The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States affirming the constitutionality of the “law” of Georgia which prohibits the running of freight cars on Sunday, does not of course touch the question of the right of the State to forbid Sunday labor by private parties; but it does show a tendency on the part of the Court of last resort to sustain Sunday legislation as a whole. We shall have more to say on this subject as soon as we shall have procured a copy of the decision.
THE Sunday-law question is being vigorously agitated in Louisiana. It seems that a movement is on foot to secure the repeal of the “law,” and the Sunday-keeping churches are rallying to its support. Memorials to the legislature are being circulated and signed asking not only that the “law” be maintained, but that it be enforced. This fight was not inaugurated by the International Religious Liberty Association, but now that it is on, representatives of the association are doing all they can to render the people intelligent in regard to the principles underlying all religious legislation.
Press dispatches announce that Mr. W. E. Gladstone, the English ex-premier, has come forward as an advocate of “Christian unity,” by means of papal recognition of the validity of Anglican orders, having written a long letter on the subject to Cardinal Rampolla. The Pope, it is said, has directed an inquiry into the subject, whereupon Mr. Gladstone declares that he regards this gracious attitude on Leo’s part as “in the largest sense paternal, and one which he will ever cherish with cordial sentiments of reverence, gratitude, and high appreciation.” It would be needless to state who is the gainer in such transactions.
As we note the fact brought out by a press reporter in connection with the Fleming murder trial, now in progress in this city, that the prosecution refused to call upon the stand the young daughter of Mrs. Fleming as a witness against her, we call to mind by way of contrast the course pursued by the prosecution in the trial of W. D. Dortch, a Seventh-day Adventist, of Springville, Tenn., for having done secular work on Sunday. In the former case the prosecution said it would be inhuman to make the child testify against her own mother. But in the case of the man arrested for desecrating Sunday, the prosecution made every effort to compel Mr. Dortch’s young son to act the part of a witness against his father.
Of the same decision referred to in the preceding note, a weekly paper, published in this city, says:—
There is one sentence in the opinion delivered by the California judges which should be conspicuously engraved where all the labor agitators, the legislators who pass labor laws, and the courts that affirm their constitutionality can see it daily. It is this:
“It is a curious law for the protection of labor which punishes the laborer for working.”
It is a peculiarity of meddlesome laws like those passed in the interest of Sunday observance that they are never what they profess to be. This law could not possibly protect any laborer in his right to rest on Sunday, because his right to such rest never has been infringed, and, in the absence of chattel slavery, cannot be. No employer can force any of his employés to work on Sunday. The law could be used only by those who desired to be idle on Sunday to oppress those who wanted to work; and the same is true with regard to the Sunday law of New York and other States.
Now that the supreme courts of three States, California, Missouri, and Illinois, have seen and declared the injustice of such laws may we not hope that still others will see it?
A CORRESPONDENT asks us to state “why idleness cannot be enforced on a certain day on purely civil grounds.” We reply, simply because no civil reason exists for such prohibition.
Joseph Cook says:—
The experience of centuries shows that you will in vain endeavor to preserve Sunday as a day of rest, unless you preserve it as a day of worship.
Again, in reply to the question: “Could not this weekly rest-day be secured without reference to religion?” the answer given by Mr. Crafts, the then Field Secretary of the American Sabbath Union, was:—
A weekly day of rest has never been permanently secured in any land except on the basis of religious obligation. Take the religion out and you take the rest out.
The fact is, as these men state, that the observance of a weekly day of rest is wholly dependent on religion.
Even admitting for the sake of the argument that a weekly day of rest is a physical necessity and therefore justified by civil reasons, there is absolutely nothing to show that all should rest at the same time. The very utmost that could be justified even then would be a law providing a weekly rest-day for each individual, allowing employer and employed to arrange the matter between them according to their convenience. But nobody wants such a law. The demand for a civil rest-day is altogether in the interests of Sunday “sacredness.”