The Anti-Saloon League and Sunday Laws
By Editor
The anti-saloon league of Springfield, Mo., has given notice that henceforward in that city “all barber shops, fruit stands, drug stores (except for the sale of medicines), cigar stores, candy stores, and ice-cream rooms” must be closed on Sundays; otherwise the proprietors of the same will be prosecuted. It seems strange that an anti-saloon league should think that its work as such extended to the closing up of stores and other places of legitimate business. The Sunday law of the State is, of course, the avenue through which the anti-saloon league has wandered away from its legitimate path. The league is attacking the saloon through the Sunday law, and to be consistent it must enforce the law against all business to which it applies. It is the nature of a Sunday law to put no distinction between the good and the bad. Its objection to the saloon is not because the saloon is an evil place, but only because it is kept open on Sunday. Let the saloon only observe Sunday, and the Sunday law has nothing to say against it. Tacitly, it sanctions the institution. We submit that this is not the proper ground of objection to the saloon. Would it not be far better for the anti-saloon league of Springfield, and for every such league, to oppose the saloon on the ground that it is an evil thing, intrinsically so, every day in the week,—a natural enemy of law and order, peace and prosperity, in the community, and therefore to be treated as an outlaw? Why throw around such an institution the sanction of law, by enacting a law which it can observe, and thus claim to be law-abiding, and yet carry on its evil business six days in the week? We wish every anti-saloon league would seriously consider these questions.