Post-Office Sunday-Closing Law Under Fire
By S. B. Horton
DURING the Sixty-second Congress, a rider was attached to the post-office appropriation bill (H. R. 21279) providing for the closing on Sunday of first- and second-class post offices. It was the opinion of certain members of that Congress that Sunday closing would bring economic results to the postal service as well as “rest” to its employees. This view was expressed in the Senate report, (Report No. 955, July 23, 1912), as the following excerpt therefrom indicates:— “It has been suggested by some that the provision be changed so as to permit the delivery of mail for one hour or for delivery of mail through boxes on Sunday, but on a moment’s reflection it will be readily apparent that the delivery of any portion of the mail for any portion of the day necessitates handling and distributing the entire mail, and, consequently, the employment of a considerable number of clerks, thus defeating the purpose to be accomplished.” After a year’s trial of compulsory Sunday closing, the Post-office Department presents facts and figures showing that neither economy nor rest has been secured by the arrangement imposed by Congress. The First Assistant Postmaster-General, Mr. Roper, in his report to the present session of the Sixty-third Congress, maintains that the Sunday law impairs the efficiency of the service, saying, in part:— “The enforcement of this law, particularly the latter clause, not only adds largely to the cost of the service, but materially lessens its efficiency. Mails are received and dispatched at practically all first- and second-class offices on Sundays, and during certain hours this necessitates the employment of at least a part of the force. Under the law these employees must be granted compensatory time on one of the six succeeding days. Owing to the constant fluctuation in the postal business, this legal requirement works materially to the detriment of the service. For instance, during the very busy periods, especially between October and May, in order to prevent an undue accumulation of mail in post-offices, it is necessary to require a considerable number of the employees to report for duty each Sunday. The granting of compensatory time to these employees during the succeeding week when the condition of the work urgently demands their presence, and to employ inexperienced substitutes in their places, results in a serious impairment of the efficiency of the force. The granting of compensatory time in New York City alone deprives that office of the services of about one hundred and ninety clerks on every week day during the busy periods. “The department believes it would be in the interest of both the service and the employees to amend the law so as to provide for the granting of compensatory time for Sunday work when the employees can be most conveniently excused from duty.” The present Sunday-closing law is the first favorable response by Congress to a campaign inaugurated more than a century ago for Sunday closing. Jan. 4, 1811, a petition was presented to the Eleventh Congress by the synod of Pittsburgh, asking for the altering of post-office and post-roads regulations so as to provide for compulsory cessation of the service on Sunday. This petition was referred to Postmaster-General Gideon Granger, who reported that “from the peculiar phraseology of the ninth section of said act (April 30, 1810), it is doubted whether he be warranted by law in limiting the right of the citizens to demand their letters to one hour on the Sabbath.” Postmaster-General R. J. Meigs, Jr., reporting Jan. 16, 1815, to the Thirteenth Congress on a similar petition, said, among other things:— “The usage of transporting the mails on the Sabbath is coeval with the Constitution of the United States, and a prohibition of that usage will be first considered.” By the Twentieth Congress, members of Congress began to protest against that character of legislation very strongly. Col. R. M. Johnson, of Kentucky, who was chairman of Senate and House committees on post offices and post roads in the Twentieth and Twenty-first Congresses, took decided grounds against religious legislation, the feature he said others saw in the proposed Sunday-closing laws. From these memorable reports we present a few thoughts:— “It should, however, be kept in mind that the proper object of government is to protect all persons in the enjoyment of their religious as well as civil rights, and not to determine for any whether they shall esteem one day above another, or esteem all days alike holy.” “With these different religious views, the committee are of opinion that Congress cannot interfere. It is not the legitimate province of the legislature to determine what religion is true, or what false. “If admitted, it may be justly apprehended that the future measures of the government will be strongly marked, if not eventually controlled, by the same influence. All religious despotism commences by combination and influence; and when that influence begins to operate upon the political institutions of a country, the civil power soon bends under it; and the catastrophe of other nations furnishes an awful warning of the consequence.” “Let the national legislature once perform an act which involves the decision of a religious controversy, and it will have passed its legitimate bounds. The precedent will then be established, and the foundation laid, for that usurpation of the divine prerogative in this country which has been the desolating scourge to the fairest portions of the Old World.” “If Congress shall, by the authority of law, sanction the measure recommended, it would constitute a legislative decision of a religious controversy, in which even Christians themselves are at issue. However suited such a decision may be to an ecclesiastical council, it is incompatible with a republican legislature, which is purely for political, and not for religious, purposes.” “If the measure recommended should be adopted, it would be difficult for human sagacity to foresee how rapid would be the succession, or how numerous the train of measures which follow, involving the dearest rights of all—the rights of conscience. “It is perhaps fortunate for our country that the proposition should have been made at this early period while the spirit of the Revolution yet exists in full vigor.”—“American State Papers,” pages 234, 236, 237, 239, 244, 250, 253. At the time the present Sunday-closing arrangement was in the Senate Committee, repeated attempts were made to secure a hearing on the part of those who could have pointed to the exigencies which have arisen, as set forth in Mr. Roper’s report, but the committee, of which Senator Jonathan Bourne was chairman, did not view with favor the application therefor. The thing for Congress to do is to keep within the beaten path of a patriotic42ancestry, which refused to turn the course of our country from a civil to a quasi religious affair. Sunday observance by compulsion of civil law has always proved unsatisfactory, and can meet with no other result, because such legislation antagonizes and repudiates the principles of civil and religious liberty.