The Sunday Law Campaign in Oakland
By Editor
The Rev. W. F. Crafts, D. D., field secretary of the American Sunday Union, is on the Pacific Coast putting forth all his energies to reclaim California, the only State in the Union which has no Sunday law. The doctor believes that this condition of equal rights and truest liberty should exist no longer, ergo his presence here. His first mass meeting was held in the First Congregational Church of Oakland, the evening of August 5. Although the meeting had apparently been well advertised, the attendance was not large, only a few of Oakland's two score of pastors being present. At the close of the lecture a petition to congress for a Sunday law was presented, ninety-eight being counted by those in favor of the petition as voting for it, and one-hundred and six voting against it. It seemed to confound the doctor. Here was Oakland, the city of churches, the Brooklyn of the Pacific slope, with its half-hundred churches, and then to have the petition voted down was indeed, as characterized by an Oakland daily, a "surprise party." No effort had been made to induce those opposed to Mr. Crafts' petition to attend the meeting. We are glad to chronicle this indication of a love of liberty on the part of the people of Oakland. This, however, is no indication of what the future may have in store. The Sunday movement will succeed; it is a matter of divine prediction; but it will be but a momentary triumph to an utterly ruinous defeat, which will involve in its ruin those who support it. In the meantime, let all who love liberty do all in their power to enlighten their fellow-men in regard to the iniquity of all religious legislation, or legislation on behalf of religious institutions.