Last night most of you probably set your clock back an hour and enjoyed a little extra sleep as daylight saving time ended. Daylight saving time has been around for a little over a century, but wasn't completely adopted by Iowa until 1971. SCUA houses letters that date back to World War I when the clock change was first adopted, as well records from the Iowa Farm Bureau publicly opposing the adoption of daylight saving time for Iowa. Read below for more details!

Photo of hands holding up a clock
Photo can be found here

Daylight saving time originated during World War I as a means to conserve fuel during the war. The time change was adopted by the United States in 1918, but it was soon abolished after the war. Check out this letter from March 30th, 1919, Madge Hawkins wrote to Ralph Van Zander:

Cursive, handwritten letter from 1919
Letter can be found in MS 0213, Box 6, Folder 68

Madge states in the 7th line, "Yesterday morning as two o'clock times changed again. It sure is hard to get up an hour earlier". Surely this is a common sentiment even today when March hits and the clock has to go an hour forward.

Additionally, Ralph Van Zander sent a letter to their parents you can find below.

Letter can be found in MS 0213, Box 6, Folder 67

In the 5th line, Ralph refers to daylight saving time and states that "it makes too long a day to suit me 3 or 4 hours is as long as I can work". Both of these letters can be found in MS 0213, Box 6, Folder 67.

Jumping forward to the 1960's, Iowa began to adopt daylight saving time in certain parts of the state. On May 13th, 1960 the Des Moines City Council voted in favor of daylight saving time, marking "17 of the 20 largest cities in Iowa committed to daylight time," regardless of the fact that 65% of Iowans were not in favor of adapting to the new "fast time," as documented in a newspaper clipping from MS 105, Box 54, Folder 7.

The same folder contains various documents showing the Iowa Farm Bureau's (IFB) opposition to Iowa adopting daylight saving time. Included in this folder is a letter to the Mayor and members of the Des Moines City Council, IFB writing that while daylight saving time was implemented in World War I, the "benefits of the plan were questionable."

Additionally, IFB stated as a main reason of opposition "the very nature of a farmer's business during the summer months requires that he work on the sun schedule at planting and harvesting periods and, thus, must work from early dawn until late in the evening as weather permits and crops demand" (MS 105, Box 54, Folder 7).

Eventually, Iowa did adopt daylight saving time state-wide in 1971. Do you enjoy daylight saving time or are you on the same side as the Iowa Farm Bureau was in the 1960s? We'll leave you from this excerpt from Henry Van Dyke in a newspaper clipping making an argument against daylight saving time.

New clipping title: As we turn out clocks forward Clipping reads: This little quote from Henry Van Dyke seems quite apropos: "To be foolish is an infirmity. To fool others is a trick. But to fool ourselves seems to be natural propensity- you might almost say a necessity of man. Take an illustration from the modern device which is called 'daylight saving.' In the summer men would like to begin their work an hour earlier in order to finish it an hour sooner, and have the lovely eventide for rest or play. Good! A find idea! Perfectly simple! But it seems that men can not do this simple thing without fooling themselves. They must set their clocks an hour ahead. They must tell themselves that the time is what they know it is not. They must delude themselves into doing a wise thing. Meanwhile, the cows and the birds and the stars and the tides and the railways run on the real time. But men are all mixed up, and miss their engagements, because they are fooling themselves. 'Lord,' says Puck, 'what fools these mortals be!'"
Clipping can be found in MS 105, Box 54, Folder 7