To the mournful mooing of cows, the indignant squalling of infants and the sleepy curses of U.S. workers, Monday, Feb. 9, will dawn one hour early. On that day the national Daylight Saving Act, signed last week by President Roosevelt, will become effective.
The rough idea: an extra hour of daylight for the nation should cut down the national consumption of electricity between dark and bedtime (the peak demand for electric power), divert 736 million kilowatt-hours annually to war-production plants. Even so, a power shortage for 1942 is predicted.
Nobody, including the President, quite understood what the country was letting itself in for. Shortly before he signed the bill, President Roosevelt wrote to Judge Landis urging baseball as usual and suggesting more night games. To floodlight Ebbets Field (home of the Brooklyn Dodgers) for a single night game requires 18,560 kilowatt-hours of electric power.