p. 22 | A Poor Sunday-Law Argument

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 3, 1907

A Poor Sunday-Law Argument

A PROMINENT lawyer, who is a candidate for representative in the next legislature of California, has publicly expressed the opinion that the growing corruption in the State is due to disregard of Sunday. Therefore he is booked as a strong advocate of proposed Sunday legislation the coming winter. The argument that a stricter Sunday observance would work a cure of the many evils now extant is not new; it has been advanced for years in this State; but a new stress is laid upon it because a prominent legal light and prominent politician—not noted as a religious man—has given it utterance.

It is somewhat strange that one so well posted on the political history and condition of the country as this same attorney and politician, should advance such an argument. He certainly is not ignorant of the reputed character of political conditions in Pennsylvania. The situation in political circles in the Keystone State has been a byword for twenty years or more. Not a State in the Union has a more unsavory political record; and business conditions, especially concerning great corporate interests, are always affected by the political atmosphere, and vice versa. In fact, it has been through the corrupt business methods of the trusts that the political corruption of the country has been more especially realized.

But Pennsylvania is a special object-lesson illustrating the futility of the argument for a Sunday law in California. Why that State especially?—Because it has the most stringent Sunday law of any of the States; and that Sunday law has been in force for more than a hundred years.—Selected.