The Sunday Question in Detroit.
W. L. Kingsley, in the N. Y. Independent of Dec. 16, 1875, gives the following account of the recent election in Detroit, the significant moral of which is, Maintain Sunday though you join hands with Roman Catholics to do it:— The city of Detroit, Mich., containing over a hundred thousand citizens, has just been stirred to its depths by the canvass for an election, as it has not been since the battle of Gettysburg. The election was only for municipal officers, but the fact that it involved a contest for principle and the fact that this same battle has been fought recently in New York, and is soon to be fought in every city in the country, gives it an importance over any, even of the State elections. The fight was really over the question whether this hard-working American people shall continue to have the privilege of a quiet rest-day once in the week. The fight in Detroit came about in this wise:— In Michigan, as in all the States of the Union, with the exception of Louisiana, they have always had a “Sunday Law.” Under it, drinking saloons, dance houses, and theaters could be shut up on the first day of the week. This law of late had not been enforced with rigor, and it was supposed by some that the people of Detroit would not be particularly disturbed if its provisions were ignored. At the last session of the Michigan legislature a law was passed on the subject of saloons, which seemed to give permission to the common councils of cities to disregard the Sunday law, and to license lager-beer saloons, theaters, etc., to keep open house on Sunday. It should be said here that it is strenuously denied that this is the fair construction of this recent law. At any rate, if there is a grant of any such permission, it is only to be found in a very ambiguous parenthesis. However, the Detroit common council undertook last summer, under the shadow of this parenthesis, to license the liquor-dealers to open their houses on Sunday. The mayor, an old Scotchman, at once vetoed the bill. The common council then tried to pass it over his head, but failed. At this time, a member of the common council, a young man of wealth, Mr. Thompson, who had recently returned from Europe, in a speech said that he had had opportunities during his travels “such as ordinary Americans had not enjoyed,” of seeing what a Continental Sunday is; and he declared that for himself, he thought he was serving God as well Sunday afternoon “sitting under God’s green trees and drinking lager-beer” as when he went to church on Sunday morning. All Detroit was stirred, and under the excitement the saloons and beer-gardens were shut up. This fall there was to be an election of a mayor. Mr. Thompson, by the use of money, as is said, captured the primary meetings of his party, and received the regular Republican nomination, with the avowed object of securing this privilege for the liquor-sellers, contrary, as is supposed by most persons, to the Sunday law of the State. At once eight hundred prominent Republicans announced in the Detroit Tribune that in the approaching election they would not be bound by party ties, and called upon all friends of “law and order” to throw their votes for the candidate of the Democratic party, Mr. Lewis, who happens to be a man of high respectability in business and social circles, yet a Roman Catholic. At once a “law-and-order” party was formed, composed of both Republicans and Democrats, and the excitement grew still more intense. On the one side, the “law-and-order” party were charged with bigotry and with seeking to unite church and State. On the other, it is claimed that a “rest-day” is one of the ancient institutions of the country, of inestimable importance to the people. It is insisted by large numbers of persons who do not profess to be religious that Sunday is protected by law not on religious grounds at all, any more than the institution of marriage is protected on religious grounds. They say that, like marriage, Sunday is protected, and a rest-day is secured to the laboring man, on the ground of its necessity and its advancement of the public good. The French, in the time of the Revolution, appointed a rest-day on every tenth day; and it proved not to be enough. Petitions came up for a change, and the National Convention actually felt obliged to interpose a “half-rest-day” between every decade—making the rest-day really just about one day in seven. But it is not necessary to give the arguments pro and con. The significant thing is that there have been great political meetings, at which people of every faith and no faith have declared in the most impassioned way their attachment to the day—not on religious grounds, but because they need it and feel that they must be protected in the enjoyment of it; and they have been applauded to the echo. We remember in New York that famous petition published in all the city papers a little while ago, signed by so many of the solid men of New York, with such significant names appended as that of Mr. Wallack, in which they declare their sense of the importance of preserving Sunday as one of the ancient institutions of our fathers, especially conducive to the public good. It will be found that this same feeling is widespread throughout the country to-day; not only among religious people—Protestant and Roman Catholic—but even among non-religious people, to an extent which will surprise mere politicians. To them and to all persons interested we commend the study of the recent canvass in the city of Detroit, and especial attention to the overwhelming majority which the “law and order” and Sunday ticket obtained.