Campaigning California for a Sunday Law by W. A. C.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 27, 1908

Campaigning California for a Sunday Law.

By W. A. C.

UNDER date of Feb. 3, 1907, a brother in California writes as follows:— “The agitation has already begun in California. Mr. Tufts from the North is lecturing in different parts, making a very strong appeal from his viewpoint for a Sunday law in favor of the workingman, and not as a religious law. It will certainly require all the energy we have to spare to meet the matter here. Special effort will be put forth at the next legislature, and between now and then.”

Mr. Tufts is the Pacific Coast representative of the International Reform Bureau, with headquarters in Washington, D. C. He, it seems, was largely instrumental in securing the passage of the Idaho Sunday law last year. In the June 20, 1907, number of Mr. W. F. Crafts’ Twentieth Century Quarterly appeared the following:— “The Reform Bureau of the Pacific Coast district drafted the Sunday rest bill, and was instrumental in securing its passage by the legislature of Idaho. Dr. G. L. Tufts, the district superintendent of the Bureau, gave the movement his personal attention. The bill was passed by a vote of thirty-three to fourteen in the House, and fifteen to four in the Senate. It will go into effect the second Sunday of May.”

And now this same man is touring California, working up sentiment in favor of Sunday legislation in this State that has been so long without a Sunday law, preparatory to securing such a law from the next legislature.

A Sunday bill is pending in the legislature of the new State of Oklahoma. When California and Oklahoma yield to the pressure for this kind of legislation, as they doubtless will sooner or later, every State in the Union will then have a Sunday law. The “reformers” are evidently working hard to “sweep in the whole nation.”

W. A. C.