It was most likely the influence of Chicago that swayed Kenosha’s early thinking on the subject.
In April 1921, thousands in the city of Kenosha signed a petition in favor of a daylight saving measure, and on May 1 it was adopted citywide. Late the following year, there was talk of having the entire county on daylight saving time, but the folks in the county were having none of it.
A resolution on adopting daylight saving time finally came before the County Board, and attorney A.E. Buckmaster pointed out the trouble caused by having the courthouse and city hall run on two different clocks: They opened and closed at different times, and someone trying to get business done in both places during the noon hour was always thwarted.
The Kenosha Evening News of May 1, 1923, reported, “The farmer members of the board put up a protest to the last, characterizing the daylight saving plan as contrary to nature and the great and glorious sun.”
In 1923, there were 17 County Board supervisors — eight representing rural districts and nine representing city districts. On the day they voted on the matter, one supervisor from each side was absent, and the final vote was 8-7 in favor of the plan, split right along the city limits.
The next spring, city residents were prevented from officially partaking in the ritual of turning back the clocks by the state legislature, which had passed a law forbidding any city in Wisconsin from adopting daylight saving time.
That’s the way it stayed here until World War II when President Franklin D. Roosevelt instituted year-round daylight saving time from Feb. 2, 1942, until Sept. 30, 1945. He called it “war time.”
It wasn’t until April 1966 that 33 states, including Wisconsin, took up the daylight saving time banner when a federal law required any state that adopted daylight saving time to use the federal dates of April 24 to Oct. 30.
Over the years, our increased mobility needed us as a people to be on the same clock and the need for energy conservancy increased dramatically.
President Nixon signed the Saving Time Energy Act, which set clocks ahead for a 15-month period in January 1974, but Congress (under duress from farming states) again discontinued the practice during the summer months.
By then, the states of Arizona, Hawaii and Indiana were the only holdouts in the synchronized science.
President Reagan later tweaked the beginning and ending dates in 1986 for those participating locations.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended daylight saving time in the United States beginning last year, and after more than two dozen failed attempts, a bill finally squeaked through the Indiana state legislature in 2005. Today only the bright sunshine states of Arizona and Hawaii are on standard time all year around.
As of 2007, daylight saving time in the United States begins at 2 a.m. on the second Sunday of March and ends at 2 a.m. on the first Sunday of November.
Diane Giles' That History Column runs the first Sunday of every month.
Contacts
Submit your ideas to
Diane Giles, reporter :
(262) 656-6364
dgiles@kenoshanews.com
Local historian Diane Giles is seeking old photographs of:
* Old photos of houses on Simmons Island that are no longer there
* Photos of the people that the County Highways are named for (many worked for the county highway department or were leaders in county and town affairs: Howard Herzog, Elaine Angelo, Marjorie Larsen, Harriet Marlatt, Eleanor Wagner, Jay Rhodes, Urban Eppers, Arthur Hartnell, William Gleason, Joseph Fox, Clarence Jackson, Jim Brooks, Ernest Zander Peter Harris, Julius Ingwersen and Fred Rasch.
Kathy Troher
(Kenosha News Features Editor): (262) 656-6363
ktroher@kenoshanews.com
Brian Sharkey
(Kenosha News Connections Editor - Web Site):
(262) 656-6282
bsharkey@kenoshanews.com
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HISTORY MYSTERY
Think you know all there is to know about Kenosha’s history?
Welcome to History Mystery, a feature guaranteed to have you scratching your head, trying to figure out a person place, thing or event in Kenosha County history.
Each week you’ll find clues for a new mystery and the answer to the previous week’s challenge. Sorry this isn't a contest and there are no prizes to give away.
~ Diane Giles
Next week's
History Mystery:
Nov. 11:
In certain neighborhoods in 1939, people could take a bucket and get drinking water... from where?
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