p. 150 | Is It Ignorance? by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 5, 1889

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 4, No. 19.

Is It Ignorance?

By Editor

UNDER the heading, “Ignorance That Is Inexcusable in This Progressive Age,” the Sacramento Record-Union of May 8 publishes the following. We are inclined to the belief that the letter to the Record-Union was the result, not of ignorance, but of something which is even more inexcusable.

“The following letter was received by the managing editor of the Record-Union yesterday:— 731 N STREET, SACRAMENTO, May 7, 1889.

DEAR SIR: Please instruct your carrier not to leave the Sunday issue of your paper at my house.

I am opposed to Sunday papers on principle, and am sorry for this change in policy in the management of the Record-Union.

A Monday paper may be published without Sunday work, but seven papers a week cannot. I am, yours respectfully, ARNOLD T. NEEDHAM, Pastor Sixth Street M. E. Church.

“Why, certainly, we will so instruct the carrier, but at the same time we would suggest to the reverend gentleman that it ought to be a greater salve to his tender conscience to have the same instructions given in regard to the Monday issue, as the work on the latter is all done on Sunday, while the work on the Sunday edition is necessarily done on Saturday and Saturday night. Mr. Needham ought to know this as well as any man, for reporters of this paper have often worked on Sunday in the preparation of his sermons for the hands of the compositors, who have had to set them up on Sunday night. Frequently the reporters are assisted in this work by the ministers themselves—and on Sunday, too.

“We had believed that there were none so ignorant of the work of publishing a daily newspaper as this letter seems to indicate. We thought that everyone knew that the publication of a paper on Monday morning involved the working of the entire force on Sunday, while the work of publishing a Sunday edition must be done on Saturday night. We have never heard Mr. Needham complain when he saw his sermon published in the Record-Union on Monday morning, that the reporter and compositors had been compelled to work on Sunday in order that he might have that satisfaction, thereby enabling him to place his arguments before an immense audience, which he could never have reached in any other way.”