p. 122 | Untitled article by W. H. M.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · April 21, 1892

FromThe American Sentinel, Vol. 7, No. 16

To Prevent Involuntary Servitude.

By W. H. M.

THE title of the Sunday bill for the District of Columbia, “A bill to prevent persons from being forced to labor on Sunday,” now before the House Committee on the District, is evidence of a remarkable state of affairs in the District of Columbia. If it means anything, it means that, under the direct jurisdiction of the Congress of the United States, and immediately within the view of the congressmen and senators there gathered, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution is inoperative, and human slavery exists which this bill proposes to mitigate for one day in the week only. The proposition is preposterous, and the whole bill is no less preposterous than the reductio ad absurdum to which its title tends.

The title is a misnomer; it should read, “A bill to secure and enforce by law the religious observance of Sunday.” The purpose of the measure is to secure idleness on Sunday, and there are judicial decisions which define idleness as the requisite religious observance of Sunday required by the law. That, then, is the title which the bill should carry as an expression of its intent, and also that the title and the body of the bill may be consistent with each other. For, in the bill itself, there is no suggestion that any person or corporation is forced to labor on Sunday, and the heinousness of the offense does not consist in the compulsion exercised by which some fellow-being or corporation is enslaved and compelled to labor, but the criminality rests in the act of performing labor on that day, as well as, and to the same extent with, the employment of labor. The purpose of the act, then, is not to free the slave, and punish the slave-master, but to punish the slave for being a slave. The title of the bill virtually recites that there are persons in the District of Columbia who are slaves, “forced to labor,” and the bill fixes a penalty of not more than one hundred dollars to be laid upon the slave because of his slavery, and upon due conviction of such a condition of servitude. The bill, then, is inconsistent with its title, and it is not its purpose to free any person or corporation from a condition of servitude. The title is a pretense, unworthy the professed character of those who framed the bill and are doing their best to promote its passage, and a slur upon the intelligence of the representative who introduced it. More than that, what can be the views of human justice held by those who can propose to the highest legislative body in the land a measure by which Jewish or Mohammedan slave-masters shall be empowered to enslave men and corporations within the District of Columbia. For any person, in fact, whether he professes the creed of the Jew, the Mohammedan, the Presbyterian, the Methodist, the Congregationalist, the Unitarian, or any denomination or religious sect, or none whatever,—only so long as he professes and practices the observance of some other day of the week than Sunday as a day of rest,—may, legally, without let or hindrance, enforce upon his fellow-men and corporations this condition of servitude which exists in the District of Columbia, and go scot free; because the bill recites “that the provisions of this act shall not be construed to apply to any person or persons who conscientiously believe in and observe any other day of the week than Sunday as a day of rest.”

It is not human slavery which this act proposes to do away with. The enslavement of man by his fellow-men is criminal. It is not criminality which it is proposed shall be dealt with in this measure. For if it were, would it be sound legislation to decree that one class of people may commit a certain crime, for the commission of which another class shall be mulcted in a heavy fine? That which is a crime as between A and B is also a crime as between B and A. If not, it is not a crime at all. And that is the solution of this whole bill, it deals with no crime whatever.

What, then, does it propose to deal with? It proposes to deal with an act which some religionists consider to be a sin against God, an infraction of his moral law, in laboring upon the first day of the week. Such being the case, by what right does any one ask the Congress of the United States to give its sanction to any individual interpretation of the law of God? And that being answered, it is not necessary to ask by what right the Congress of the United States shall attempt the enforcement of any interpretation of the moral law of God.

W. H. M.