Sunday-Law Agitations by S. B. H.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 24, 1911

Sunday-Law Agitations

By S. B. H.

From correspondence and press reports this department is being advised almost daily of some agitation on the subject of Sunday-law enforcement from official as well as unofficial standpoints. The legislature of Connecticut is still in session, and has before it the matter of Sunday-law amendments. It seems that the people who desire Sunday recreation are pleading for amendments to the present Connecticut Sunday law affording more liberal advantages.

The Hartford Courant of Wednesday, August 2, contains a very full account of a Sunday-law debate in the senate. According to this account, many speakers took part pro and con, from which we give one or two interesting statements:—

Senator Hooker pointed out the inconsistencies of Sunday-law enforcement. He said that the people in the upper wards of Hartford could do about anything they wished to in their country clubs and golf links and in their automobiles, but the man who lived in a tenement, with only a few cents to spend for car fare, could shut himself up in his tenement.

“Since Hartford was shut up tight, twenty clubs had sprung up, where, under the club rule, there were card games and drinking. Those clubs were veritable dens of vice and wickedness. He said he did not think it any more wicked for a crowd of men to sit in the open air and watch a ball game on Sunday than it was for the more favored ones to dance about the State in automobiles.”

Senator Spellacy, advocating his substitute, said that every town in the State could have just the kind of Sunday it wanted. The object of the bill was not to cover baseball only, but was broader than that. Local option seemed to him the only logical solution of the problem. The senator made the following very pointed and significant statement: “You are making Socialists and anarchists; not that those words have any connection, but you are making anarchists when you make one class stand idle and watch the other class go by in their automobiles.” He said, further, that it was demoralizing to the citizenship to tell the working people of Hartford they could not go to Elizabeth Park on Sunday and buy a glass of soda sold by the city of Hartford at actual cost. He maintained that rest did not mean idleness, but a change, a transition from one occupation to another.

The injustice of Sunday laws was pointed out by Senator Judson, who remarked: “While the senator from the twenty-fourth occupied his upholstered pew in church and sat or dozed during the sermon, druggists within a stone’s throw were selling ice-cream or cigars, while stores near by, which also sold those innocent things, were raided by the police.”

The Spellacy amendment was passed by a vote of eighteen to sixteen! The bill now goes to the house for its action.

“Sunday War” in Atlantic City

A letter from Elder G. W. Spies, of Pleasantville, N. J., brings the information that a Sunday war is on at that place, and refers to the friendly attitude of the local press to the principles of religious liberty. In writing to the editors of the papers there, Brother Spies said, among other things:—

“There needs to be a better and more general understanding of the great principles underlying human rights and liberties. Principles which, if universally understood and adhered to, would insure peace on earth and good will among men, ought not to be ignored or forgotten.

Religious liberty is safe only while a knowledge of its principles is familiar to the people. It is to this fact that the laws of toleration and religious freedom in many of the modern governments of Europe, America, and elsewhere are due. Through the great struggles of the past for freedom, the people of these lands became familiar with the principles, and public sentiment demanded their recognition and expression in the laws of the land.”

A Delaware Experience

The Morning News of August 2 gives an account of the prosecution of Upton Sinclair, the author of “The Jungle,” and others, for playing baseball and lawn tennis on the previous Sunday. The law had been invoked by a Mr. Brown in retaliation for preventing his speaking at a Single Tax community gathering at Arden, Del.

“Navy Must Observe Sunday”

The following is clipped from the Washington Post of August 8, under the above heading:—

“Laxity in the naval service in complying with Sunday-observance regulations has brought forth a special order from the Secretary of the Navy, directing that they be strictly followed. The regulations provide that labor shall consist only of necessary duty. A vessel is not allowed to coal, except in urgent cases. The special order says, ‘The department notices a tendency in the service to fail to comply strictly with the provisions of these regulations.’”

S. B. H.