Tammany Misuse of Sunday Laws in New York
In a scathing arraignment of the political organization that has long ruled New York City, Mr. Jacob A. Riis tells how this corrupt organization has used the Sunday law to promote its nefarious work. He gives the following illustration:— “A storekeeper, a Jew, on the East Side, was ordered to pay five dollars a week for the privilege of keeping open Sundays. He paid, and they asked ten. When he refused, he was told that it would be the worse for him. He closed up. The very next week he was sued for a hundred dollars by a man of whom he had never borrowed anything. He did not defend the suit, and it went against him. In three days the sheriff was in his store. He knew the hopelessness of it then, went out, and mortgaged his stock, and paid the bill. The next week another man sued him for a hundred dollars. He went and threw himself on his mercy, and the man let him off for the costs.” A bad statute is always a ready instrument of cruelty in the hands of unscrupulous men.