or lunch thirty minutes long instead of ninety
minutes, the way some people has got into the habit of figuring it,
Abe," Morris retorted, "but, anyhow, that ain't here nor there. This is
a republic, Abe, and if the people wants to kid themselves by putting
the clock ahead instead of getting up earlier, Mawruss, the government
could easy oblige them, y'understand, but not even the Kaiser and all
his generals could make a law that would change the sun from being right
straight overhead at twelve o'clock noon, Abe."

"Don't worry about the sun, Mawruss," Abe said. "The sun would stay on
the job, war-times or no war-times. Nobody is trying to make laws to kid
the sun into getting to work any earlier, Mawruss, but even with this
war as an argument, there's a whole lot of people which would be foolish
enough to claim pay for a time and a half for the first hour they worked
if you was to alter your office hours so that they had to come down-town
at seven instead of eight, although you did let them go home an hour
earlier in the afternoon."

"Maybe they would," Morris said, "but it seems to me, Abe, that a great
deal of time and money is wasted by legislatures making laws for
unreasonable people. For instance, if you change the clocks to save time
where are you going to stop? The next thing you know the legislature
would be trying to save coal by changing the thermometer in winter so
that the freezing-point from December first to March first would be
forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, and then when people living in houses
situated in cities of the first, second, and third classes kept their
houses up to a sixty-eight-degree new style, which was fifty-five
degrees old style, they would be feeling perfectly comfortable under the
statue in such case made and provided. Also legislatures would be making
laws for the period of the sugar shortage, changing the dials on spring
scales by bringing the pounds closer together, so that a pound of sugar
would contain sixteen ounces new style, being equivalent to twelve
ounces old style."

"It ain't a bad idea at that, Mawruss," Abe said.

"It wouldn't be if the same law provided for changing the size of
teaspoons and cups, Abe," Morris said, "and even then there is no way of
trusting a bowl of sugar to a sugar hog in the hopes that he wouldn't
help himself to four or five spoonfuls, new style, being the equivalent
of the three spoonfuls such a _Chozzer_ used to be put into his coffee
before