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Run Through To Jackson

Run Through To Jackson image
Parent Issue
Day
25
Month
April
Year
1902
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Cars From Detroit Made Their First Trips Today

Will the City Now Adopt Standard Time as Has Been Stated? It Looks Doubtful That it Will

At 6:15, standard time, Tuesday morning the D., Y., A. A. & J. railway commenced running its Detroit cars straight through to Jackson, the work on the interlocker at the Ann Arbor railroad crossing having reached such a stage as to permit the cars to cross the tracks.

From now on there will be an hourly service to Jackson, and alternate cars, reaching Ann Arbor at a quarter before the hour, standard time, will return to Detroit without going further west. The large cars will now run over the whole distance, and the express cars will also run through to Jackson.

In accordance with the statement made some time ago, the electric railway company adopted standard time this morning, at the time the first car passed through for the west, and it now remains to be seen whether the city and University authorities will get in line and adopt the same system.

It was announced several weeks ago that the campus and court house clocks would be set at standard time as soon as the electric railway people made the change, but since that time there has been some protest on the part of those who do not desire to give up local time. When asked as to the probable outcome of the matter, County Clerk Philip Blum said:

"I am not able to say just when the county and city will adopt standard time, and neither am I sure that there will be a change at all. At its last session the board of supervisors passed a resolution empowering me to set the court house clock at standard time as soon as the University adopted the system, but I have heard so much dissent that I am inclined to leave the matter to the building committee, which has charge of the court house. This committee consists of Eugene Oesterlin of this city, Wm. Bacon of Chelsea, and Ira E. Wood of Lodi, and from what I know of their views I do not think that they are in a hurry to change to standard time. Personally I have no choice, but I am inclined to believe that the city will continue to run on local time."

When asked as to what stand the University would take in the matter, Secretary Wade said:

"The University will not adopt standard time until the city is ready to do so. We once tried to act independently of the city, but with such unsatisfactory results that we will not try the experiment again. We are ready for a conference with the city and county authorities at any time, and will abide by any decision that may be arrived at."

It may be interesting to know that a state law designates standard time as the legal time, and all courts, legislative bodies, etc., are expected to use it. Section 1753 of the compiled laws of Michigan reads as follows:

"The people of the state of Michigan enact, that standard time, central division, based on the ninetieth meridian of longitude west from Greenwich, shall be legal time within this state."

When questioned in regard to the practice in this county, Attorney M. J. Cavanaugh said:

"Although standard time is the legal time in this state, the courts and other county machinery of Washtenaw county have never been run on that system. When the time for the execution of a legal instrument is set for a certain hour, the action would be void if other than standard time were observed in execution."

In this county it has been the custom to add the word "local time" to the hour, and there has never been a question of legality on this score.