Religious Liberty Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 19, 1906

Religious Liberty Notes

None of the Sunday bills introduced during the past session of Congress succeeded in passing. The only thing of the kind which did pass was the Sunday-closing rider attached to the appropriation to the Jamestown Exposition. This had the precedent of like provisions to appropriations made to the Chicago, St. Louis, and Portland Expositions in former years. The Wadsworth Sunday bill passed the house June 11, but got no further.

After the adjournment of Congress, Saturday, June 30, President and Mrs. Roosevelt left Washington for their summer home at Oyster Bay, arriving there Sunday, July 1. Knowing their aversion to having their pictures made on Sunday, the men composing the President’s secret service body-guard endeavored to protect them from men with a camera. But in spite of all their vigilance and remonstrances, one man, a photographer employed by a New York paper, succeeded in getting a snap-shot of the President and his wife. When expostulated with by one of the secret service men for taking it, the photographer, it is said, laughed tauntingly at him, and called him a “bluffer,” whereupon the guard struck the photographer in the face. For this the guard was a few days later fined ten dollars. While courtesy would suggest a due respect for the known wishes and religious scruples of others, there is, of course, no law against taking snap-shots on Sunday. If men without law, and contrary to law, will do such things as this in behalf of Sunday observance, what may be expected when rigorous laws are secured from Congress for the compulsory observance of the day?