NEW YORK LETTER by Calvin P. Bollman

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1890

NEW YORK LETTER.

By Calvin P. Bollman

SUNDAY IN THE METROPOLIS.

FOR some years the writer has resided in California, a State without a Sunday law, and since coming to this city, in a State having such a law, it has been a matter of not a little interest to note the difference, if any, in favor of the city in which Sunday labor and certain kinds of Sunday business are forbidden.

For nearly two years the saloons of New York have been closed on Sunday, the law against the sale of liquors upon that day being rigidly enforced; but in a half hour's walk on a recent Sunday I saw more intoxicated men than in a five years' residence in Oakland, California, with an occasional Sunday visit to San Francisco. I cannot, therefore, escape the conclusion that Sunday closing of saloons is very far from being an effective temperance measure. The fact is that men who want liquor, if they know that they cannot buy it on Sunday, will lay in a supply on the previous night, and, as in buying by the quart or gallon they get more for their money than in buying by the glass, they drink more than they otherwise would. They have it in their homes, and teach their children to drink, or invite in friends and all drink together, and all become more or less drunken.

Prohibition is a good thing, and should be enacted and enforced wherever practicable, but it should not be confined to one day of the week, nor should the law be depended upon to do that which can only be done by earnest, persistent effort on the part of Christian people, namely, the formation of a public sentiment that will make absolute prohibition possible. To secure the passage of a prohibitory law in advance of public sentiment, and then to settle down satisfied and allow the law to become a dead letter, is one of the worst services that can be rendered to the cause of temperance. Facts, overpowering, demonstrative facts, showing the evils of the traffic, should be kept constantly before the people, and the rising generation should be educated to shun alcohol as they would a viper, and for the same reason, because there is death in it. In this way, and only in this way, can prohibition be made lasting and effective.

But I did not design saying so much on this question, important though it be. My subject is "Sunday in the Metropolis," and to it let us return. The law allows milk, meat, and bread to be sold for an hour or two on Sunday morning, consequently the shops for the sale of these articles are open during the allowed time, after which they are closed. Barber shops likewise do business for a few hours, and drug stores all day. Street-cars run, and generally ply their trade, but the Fifth Avenue stages are withdrawn, professedly in obedience to the fourth commandment, and run only in Central Park, where presumably the fourth commandment is not in force! This line of stages is controlled by the president of the so-called American Sabbath Union.

The parks are open on Sunday, but the public museums and art galleries are closed. The rich can go to these places on other days, and the poor—well, as an ardent Sunday-law advocate argued last summer, it don't do the poor any special good to see such things anyway? Notwithstanding all the professed philanthropy in the Sunday-law movement, its spirit is as selfish as anything can be. It would close, if possible, every avenue by which poor people can enjoy an occasional breath of fresh air and a sight of green grass and trees. In New York Central Park is the great place of resort on Sunday, and, thanks to the street-cars and elevated roads, large numbers of even the comparatively poor and the hard-working people can now visit it at least occasionally; but stop these means of rapid and cheap transit on Sunday, as the American Sabbath Union proposes to do, and there are thousands in New York who could know nothing of any such pleasure from one year's end till another. If Mr. Crafts and his co-workers for "Sabbath reform" want to really benefit the laboring classes, as they profess, and their movement is in the interests of better health, I know of no greater service they could render the poor of New York at so small an outlay of means as to enable them to spend every pleasant Sunday in the park. Liquors and intoxicated persons could be rigidly excluded, and such ministers as would volunteer to do so might be permitted to preach at certain hours and in certain places to such as chose to listen; and such services should be protected from interruption. But this plan will never be adopted, for it would not meet the minds of the aristocrats who are at the head of the Sunday-law movement, and who are manipulating it in the interests of the guilt-edged Christianity of the day.

But it may be asked, How do the masses spend Sunday? It is hard to say. As before intimated, many spend it in drunkenness. Those who can go to the parks or on excursions if the weather will permit, but thousands, especially youth and children, spend the day in the streets. The public reading-rooms, which, on Sunday above all other days, should be open all day, are closed for all but a few hours in the afternoon and evening. But notwithstanding a Sunday law and the Sunday agitation, New York has no better or more general Sunday observance than has San Francisco or Oakland—all of which goes to show that at best such laws are of doubtful utility, even in securing a quiet rest-day.

C. P. B. January 28, 1890.