Jews Fined in Chicago for Working on Sunday.
THERE is trouble between Jews and “Christians” in Chicago because of “disturbances” occasioned by the former in transacting business on Sundays. The Chicago Tribune of March 20 prints the following:— “Religious warfare has broken out in the ghetti over the failure of the Jewish merchants to rest on Sunday. The members of Christian churches in the district declare they are annoyed while attending church by noises occasioned by auctioneering. Captain Wheeler and the police of the Maxwell Street Station have taken a hand, and several arrests have been made. Three men, John Demetrik, Andrew Brown, and Joseph Belap, were taken before Justice Dooley yesterday and fined the costs for disturbing the peace by conducting horse sales in Maxwell street. Their place of business, near Halstead street, was in the immediate vicinity of two churches, and the parishioners complained. “Jewish residents of the district say the arrests are the climax of a series of petty persecutions. They declare that on Saturday they are as much interfered with by the Christians as are the Christians by them on Sunday.” Of course, the Jews and seventh-day Christians are “disturbed” as much by the noise and confusion of secular business on Saturday, as the Sunday observers are by secular business on Sunday; and more so, because the volume of business is vastly greater on the204seventh day than on the first. But of course the seventh-day people do not need any protection against such things! Not that they are differently constituted from other people, but they observe the seventh day instead of the first, and therefore their interests don’t need to be considered! The minority don’t need protection against the majority; it is only the majority that must be protected against the minority! Such are some of the principles involved in this agitation for the legal protection of Sunday. The seventh-day people ask for no “protection” for their rest on the seventh day, and feel no need of any; and the Sunday people, in asking this for their day, only expose the weakness of their cause.