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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · October 16, 1890

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 5, No. 41

A RECENT decision of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, holding that a barber who kept his shop open on Sunday violated the statutes prohibiting all labor on the Lord’s Day except works of necessity and charity, provoked the following comment by the editor of the Albany Times:—

‘Why the Philadelphia judges should hold that it is Sabbath-breaking for a barber to shave a customer on Sunday, but not for the customer to shave himself, is one of those queer things that none but Philadelphia lawyers could fathom. If the shaving be work and labor, why is it not equally work and labor if performed by an individual upon his own countenance? And again, if Sunday shaving be work and labor, what is putting on one’s coat or one’s clean shirt to be called? Is not the one as necessary to a decent appearance at church service as the other? Does not a decent respect for the house of worship require a man to appear in it with a clean face, as well as in a clean collar and polished shoes? And if the law will not allow the barber to shave his cheeks and chin, why does it permit his cook to prepare his dinner, his waitress to serve it up, and him to eat it? Where does Sunday work and labor begin, and where does it end?