Sabbath-keeping Peddlers and Canvassers by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 16, 1875

Sabbath-keeping Peddlers and Canvassers.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

THERE are many legitimate and honorable ways of making a living besides simply laboring with the hands. Keeping store or grocery, buying and selling, canvassing, peddling, &c., &c., may all be conducted in a righteous and honorable manner, so that both the community and the person carrying on the business may be benefited. To all these we have no objection. Still in this age of deception, lying and cheating, there is great danger to those who practice these callings.

If our brethren must go to dickering, peddling, canvassing, and the like, they must be exceedingly careful or they will bring trial upon themselves and a reproach upon the cause. As to dealing in patent rights, it would seem that there has been enough said upon that point, both directly by the Spirit of God through the testimonies, by our preachers, and through our papers. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we are sorry to know that there are some who profess to believe present truth who will go right against this light and knowledge in these things.

But the particular point to which I wish to call attention in this article is this: A Sabbath-keeper starts out through the country peddling, canvassing, or selling patent rights. Persons of this class are generally very talkative, loud in their professions of faith in the present truth, and are very anxious to find those of like precious faith wherever they may chance to go. If possible, they are sure to arrive at the house of some Sabbath-keeper just at meal time, or just at night, and especially just before the Sabbath. They do not wish to stop among unbelievers. They would go a good ways to find a Sabbath-keeper, particularly one with whom they can stop from Friday night till Monday morning. And this not once nor twice in a place, but generally. As to paying, of course they do not expect to pay a brother or sister for such a privilege. Or, if they do, they expect to pay much less than they would anywhere else, and even this must be taken in their wares. Brethren do not wish to turn such persons away positively, nor do they wish to seem little or unbrotherly in charging them; and so these spongers go around the country living off our brethren and saving their own means. Worse than this, as they claim to be Sabbath-keepers, our brethren will trade with them when they would not with any others. They will trust them as they would nobody else, and when they get bitten and deceived by them, as they often do, it hurts them and the cause.

I feel like emphasizing the advice which has so often been given to these peddlers, viz., If you must follow this business, keep away from our brethren and pay your bills honorably as honest men. And to our brethren we say, Give such men a wide berth and a cold shoulder. Do not feel that you are doing God service by encouraging them in this course. D. M. CANRIGHT.