The Sunday-Law Agitation in Washington
By W. A. C.
TWICE recently since the Senate District Committee reported favorably upon the Johnston District Sunday bill, action upon the measure has been delayed by different senators requesting that it “go over,” whereas in the Sixtieth Congress (May 15, 1908), it passed the Senate without opposition, word, or comment. This no doubt has been somewhat of a disappointment to the friends and promoters of the bill. In the two Washington morning papers, the Washington Post and the Washington Herald, of Monday, January 24, there appeared the following communication from Dr. Wallace Radcliffe,19pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian church of the city, and chairman of the Interdenominational Committee on Sunday Rest in the District of Columbia:— “Editor the Washington Herald:— “I wish to call attention to Senate bill No. 404, which seeks to secure Sunday as a day of rest for the District of Columbia. It is the same bill which was passed by the United States Senate last winter, but did not get past the House District Committee. Its regulations are substantially as follows: It forbids labor on the first day of the week, except household work, and other works of necessity and charity, and excepts newspaper publishers and public service corporations and their employees. “It forbids circus, show, or theatrical performances, but excepts sacred concerts. It distinctly states that its provisions shall not be construed against the opening of hotels or restaurants, nor the delivery of food before ten o’clock in the morning between June and October, nor the sale of milk, fruit, confectionery, etc., soda, mineral waters, newspapers, periodicals, cigars, drugs, medicines, or surgical appliances, nor livery stable business, nor the handling and operation of the United States mail. “The mere announcement of these details is a complete answer to any charge of narrowness or severity. It is far below the Christian ideal. It is distinctly a civil and not a religious measure. It enjoins no religious duty and imposes no restraint upon the religious liberty of any citizen of the District. It has, in fact, a separate provision which exempts from its penalties any member of a religious society who observes as a sabbath any other day in the week than Sunday. It is eminently fair. It is supremely an effort to secure to the working man his legitimate day of rest. One of the most significant elements in this movement is the fact that it has the eager and enthusiastic support of the labor organizations of the District, claiming more than twenty-eight thousand of our people. “It endeavors to secure to the District the same privileges enjoyed by the citizens of the States of the Union. The seat of the national government is, perhaps, the only territory within its jurisdiction in America where such protection is not given to the citizen. It is a reproach that the District of Columbia has no law to assure or protect a day of rest. Any one can recognize how quickly in recent days, seriously and how, the rights of the laboring man and woman are being encroached upon. He has an inalienable right to his day of rest, and it is the business of the government to see that he is not defrauded. If things continue as at present, there will be only one result, and the workman knows it—seven days’ work for six days’ wages. Their cause should appeal to the humanity of every good citizen. “This bill has behind it the great mass of our law-abiding and humane citizenship. The systematic and persistent opposition is almost entirely limited to the Seventh-day Adventists, whose members in the District, including men, women, and children, are almost three hundred, in a population of more than three hundred thousand. Their coreligionists throughout the country are aiding them by bombarding senators and representatives with telegraphic and other protests on the preposterous idea that the bill is a movement toward union of church and state! This bill, except to a perverted or prejudiced mind, does not attempt in the remotest way to establish any religion or prevent the free exercise thereof by any one. This question has been often raised on similar statutes, and we have yet to find a single decision sustaining it. Wallace Radcliffe.” In response to this, the following reply was prepared for publication in the same papers:— “Is the Sunday-Rest Bill Religious?
“Editor the Washington Herald:— “A communication in your Monday’s issue, I notice, denies that the Johnston District Sunday bill, Senate bill No. 404, is religious. A few facts as to the origin of some of these Sunday-law bills now before Congress and the character of the movement demanding their passage may throw light upon this question. “At a mass-meeting held Feb. 26, 1908, in the New York Avenue Presbyterian church, in the interests of this proposed legislation, the pastor, giving a brief history of the origin of the movement in the District, stated that it originated about a year previously with the ministers of the various denominations in the city forming themselves into an ‘Interdenominational Committee on Sunday Observance.’ To arouse public sentiment in the movement, he said, this committee had prepared and distributed throughout the city twenty thousand copies of a publication entitled ‘A Christian Appeal in Behalf of Sunday Observance.’ This appeal was addressed, ‘To the People of Washington,’ and among other things said:— “‘The custom of setting apart one day in seven from secular work for worship and communion with God antedates the ten commandments.’ “No one can deny that the reason for setting apart one day in seven from secular work, is religious. The reason is plainly stated. It is ‘for worship and communion with God.’ “The publication further says:— “‘To keep the Lord’s day holy, Christians must conscientiously make it a day of rest from all secular work.’ “The prevailing idea throughout the entire publication is that secular work should cease on Sunday in order that the day may be devoted to worship,—that cessation from secular labor is a prerequisite to proper Sunday observance. But this is precisely what the Johnston Sunday bill calls for,—cessation, as far as possible, from all secular work and amusement on Sunday. “In the published ‘Report of the Interdenominational Committee,’ dated Oct. 1, 1907, appeared the following:— “‘The main and necessary feature of such a movement should be the enlistment of all good citizenship for the procuring of efficient Lord’s day legislation for the District.’ “Note the expression, ‘Lord’s day legislation.’ This itself shows that it is religious legislation that is wanted. “This Interdenominational Committee has gone so far as to itself draft a Sunday bill. Senate bill No. 6535, introduced in the last Congress by Senator Johnston, and House bill 19965, introduced by Mr. Hay, are very similar, and this last is word for word the bill as prepared by the Interdenominational Committee and sent to the District Commissioners March 26, 1908, for their approval, with an accompanying communication stating that ‘arrangements are being made to have this bill introduced in both the House and Senate to-morrow.’ “It is useless, therefore, to deny that the movement is religious. But if the movement is religious, so also are the bills called for by it; and if the bills are religious, to enact them, or any one of them, into law, plainly would be religious legislation, and hence unconstitutional. “Senate bill 404 contains an exemption for observers of another day. But the terms of this exemption themselves prove the measure religious. Those exempt must be members of a ‘religious society,’ and must ‘observe as a sabbath’ one day in each seven ‘as herein provided.’ Nothing could more clearly show the religious character of the bill than this. It provides for ‘Sabbath observance,’ and makes the observance of one sabbath or another compulsory. “Pre-eminently, therefore, this is a religious bill. Labor organizations may have been induced to join in the movement, but no man, either in the District or elsewhere in this country, is compelled to labor on Sunday in any legal sense of that term. He can refuse to work, and go to church or spend the day as he likes. In some cases he might lose his position and be obliged to find other employment, but a religion or a religious institution for which we are not prepared to sacrifice is scarcely worth profession or defense; and a religion that seeks the aid of the civil power at once confesses its spiritual weakness. “To appeal to numbers in matters of conscience is unworthy any one, particularly a Christian, who professes regard for the rights of conscience. Eighty years ago, in a report on this very subject of Sunday legislation, Congress said: ‘The Constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual than that of a whole community.’ “Gideon’s army numbered but three hundred, but it was on the side of right and final victory. One of the first and noblest declarations of Protestantism (1529) was, ‘In matters of conscience the majority has no power.’ As a matter of fact, however, the church membership of the District of Columbia Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, the people inveighed against for their opposition to the bill, is more than twice three hundred, representing a population approximately of one thousand. “Is it not well that even a few see the dangers in the first step toward a union of church and state? and should they not be commended rather than stigmatized for their foresight and their adherence to American principles? Well did Madison say: ‘The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.’”