p. 51 | Untitled article by G. E. Fifield

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 12, 1891

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 6, No. 7

“Sunday Labor.”

By G. E. Fifield

“THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS TO BE PETITIONED TO PROTECT THE BAKERS FROM IT.”

The above is the heading of an article we clip from the Boston Herald, of Monday, the 19th ult. A portion of the article reads as follows:—

The bakers of Boston affiliated with the Knights of Labor, took possession of District Assembly No. 30, Knights of Labor, yesterday afternoon, and urged that body to petition the Legislature to enact a law abolishing Sunday work in all bake-shops.

It was claimed that Sunday work was unnecessary, and that it had a demoralizing effect upon the craft; that its abolishment would tend to create thrift, industry, and more temperate habits among the bakers. The Assembly unanimously voted to comply with the request of the bakers, and to instruct its delegates to the State Assembly, to urge that body to take up the bakers’ cause.

Here, indeed, would be something laughable in the extreme, if it were not, when viewed in the light of history, so prophetic of coming evil. It seems that the bakers of Boston are desirous of stopping work on Sunday, but for some reason they do not dare to do so until they can induce the Legislature of the State to compel them to do the very thing they declare they want to do. So they desecrate the sacred day by holding a business meeting to urge the Knights of Labor to petition the Legislature to make a law to prohibit them from desecrating it. Well, well, can it be that these bakers who live under the very shadow of “Bunker’s shaft of gray” have forgotten so entirely their rights as American citizens?

The very Declaration of Independence, which was the beginning of our national existence, declares that “all men are created free and equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

What is meant by liberty, which is here declared to be an inalienable right? What but the right of every man to his freedom, and the use of his time as he sees fit, limited only by the rights of others?

It is the inalienable right of every one of these men to stop working when they please, and to work when they please, provided they do not interfere with others’ rights.

When they petition the Legislature to make laws compelling them to stop work on Sunday or on any other day, they petition the Legislature to take away their inalienable rights. They petition the Legislature to do what no legislature on earth has the right or power to do; for no human power can in reality take away a right which God has given, and which is therefore inalienable. “Despotic power may invade these rights, but justice still confirms them.”

It has always been the tendency of legislative bodies to be aggressive, and infringe on the rights of the people; hence they have had to be checked by Constitutions, and all sorts of limitations. When, therefore, the people come to humbly beg to be enslaved, and to fairly plead that their most sacred right shall be infringed upon, will it be strange if the Government accommodates them sooner or later, and makes them slaves indeed? One is reminded by all these things, of the time when the Roman people became incapable of self-government and so looked more to the representative power for everything. Thus was built up a paternal government, and finally, an absolute despotism. “Can it be that we too are in the last days of the Republic, as then was Rome?”

Sure it is, that when any considerable proportion of the citizens of a nation, come to request, or even to peaceably permit their inherent rights to be infringed, those rights will not long remain secure.

G. E. FIFIELD.