Sunday and Sunday Newspapers.
As referred to elsewhere in these columns, the question of Sunday newspapers is agitating the minds of some of the good people of Sacramento, this State, and the editor of one of the dailies of that city has felt called upon to explain at some length his position in the premises. We quote as follows from the Record-Union of May 8:— “The Woodland Democrat quotes in full an editorial note of the Record-Union, concerning the manifest antagonism of public sentiment to the Sunday hoodlum picnic, and the growing disposition to secure for the one day in seven more of consideration as a day when boisterous amusements, carousal, and rowdyism ought to cease. In that article we also said that the sentiment referred to was not opposed to rational use of the day, as good taste, the demand for change, and the necessities of rest and recuperation, require, even when these are manifest by indulgence in reasonable amusements. Upon such expression our contemporary thus comments:— “The above is from the Record-Union, and right beside this friendly sympathy with the sentiment against Sabbath desecration is a blazing advertisement stating that the Record-Union, in order to be ‘abreast with the times,’ will issue a regular Sunday edition. This is not a youthful ebullition, but the determination of a respectable, staid, elderly journal. How does it seem as to consistency?” “We are amazed that so old a journalist as the editor and proprietor of the Democrat should have committed himself to the confession of such rank ignorance. The intelligence bounded by a comprehension that cannot distinguish between rowdy picnics, boisterous amusements, and drunken routs, and the sober and educating vocation of issuing a clean newspaper for reading by the people on Sunday, or any other day, is really unworthy of consideration. But since our contemporary asks how the expression quoted from the Record-Union, and its announcement of the Sunday Union, can be reconciled, we are disposed to reply, since it will reach a few other hide-bound people who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel in disapproving of a newspaper that is compiled, originated, composed and made ready for the press on Saturday, but who do not even entertain the suggestion of gagging over a newspaper that is the product of Sunday work entirely,149in order that the editor of the Democrat, in common with the rest of the community, may enjoy coffee and the record of the news of the world on Monday morning.” “There is no question of consistency involved in the case of the Record-Union; it has published a Monday edition, the product of Sunday labor, for more than a third of a century. That it now proposes to publish a newspaper dated on Sunday, but the product of Saturday labor, in no wise changes its relation to the public or to the Sunday question, and the decent observance of that day. If all the world does no more to offend the Sunday sentiment than this journal, neither clergy nor laymen need entertain any fear of desecration of the day. We recall a time when the Democrat was composed, printed, and issued on Sunday—it being an evening paper—and its proprietor and editor held that he was serving God and man thereby. The Woodland community will bear us out that his religious convictions and profound regard for things holy were as deep and sincere as those of his successor, who now takes the Record-Union to task, but, unlike his predecessor, holds the first instead of the seventh day holy. We have no patience with the bigotry and shortsightedness that exclaims against the clean, helpful, and knowledge-disseminating newspaper dated on Sunday, but that has a stomach for the all-around newspaper that is wholly worked up on Sunday and simply dated on Monday.” “The Record-Union yields to none in its regard for the sentiments of the Christian world, and in sincerity has labored diligently through the medium of these columns to afford its priest and apostles a wider hearing than their pulpit insures, and has labored on Sunday to that end. It has not come to our knowledge that any of these worthy people, whose profession, like that of the journalist, is the betterment of mankind, have ever objected to the industry of the press that makes the newspaper a vehicle for carrying to the world the voice of the pulpit, even though that industry involves labor on Sunday.” What the Record-Union says about the work on a Sunday paper is true, as every newspaper man can testify, as is also what is said of the work on a Monday-morning paper; if either ought to be discontinued because of Sunday work, certainly it should be the Monday paper. But that is not where the shoe pinches; the trouble is, as many ministers have been candid enough to state, that people read the newspapers instead of going to church; the papers are, in short, the competitors of the preachers, and the latter want a monopoly of instructing the people on that day. Were it not for this fact, the outcry, if there were any, would be against the Monday paper.