100 years ago in Spokane: City prepares to gain an hour for the war effort

People were preparing for a bold new nationwide experiment: daylight saving time.

The Spokesman-Review reminded its readers to set their clocks ahead one hour before going to bed.

“The change was purposely made effective on Sunday to lessen confusion,” said the paper. “The average householder will have time to become accustomed to the change by breakfast time Monday morning.”

Weeks earlier, the U.S. Congress passed a daylight saving time law, on the theory that it would reduce fuel and power consumption during wartime.

The S-R editorial page approved, saying, that in the evening “the gardener can garden, the golfer can golf, and the autoist auto.”

The daylight saving time committee of the local Chamber of Commerce had one other admonition: “Don’t be late for church!”

From the golf beat: Speaking of golf, the S-R editors offered a withering critique of the park board’s plan to double the playing fee at Downriver Golf Course.

They said that if the board wants to turn the course into “a new and exclusive country club for the well-to-do,” then they were taking the ideal course. But if they wanted to “offer healthful exercise and recreation to the greatest possible number, the board is acting most foolishly.”

The new fee will be “absolutely deadly.” It will “bar the very classes of people for whose benefit the course was, ostensibly, founded.”

How much was this new, outrageous fee?

50 cents.