Untitled article

Pacific Press Publishing Company · New York City · June 11, 1896

CALIFORNIA is a bad State for Sunday laws. In declaring the Sunday Barber Law unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of that State said:—

The laboring barber, engaged in a most respectable, useful and cleanly pursuit, is singled out from the thousands of his fellows in other employments and told that, willy-nilly, he shall not work upon holidays and Sundays after 12 o'clock noon. His wishes, tastes or necessities are not consulted. If he labors he is a criminal. Such protection to labor, carried a little further, would send him from the jail to the poor-house.

How comes it that the legislative eye was so keen to discern the needs of the oppressed barber, and yet was so blind to his toiling brethren in other vocations? Steam car and street-car operatives toil through long and weary Sunday hours, so do mill and factory hands. There is no Sunday period of rest and protection for the overworked employés of our daily papers. Do these not need rest and protection? The bare suggestion of these considerations shows the injustice and inequality of the law.

Commenting on this decision, the Daily Ledger of Tacoma, Wash., well says: “It is only demagogues, idlers, professional agitators and mischief-makers who talk of overwork and encourage the making of laws to make honest labor criminal.” The Ledger might have added misguided Sunday religionists to the list of those who ask for such legislation.