Nevin's Data "Points"

  This past weekend most of America underwent a rather painful change — though it’s probably only just setting in. I’m talking about the legally mandated move to Daylight Saving Time (for most of us [i] ). That’s right, at 2:00 a.m. on March 9, clocks around the nation “sprang forward,” reversing course from last fall when the move was to “fall back” to standard time. It’s a “movement” laid at the feet of none other than Benjamin Franklin who, in what’s been characterized as a “satirical”  letter  to the editor of  The Journal of Paris  in 1784 pitched “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.”  Mr. Franklin may have been satirical, but the economic rationale for this artificial time contrivance lingers on. It was certainly a factor in 1916 when Germany saw adjusting the time as helpful to its war effort. Great Britain embraced the same logic the following year, and by March 1918 [ii]  the (now at war) United States was on board — well, s...