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

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 88, No. 34.

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District of Columbia

By S. W. Van Trump

ANACOSTIA.—This suburb of the national capital is on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and is accessible by trolley from the city. The population is about 3,500, and the town reminds one of the period of the civil war or earlier.
A company of five workers from Takoma recently visited this place, distributing religious liberty literature, conversing with the people, and learning their attitude toward the Sunday-closing movement which is now being agitated there.
As the place is within the District of Columbia, the people have no voice in its government. Like the city proper, its affairs are managed by the three District Commissioners appointed by Congress. This arrangement does not seem to please some of the people of Anacostia, especially the Sunday-law advocates; for the District Commissioners do not enforce the old 1801 blue-law, since Judge Maloney, in 1908, sitting in the District Court of Appeals, declared it obsolete.
Left without this enforcement, the Sunday-closing forces have been carrying on a campaign of moral suasion, securing signers to a petition for a general closing of all stores, and the release of all employees from Sunday labor. Not all the merchants are willing to sign the petition, one prominent druggist taking a decided stand against it. The idea of letting every man choose his own time of labor is repugnant to those at the head of the movement, and they would covet the paternal duty of regulating the time when free citizens should work and rest. It is hard to lead men to see that this would be an entering wedge for religious persecution.
About five hundred copies of Liberty and a greater number of tracts were given to the people. The leader of the movement received two of our brethren in a most kindly manner, and requested more of our literature, voluntarily subscribing for the Protestant Magazine, upon being told that we printed such a periodical.
The right of franchise may some day be granted the citizens of the District of Columbia, and now is the time to present to them the true principles of liberty as set forth in our excellent publications. S. W. VAN TRUMP.