Trades Unions Enforce Sunday Observance in New York
The New York Sun mentions that there were last year in that city 496 arrests for violation of the Sunday law. And Sunday-law sentiment is not as prevalent there as in some other sections of the country, either. There is a new feature also which is to be noted in connection with this Sunday movement, and that is the stand that is being taken for Sunday enforcement by the trades unions. These unions have their own rules and codes of discipline, independent of all State or municipal law, which they enforce under penalty of fine or expulsion from the organization to which the offending firm or party belongs. Thus Sunday observance is made a rule of the union controlling any particular line of business, and an offense committed within the same can be punished not only under the State Sunday law or the city Sunday ordinance, but also by the trade union itself, under its own code, the extreme penalty in which would be expulsion from the union. And very often the discipline of the union would have more terror for the offender than would any prosecution that would be likely under the civil law. This attitude of the trades unions in favor of that institution, the enforcement of which we have so long believed on the authority of Scripture would at the last be connected with prohibitions upon freedom of trade, is very significant.