meets my views. It will be more easy
to discuss the subject, more easy to arrive at a decision, in that
form.

M. le Comte ALBERT DE FORESTA, Delegate of Italy. I propose as an
amendment the fifth resolution of the Roman Conference, which reads as
follows:

"The Conference recognizes, for certain scientific needs and
for the internal service of great administrations of ways of
communications, such as those of railroads, lines of
steamships, telegraphic and postal lines, the utility of
adopting a universal time, in connection with local or
national times, which will necessarily continue to be
employed in civil life."

The PRESIDENT. The question is now upon the amendment offered by the
Delegate of Italy.

Professor ABBE, Delegate of the United States. I would like to ask
whether this amendment adds anything substantially to the resolution.
I think it does not. It simply specifies the details of the resolution
pending before us. That resolution "proposes the adoption of a
universal day for all purposes for which it may be found convenient."
That is general. The amendment merely specifies certain of these
purposes. That is a matter of detail.

Mr. ALLEN, Delegate of the United States. Mr. President, I desire to
offer an amendment to the amendment, as follows:

"Civil or local time is to be understood as the mean time of
the approximately central meridian of a section of the
earth's surface, in which a single standard of time may be
conveniently used."

Mr. RUTHERFURD, Delegate of the United States. Mr. President, it does
not seem to me that it is within the competence of this Conference to
define what is local time. That is a thing beyond us.

Mr. W. F. ALLEN, Delegate of the United States, then said: Mr.
President and gentlemen, all efforts to arrive at uniformity in
scientific or every-day usage originate in a desire to attain greater
convenience in practice. The multiplicity of coins of which the
relative value can only be expressed by fractions, the various common
standards of weights and of measures, are inconvenient both to the
business man and the scientist. Alike inconvenient to both are the
diverse standards of time by which the cities of the world are
governed, differing, as they do, by all possible fractions of hours.

All coins have a relative and interchangeable value based upon their
weight and fineness. Weights and measures remain the same