Untitled article by W. H. M.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 2, 1893

“The End is Not Yet.”

By W. H. M.

NOTWITHSTANDING the persistence with which the advocates of Sunday closing of the World's Fair by congressional legislation have kept this matter, and their views upon it, before both Congress and the people,—and in spite of the fact that the legislation which they asked they have secured,—it would seem that the real contest over the matter is, after all, yet to come.

The interest which the public press is taking in the question is greater than at any previous time. Every organization is expected to array itself either on one side or the other, and the mass of resolutions and individual petitions presented to Congress on the subject is increasing daily.

At the Woman's Suffrage convention, which lately convened at Washington, D. C., these resolutions were offered:—

WHEREAS, the Constitution of the United States promises no interference with the religious liberty of the people, and

WHEREAS, Congress is now threatening to abridge the liberty of all in response to ecclesiastical dictation from a portion of the people,

Resolved, That this association enters a protest against any national attempt to control the innocent inclinations of the people, either on the Jewish Sabbath or the Christian Sunday, and this we do quite irrespective of our individual opinions as to the sanctity of Sunday.

Resolved, That we especially protest against this present attempt to force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a part of the people as establishing a precedent for the entrance of a most dangerous complicity between Church and State, thereby subtly undermining the foundation of liberty so carefully laid by the wisdom of our fathers.

These resolutions received both hearty support and vigorous opposition. It seemed likely that they would be adopted by a small majority, but they were finally tabled indefinitely, on the plea that it was an individual question and outside the province of the convention as representing the Woman Suffrage Association.

It will be seen that these resolutions, while referring to the present threatened abridgment of popular liberty, do not in so many words designate the Sunday closing of the World's Fair, unless the movement for legislation to close the Fair on Sunday is at ecclesiastical dictation, and does interfere with the constitutional provision protecting religious liberty, and is an attack upon the liberties of the people, and does force all the people to follow the religious dictates of a portion, thereby establishing a complicity between Church and State; unless all this is true the resolutions do not apply to the congressional Sunday closing of the World's Fair. No more striking confirmation of the fact that this Sunday-closing proviso of Congress does do all this need be asked for than the fact that no one in the convention even thought for an instant of any other application of the resolutions than to the Sunday closing of the World's Fair.

The petition clerks of the congressional document rooms are swamped among the thousands of petitions from all parts of the country on the opening or closing of the World's Fair. The Congressional Record, of the dates January 20, 21, 22, 24, and 25, contain thirty-five columns of petitions on this subject. The Record, of January 22, 24, and 25, has twenty-seven solid columns of petitions either for Sunday opening or an unconditional repeal of existing legislation on the subject.

More than a month ago a gentleman, resident in New York City, addressed a letter to the President, personally, protesting “against the delivery of any of the souvenir half-dollars to the representatives of the Columbian Exposition until the provisions of the law making the gift are complied with, namely, that the Exposition shall be closed on Sunday,” and contending that “in the eyes of the law the Exposition was formally opened in October, and, therefore, that the law requiring its closing on Sunday is now in full force, and is being violated by Sunday opening.” This letter was referred to the Solicitor of the Treasury, and upon it he rendered his opinion “that the Exposition has not been formally opened and the statute has not been violated by the delivery of said souvenir coins. The statute presupposes that the souvenir coins will be used for the purposes intended before the Exposition is formally opened.”

The next step was the presentation and adoption in the Senate of a resolution requesting the Secretary of the Treasury to transmit to the Senate a copy of this legal opinion in consonance with which the delivery of the souvenir coins was going on, and also a copy of the regulations for the delivery of the coins which he had made in accordance with that opinion.

Upon this, there soon followed the introduction in the Senate, by Mr. Pettigrew, of South Dakota, Chairman of the Senate Committee on the World's Fair, of a bill instructing the Secretary of the Treasury not to deliver any of the souvenir coins until the World's Columbian Exposition presents a good and sufficient bond that if the World's Fair is opened on Sunday the corporation shall repay to the United States the sum of money it shall have received from the sale of souvenir coins, not less than $2,500,000. Notice was also

given by Mr. Pettigrew that this would be offered as an amendment to the sundry civil bill. On the same day, in the House, Mr. Ketcham, of New York, introduced (by request) a joint resolution which recites in its preamble that an appropriation of five million half dollars had been made in aid of the Exposition on condition that it should be closed on Sunday, and the World's Fair corporation is now seeking to avoid this condition. The resolution then directs the Attorney-General to ascertain the facts in this relation, and if the corporation is not at any time in good faith carrying out the condition and closing the Fair on Sundays then he shall in the name of the United States sue the World's Fair corporation and recover the nominal value of the coins paid to the corporation.

All these things, together with the fact that measures have been taken in Chicago to enjoin the World's Fair Board from closing on Sunday,—and counter-action has been taken by those who desire to compel Sunday closing,—go to show that the public excitement over this question will not subside until the World's Fair is in actual progress, and perhaps not even then.

W. H. M.