Will the Golden State by the Golden Gate succumb to an attack of the blue laws?
Alonzo L. Baker
State capitol, Sacramento, California
Under the guise of a labor measure, a Puritan Sunday blue law is on the ballot in the State of California for the election November 4. This proposition, mistakenly called by some a “barbers’ bill,” is a thoroughgoing blue law. It is true that it was initiated and sponsored by the barbers of the State, but it comprehends much more than the tonsorial trade. Here is the way it reads in part on the ballot itself:
“SUNDAY CLOSING LAW. Initiative. Prohibits keeping open for business any store, barber shop, workshop, factory, or other place of business, or performing or employing labor, on Sunday.”
Eighteen subsections of the proposition recount the exemptions covering works of charity, necessity, recreation, public utilities, railways, newspapers, etc.
In opposing all such measures as this, the SIGNS OF THE TIMES would not have it appear that it is against either the workingmen or the churches, for such is far from the case. We believe that every man and woman is entitled to one day’s rest each week. Indeed, both by precept and example, God gave us the weekly cycle consisting of six working days and one rest day. It is fundamentally wrong that any should be compelled to labor seven days a week.
Furthermore we hold that society as a whole is much the gainer when worship as well as rest is a prime factor on the one rest day each week. Civilization would rise to new heights if all the people were regular in their attendance upon divine services, for religion is the mainspring of idealism, morality, integrity, and righteousness.
But blue law legislation is neither the cure for the ills the workingmen suffer nor for irreligion on the part of the masses. In fact, the disease is better than the cure if the latter is an attempt at legislation on the things of religion.
California needs no law making it possible for the barbers to have one day’s rest in seven, for very wisely the lawmakers of that State long ago passed a statute making it illegal for employers to require their employees to work more than six days in any one week without a day of rest. See California General Laws (Deering, 1923), tit. 350, act 4718. When that law was made, the legislators very wisely refrained from prescribing the day upon which employees should rest. They left that to the wishes of the employees and the employers.
Therefore, so far as the laboring classes are concerned, this Sunday closing law proposed for California is altogether superfluous. No barber needs to work at his trade seven days in the week if he does not want to. If hisPage Twoemployer should demand such a thing, he could be haled into court and prosecuted forthwith.
Some of the religionists of California are very zealous that this Sunday closing measure should become a law. They feel that it will greatly aid church attendance, for, they reason, the more things that are shut up on Sunday the greater the number of people who will go to church. But such logic is fallacious.
No Help to Religion
There is no law or other hindrance in the State of California to church attendance. Every one may go to church who so desires. And how, pray tell us, will it benefit religion to have people in church who don’t want to be there? If religion is not voluntary, it is not religion. If people go to church because every other place is locked up, it would be far better for the church for them not to be present. Such a situation is the prolific spawning ground for lukewarm religion, hypocrisy, and often bitter antagonism to the church. Husbands cannot pass laws making it compulsory for their wives to love them. Neither by compulsion can men be made to love God or the church. Religion is altogether a matter of persuasion and attraction. Men are drawn to God, not pushed.
Rev. Harry W. Bowlby, secretary of the militant Lord’s Day Alliance, says that if a man’s ball bat, golf sticks, fishing tackle, and theater ticket are taken away from him on Sunday, it will be easier for him to go to church. But if a man is yearning for home runs, par scores, five-pound trout, or Ziegfeld’s Follies while sitting in a church pew, is his presence any advantage to himself, to the church, or to God? Such a man is present in the body but absent in the spirit; and in religion the spirit is what counts.
A Barbers’ Quarrel
So far as the barbers are concerned, this Sunday closing law is an attempt to settle differences among themselves. A few shops in the larger cities of the State want to keep open at least a few hours on Sunday. Their competitors want to close them up. Therefore, they want to shackle the entire State with blue law chains in order to squelch their competitors.
We hold that this is not a fair way to settle such differences. The carpenters, the plumbers, the electricians, and other trades of the State have regulated their hours and days of labor quite satisfactorily without dragging all the people of the State into the quarrel. Why shouldn’t the barbers do likewise?
The days of labor is not a matter to be regulated by law. So far as civil law is concerned, any act that is lawful on Wednesday is also lawful on Friday or on Sunday. Why should the state attempt to say that building a house or giving a shave is lawful on Monday but a crime on Sunday? Religion alone has holydays. Religion alone says that an act is all right on six days but a sin on the seventh. Therefore when the state attempts to make a day holy or holier by legislation, it is stepping over into the domain of religion;3and the interference of the state with religion, or religion with the state is wholly un-American and unchristian and diametrically opposed to the principles of both.
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Only a Beginning
One of the great dangers in such legislation as is proposed for California is that the regulation of one’s labors and recreation will not stop with such a mild measure as the one on the ballot. California has long withstood all attempts of the National Reform Association and the Lord’s Day Alliance to foist a blue law upon the Golden State. They know they must allow many exemptions and camouflage their proposition for it to have any chance at all of getting on to the statute books. But once the blue law camel has his nose within the tent, it will then be only a matter of time until he is in, legs, hump, tail, and all. The blue law proponents never seem satisfied until they have locked everything up tight on Sunday except the churches. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are this very year doing their utmost to free themselves from puritanical blue laws long ago fastened upon them by these reform organizations. In those States practically all labor and amusement are prohibited on Sunday, even “Tom Thumb” golf!
Let the barbers adjudicate their differences among themselves; let the churches make religion so attractive that men will feel they cannot afford to miss attendance at their services; let us not mix up the things of Caesar and the things of God; let us remain true to the principles of Christianity and the principles of the Constitution of the United States.
