PETITION FOR A SUNDAY LAW.
By William N. Glenn
THE Sunday-law effort in the present Legislature of California has made its appearance in the form of a petition. At this writing no bill has been introduced. The following is a copy of the petition:— To the California House of Representatives of 1893: We, the undersigned, citizens of the State of California, twenty-one years of age and over, most earnestly petition your honorable body to enact a law forbidding all Sunday traffic and work, as well as all coarse and noisy amusements on that day of the week, making suitable exception for works of necessity and mercy, and for private work by those who religiously and regularly observe another day of the week by abstaining from labor and business on the same. The petition bears the well-known stamp of the American Sabbath Union. It was expected that the union's agents would make a strong pull at this session. Their three years' campaign in the State, at the close of which they confidently promised their supporters a Sunday law, has been zealously though quietly prosecuted. The time is up, and it now lies with the Legislature to announce the success of the plotters, or their doom to disappointment and another two years of campaign. The special mark of the Sabbath Union lies in the religious requirement. They have always claimed that they only asked a civil rest day, but their dictum that those who observe another day shall do so "religiously," invariably discovers that the move is a religious one, and its purpose the enforcement of a religious tenet by the power of civil law. They well know that the masses of the people, as well as intelligent and capable lawmakers, are not blind to the fact that the civil government has no legitimate business to interfere with the religious scruples of the people, either to enforce or to restrain; therefore they have so far endeavored to dress the Sunday-law movement in a civil garb, with a garniture of solicitude for the physical well-being of the workingman. But the requirement that those who observe another day shall observe it "religiously" and "regularly" so, shows that such is the design for Sunday observance. The logical point is that men should be compelled to be religious at least one day in the week, and that the State is the proper authority to see that such duty is performed. Should the Legislature lend its aid to such a scheme, it becomes the abettor of two gross evils: First, it legalizes a process ostensibly to inculcate morals, but which can only result in making many hypocrites. Secondly, it places in the hands of bigots and fanatics a weapon with which they can persecute those who do not agree with them in the matter of true Sabbath observance, to an almost unlimited extent. And we know from the example of some other States that such men are not lacking when the opportunity is presented. And, furthermore, when the door is once opened to legislation of a religious character, the demand will not cease with the first success. The tendency already is forcibly to set215aside everything that comes in the way of ambitious churchmen and church work. And, surely, if the right exists to say what men shall do religiously on any particular day of the week, there is no reason why other and further demands shall not be enforced at the call of the same influence that should secure the first step. But some will say there are Sunday laws in nearly all the other States, and only in a few of them have such persecutions arisen, and it is designed here to exempt the class that have been persecuted in those States. But it should be borne in mind that the American Sabbath Union is a New York corporation organized for the very purpose of securing more stringent enforcement of State Sunday laws, and making those laws more stringent in their provisions. And to this end a part of their program is to secure the enactment of a national Sunday law so that the general government will not in any of its operations infringe upon the State laws. And our Legislatures should bear in mind that a California Sunday law is a prominent factor in the effort for a national law. And this is why the agents of the American Sabbath Union (the California branch) are so zealously working to secure a State law. California stands almost alone among the States as having no such law, and hence is a barrier to the design of presenting before Congress the argument of a unanimity of the States on the Sunday-law question. Therefore the importance to the union of securing something, be it ever so mild at present, that can be called a Sunday law. But when the national law shall have been secured, then, according to the program, will come a general stiffening up on the part of the States in the matter of enforced Sunday observance. It remains to be seen whether the California Legislature will become a party to any such sinister scheme against the rights and liberties of the people.