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THE "SUNDAY PICNIC."

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International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 12, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 18.

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THE "SUNDAY PICNIC."

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

HAVING occasion on a recent Sunday evening to go over to San Francisco, we boarded the local train at Seventh Street and Broadway. As we entered the car, our ears were greeted with a jargon of sounds that seemed to indicate that an Indian powwow was going on. We soon found, however, that the sounds came from a crowd of male and female San Francisco hoodlums on their way home from a Sunday picnic. They crowded the car so that the conductor could scarcely get through, and their half-drunken orgies made decent people ashamed to be in the car.
As we looked upon the disgraceful scene, we could not help thinking how plausible an argument the Sunday-law advocates have for a Sunday law. The "Sunday picnic" is one of the standing reasons for a Sunday law in California, and many persons honestly think that nothing but a Sunday law will abate the nuisance.
But, as a matter of fact, it affords not the slightest reason for a Sunday law. Sunday is not the only day on which picnics are held, although, of course, more are held on that day than on any other. But the hoodlums behave no worse at a picnic on Sunday than on any other day. The same scenes are repeated on the Fourth of July, Admission day, etc. People whose business does not call them to cross the bay in company with a party of these picnickers are not disturbed by them; there are tens of thousands of people in San Francisco and Oakland who know nothing of the performances on these occasions, except as they have read about them; they are no more disturbed by the Sunday picnics than if the picnics were held on the moon. And those people who do have to cross the bay on the same train and boat with the hoodlum picnickers, see nothing more disgraceful on Sunday than on any other day that a picnic may be held.
The trouble therefore is not with the "Sunday picnic," but with the hoodlums who exhibit the beastliness of their nature regardless of the calendar. Then the thing to do, in order to abate the nuisance, is not to suppress the "Sunday picnic," nor, for that matter, any picnic whatever, but to "suppress" the hoodlums, no matter what the day may be. This a few resolute policemen could easily do, and they do not need the enactment of any new law to give them authority! The same law which enables a policeman to lock up a single "drunk" for disturbing the peace, is amply sufficient to deal with the hoodlum picnic any day in the week.
So, while we heartily agree with all that anybody can say against the disgraceful performances of returning picnickers, we know full well that they afford no ground for the enactment of a Sunday law. The evil could be stopped, but it will not be; for if those who deplore it should demand that order be maintained by means of the laws already provided for such cases, and should see that their demand is complied with, they would deprive their Sunday-law kite of much of its wind. There are a great many existing nuisances that would be abatedby "reformers" if it were not for the fact that such proceeding would demonstrate the fact that there is no earthly necessity for a Sunday law.
E. J. W.