Standard time throughout the United States and Canada has been established in accord with this principle.  Its adoption has proved the advantages which may be attained generally by the same means.  On all sides these advantages have been widely appreciated, and no change intimately bearing upon common life was ever so unanimously accepted.  Certainly, it is an important step towards the establishment of one system of universal time, or, as it is designated in the recommendations, Cosmic time.

The alacrity and unanimity with which the change has been accepted in North America encourages the belief that the introduction of cosmic time in every-day life is not unattainable.  The intelligence of the people will not fail to discover, before long, that the adoption of correct principles of time-reckoning will in no way change or seriously affect the habits they have been accustomed to.  It will certainly sweep away nothing valuable to them.  The sun will rise and set to regulate their social affairs.  All classes will soon learn to understand the hour of noon, whatever the number on the dial, whether six, as in Scriptural times, or twelve, or eighteen, or any other number.  People will get up and retire to bed, begin and end work, take breakfast and dinner at the same periods of the day as at present, and our social habits and customs will remain without a change, depending, as now, on the daily returning phenomena of light and darkness.

The one alteration will be in the notation of the hours, so as to secure uniformity in every longitude.  It is to be expected that this change will at first create some bewilderment, and that it will be somewhat difficult to be understood by the masses.  The causes for such a change to many will appear insufficient or fanciful.  In a few years, however, this feeling must pass away, and the advantages to be gained will become so manifest that I do not doubt so desirable a reform will eventually commend itself to general favor, and be adopted in all the affairs of life.

Be that as it may, it seems to me highly important that a comprehensive time system should be initiated to facilitate scientific observations, and definitely to establish chronological dates; that it should be designed for general use in connection with railways and telegraphs, and for such other purposes for which it may be found convenient.

The Cosmic day set forth in the recommendations would be the date for the world recognizable by all nations.  It would theoretically and practically be the mean of all local days, and the common standard to which all local reckoning would be referable.