Will They Adhere to the Principle? by C. P. Bollman

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 18, 1915

Will They Adhere to the Principle?

By C. P. Bollman

IN deciding a recent case, the Supreme Court of the United States announced a vital and far-reaching principle. The State of Kansas has a statute forbidding employers to require applicants for positions with them, to sign an agreement not to hold or to acquire membership in any labor union during the term of said contemplated employment.

In a case arising under this statute, the supreme court of Kansas upheld the act. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States. This tribunal reversed the State court, declaring the statute unconstitutional on the ground that it was an unwarranted invasion of the natural rights of the individual.

“The court holds a statute cannot declare things criminal which are in truth essentially normal, constituting nothing more than an innocent exercise of personal liberty. The court holds that under the Fourteenth Amendment a State may not strike down personal liberty or property rights or restrict their normal exercise, except so far as may be incidentally necessary for the accomplishment of some paramount object in promoting the public welfare. The mere restriction of liberty or of property right cannot be practiced by a legislature under the guise of promoting the public welfare and claimed as the legitimate exercise of police power.” — Washington Herald, Jan. 26, 1915.

This principle if adhered to would prove the death knell of every Sunday law in every State of the Union, and would forever settle the question of such a law for the District of Columbia, now so urgently demanded not only by the ministers of Washington but by Sunday law advocates throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Nobody objects to making Sunday a dies non, and this is all that needs to be done for the protection of the individual. But those who demand Sunday laws want not a holiday but a holy day. They want not only that he who wishes to observe the day may be left free to do so, so far as government is concerned, but that every man shall be compelled to render a degree of homage to that day whether he will or not. They are determined that he who will not worship upon that day shall at least be compelled to rest; and this notwithstanding the seemingly ample Constitutional safeguards of religious liberty.

In several States, the constitutions of which provide in more or less explicit terms that “no preference shall be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship,” Sunday laws have been sustained as a part of the “police power” of the State. But under this most recent decision touching this very principle, the innocent exercise of personal rights cannot be infringed upon mere pretense of promoting the public welfare.

“Police power” is not something that is superior to constitutions, but is merely “the power of the State through all its agencies, both general and local, to preserve order, regulate intercourse between citizens, and to insure to each the lawful enjoyment of his rights.” It is therefore no justification whatever of any statute or of any action taken under any statute in contravention of the rights of even a single citizen, to say that the statute was enacted or the action was had in exercise of the police power. Under a government of delegated powers, the police power can never of right rise superior to the fundamental law which at once creates and restricts that power.

Nobody can successfully maintain, and few even attempt to maintain, that Sunday laws are not designed primarily for the protection and exaltation of the day, and only secondarily for the protection of the individual in his right to rest upon that day if he so elects. That this is true is shown by the fact that in most of the States having Sunday laws, such statutes, while permitting the operation of railroads, street cars, etc. (in which employments men often feel compelled to work when they would not otherwise do so, for fear of losing their positions), forbid and punish private, individual labor, labor which is wholly voluntary and which neither interferes with the rest of others nor even remotely requires that others work also.

How accurately the principle laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States applies in the Kansas case, the present writer does not undertake to say; but it is certainly correct as a principle, and fits perfectly much of the Sunday legislation now upon the statute books of the several States, and also that which is demanded of Congress for the District of Columbia. It will be of interest to watch this matter and to see if our national court of last resort will adhere consistently to the wholesome principle which it has enunciated.

C. P. BOLLMAN.