Labor Unionism and Sunday Legislation

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 14, 1909

Labor Unionism and Sunday Legislation

WHILE there is no appreciable increase in church attendance among labor unionists, there has been during the past three years a marked drawing together on the part of labor union leaders and the leaders in the movement for Sunday legislation. This drawing together is wholly in the interests of Sunday enforcement, and not because the labor unions are desirous of evangelization or conversion, as the absence of any movement in that direction testifies. At the recent church federation meeting in Philadelphia, the workingmen’s meeting was one of the marked features of the convention, and was participated in by the newly elected president of the Federal Council of Churches and Rev. Charles Stetzle, superintendent of the department of church and labor of the Presbyterian Church. Concerning this meeting the Washington Post says:—

The workingmen’s meeting, in the Lyric Theater, was probably the largest ever held in the country. Two thousand men, including the full membership of twenty-four unions, attended. Dennis Hayes, fifth vice-president of the American Federation of Labor, presided. Vice-President Hayes expressed the opinion that the meeting marked an epoch in the history of the church and organized labor. The resolution on labor, adopted by the federal council, the speaker said, was such as to make him almost conclude it emanated from some labor committee.

The drawing together of these two forces for the purpose of enforcing the observance of Sunday does indeed mark ‘an epoch in the history of the church and organized labor.’ It marks a long step backward toward the days of persecution for ‘conscience’ sake; and in this connection it is well to remember the warning sounded in the year 1903 by the New York Independent:—

No one can watch the recent development of trade unionism, with all its unquestionable value and importance, and not be impressed by the rapidity with which it is tending to become a dogmatic religion, surcharged with bigotry, fanaticism, and superstition. The unions have erected Sunday into a sabbath of the faithful. The trades-unions embrace possibly two and a half million members. If they are all to become dogmatic religionists, the days of persecution ‘for the faithful’ are not over.

So far as the leaders in Sunday legislation are able, they are influencing trades-union leaders and members to become that kind of religionists, and the spirit manifested by both parties toward the religious rights of those opposed to the enforcement of a religious rest day, leaves no room to doubt that the prediction of the Independent is true.