Why do They do It ? by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Sep 14, 1882

Why do They do It ?

By Editor

IT seems to us that it is full time for the religio-political speakers and writers to cease their affirmation that the workingman's only hope of a day of rest depends upon upholding the present Sunday Law. A political paper says of those who do not approve of it that they mean,

"To deprive the workingmen of a legal holiday—a day set apart for rest and relaxation by law—and thus aim a blow at the toiling 'mud sills of creation.' "

Anyone who is not lamentably ignorant of the laws of California knows that the Sunday Law of the Penal Code makes no provision whatever for a legal holiday. The Civil Code makes every Sunday a legal holiday, and the workingman would have his legal holiday—"a day set apart for rest and relaxation by law"—if the Sunday Law of the Penal Code were entirely abolished. We would be pleased to see some one undertake to disprove this statement.

The fact is that the present excitement is not at all to secure to the workingman "a legal holiday." We do not know of a single interest or a single individual in the State by whom the Sunday legal holiday has been attacked. The Sunday Law regards the Sunday only from a religious stand-point; and as a religious observance, and not as a legal holiday, it is now forced into politics. It is because its friends do not want it as a legal holiday for rest and relaxation—or "rest and recreation" as the latest and "authorized version" has it—that it is made a political question at this time.

Yes, say the clerical advocates of the Sunday Law, it is the "Christian Sabbath," and must be observed in a manner becoming its sacred character.

Why not, then, take that position openly and unitedly, and not tell the people that it is not a question of religion at all, but merely a "police regulation" or a "sanitary measure?" It is too plain to admit of denial that all this pleading for the Sunday Law as a necessity in order to provide a legal holiday for the workingman, or that it is a mere police regulation, is a mere subterfuge—no better than a rank deception. This we have claimed from the beginning of this Sunday-Law excitement.

We do not affirm, however, that all the people, all the politicians, or even all the ministers who have asserted this, are yet well enough informed on the subject to be aware of the nature of the deception which is thus being practiced. We are sorry for them, and shall do all in our power to enlighten them. And with us it becomes a matter of anxious inquiry, How will they act in reference to it when they become better informed in respect to it? Will they then try to conceal their object by still advocating the Sunday Law for the sake of a legal holiday? Or will they come out openly and tell the public just what they want, and why they want it?