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Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York · February 16, 1893

In its issue of January 29, the New York Sun said in reference to the Sunday opening of the World's Fair:—

No, Congress must insist, whether in the interests of religion and reverence or in obedience to the custom and sentiment of the American people, that the Chicago Fair shall be closed on Sunday if it is to receive pecuniary aid and official recognition from the Government of the United States.

Close the Chicago Fair on Sunday! Close it tight!

The Sun said in an editorial paragraph, on October 7, 1892.

The Woman Suffragists have resolved in favor of opening the Chicago Fair on Sundays. The Fair grounds are already open to visitors, and the attendance is increasing. On a recent Sunday fifteen thousand persons passed through the turnstile. During the week the average daily attendance was three thousand. Most of the visitors to the park on Sunday are laboring men and their families. The worthy Col. Elliott F. Shepard is in Chicago working—yea striving with the brethren—to keep the Fair closed against the workingman. Colonel Shepard is a good man.

What becomes of the keen edge of the Sun’s irony in this paragraph when compared with its editorial shout in January—“Close the Chicago Fair on Sunday” against the workingmen! “Close it tight!”

The Sun once itemized its editorial views about the efforts of the Barbers’ International Union to obtain Sunday laws, forbidding Sunday work in barber shops, thus:—

Why should the Barbers’ International Union ask the State legislature to enact laws prohibiting all the barbers of the United States from plying their razors on Sunday? There is no law in any State requiring barbers to engage in Sunday shaving. Every barber in the country is at liberty to refuse to shave anybody, or trim anybody’s beard, or cut anybody’s locks on Sunday. Any barber has the right to close and bar his shop every Sunday of the year. The International Barbers’ Union had better let the legislatures of the States attend to public affairs while its members regulate their own business.

This is sound doctrine. The Sun should have applied the same doctrine to legislation for the Sunday closing of the World’s Fair, and, realizing the fact that there is no law in Illinois requiring exhibitors at the World’s Fair to exhibit on Sunday, been willing that every exhibitor should exercise his individual right to close his exhibit every Sunday if he saw fit. Has the Sun forgotten to apply its own injunction and let Congress attend to public affairs, while the exhibitors at the World’s Fair attend to their own business?