Although his father was employed by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, train schedules were not especially important to Carl Sandburg in his youth.

 

It was important for the railroad to have scheduled times for arrivals and departures at the depot in Galesburg during the nineteenth century. There was a great deal of freight to be shipped out and to be received  for delivery to local businesses. Passengers also boarded trains for cities across the state and country. The railroad was the fastest transportation of the day.

 

The depot had its own clock and the train conductors carried their watches. They had to be synchronized. Not only did the clock and watches agree with one another, they had to agree with other timepieces which were many miles away. After 1869,  and for many years thereafter, their uniform time was provided by the Allegheny Observatory which still exists at the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Samuel Langley, the director of the Observatory devised a source of income for his institution. It was to sell subscription service to time that was accurate by astronomical measurements and transmitted over telegraph to customers, most of whom were railroads.

 

Railroads in the East used New York time. Chicago time was used to coordinate schedules in the Midwest. Trains in the West ran by San Francisco time. For some reason, the Santa Fe Railroad ran on Jefferson City, Missouri, time.

 

Many people in those days observed natural or sun time. Many called it God's time. It was specific to their location on the earth. As astronomical research and observations were made by scientists, they realized that the sun created time and it could be easily predicted.

 

The General Time Convention (renamed the American Railway Association in 1891) was an organization of U.S. railroads charged with coordinating schedules and operating standards. It was urged to adopt a five time-zone standard similar to the one in use today. On October 11, 1883, the leaders of all the railroads met in Chicago at the Grand Pacific Hotel and agreed to adopt the proposed system. On November 18, 1883, all railroad clocks were adjusted to four time zones across the United States. Previously, there had been more than three hundred sun time zones observed across the country.

 

Travelers wishing to go long distances by train frequently had long waiting periods in the cities on their route. Since many railroads had only a single track, one train had to wait on a siding while another passed. There were collisions caused by trains traveling on the same track at the same time. Observing a common time in each time zone helped the railroads provide regular service, increased the safety of passengers and prevented the destruction of expensive equipment.

 

Of course, there were people who didn't see any need for changing from sun time. Local residents of towns thought their clocks were set at the proper time. There was some variation across each time zone as the sun crossed the distance from one time zone to the next. Keepers of public clocks, jewelers and fire bells had a stake in keeping sun time. To this day China has only one time zone in that extraordinarily large country.

 

Standard time is the synchronizing of clocks within a geographical area. The United States Congress established standard time in 1918 during World War I, using the railroad's pattern. It also created daylight saving time in the same legislation, to make more use of the daytime hours. That section of the law was repealed after the war ended. Of course, there were people who thought that was a poor way to run the country. According to the law, time zones can be changed only “for the convenience of commerce.”

 

When Carl Sandburg was on his hobo trip in 1897, he didn't pay much attention to time zones. He just waited until the next freight train left the yard going slow enough for him to hop on. Of course, he had to be careful to stay awake and avoid falling off the car, no matter the time.