A Labor Paper on Sunday Laws.
By Editor
WE would commend the following excellent editorial article from the El Dorado Independent and Workingman's Friend, of May 18, 1889, to those of our readers, if there be any such, who think, as is claimed by Dr. Crafts and others, that Sunday laws are demanded by the workingmen. The Independent says:— “The Sunday-law question has become a prominent matter of discussion, made so by the attempt on the part of those claiming to be Christians to violate the spirit and meaning of the Federal Constitution, which, if it means anything, expressly forbids legislation involving a union of Church and State. No matter what the pretense, the fact is patent to every candid mind that the first and main object of legislation upon the matter is to enforce religious observances. We believe in calling a spade a spade, at the same time we design no prejudice to the Christian religion. It is the attempt to enforce religion by law that we have to do with. The proposition to enforce a Sunday law is nothing less than the manifestation of a deliberate contempt for one of the most sacred constitutional rights of the American people. It is a violation of the principles of American institutions. It is bigotry and intolerance. It is a relic of barbarism. “We regard the constitutional question involved in the Sunday-law proposition a test of honesty, and one that stamps as hypocritical all pretensions to Christianity. No one can be honest, and no one can be a Christian, who wantonly disregards the sacred principles of civil and religious liberty, and would bind the consciences of men with legal enactments. A religion that requires to be enforced by law is in direct conflict with the entire teachings of Jesus Christ. “But aside from all religious considerations, no constitutional authority exists upon which a law can be made, saying what an individual shall or shall not do on any certain day of the week that does not apply to all days. All laws governing human action are of a general nature, not confined to any one day, but to all days alike. Any law designed to make one day better than another can have no other authority than that derived from ecclesiastical dogma. Again, no one will deny that it is the inviolate right of every individual to rest on any day he chooses. To enforce the observance of any certain one day of the week as a day of rest would annihilate that right. There is no escaping these conclusions. There is no necessity for adding words. The points we have made in this article are common to every thinking mind. The question is with each individual mind to answer for itself, Shall we maintain the principles of civil and religious liberty? or shall we bow the knee to ecclesiastical tyranny?”174 This is another evidence of that which we have repeatedly stated, that comparatively few of the workingmen are really in favor of Sunday legislation. The fact is, as we have more than once proved, that the demand for Sunday laws originated with a few religious bigots, and that by dint of long speeches and smooth arguments a few laboring men were persuaded to indorse the movement, and then with an immense flourish of trumpets it was at once announced that the demand was the spontaneous production of the labor unions. “For ways that are dark and for tricks that are vain” the National Reformers are not one whit better than ward politicians.