ENFORCED SABBATH BREAKING.
By Editor
THE following in regard to a new feature of the Sunday-closing question at the World's Fair is from the San Francisco Examiner of the 9th inst.:— It looks as if the friends of the "American Sabbath," who succeeded in inducing Congress to follow the virtuous way in demanding that the World's Fair be closed on Sundays, might witness a curious result of their achievement. The argument of the Sabbatarians was that the spectacle of hundreds of thousands of people suspending their ordinary vocations and entering a quiet park to contemplate the world's masterpieces of art and science, would destroy the sacred character of Sunday, and lead eventually to its transformation into a working day. It now appears that if the Fair shall be closed, that transformation will be effected without indirection or delay. The workingmen in Chicago and the neighboring cities do not propose to be cheated out of the opportunity of seeing on one day in the week what their moral advisers can see in six. They are circulating petitions to their employers asking permission to work on Sundays and take their weekly holidays on Mondays, and the employers are responding cordially to the proposition. Thus the project is, to quote the Chicago Herald, that all the cities within a day's ride of the Fair—that is, within an area of some hundreds of thousands of square miles—"will see chimneys smoking, forges blazing, moulds seething, and lathes flying Sundays," and all to preserve the sanctity of the American sabbath. Sunday work will be forced upon the country to avoid the sacrilege of Sunday culture and recreation. Fortunately, we are not yet reduced to this alternative. It is believed in Chicago that the action of Congress in attaching new conditions to a part of the souvenir half-dollar appropriation has relieved the directors from any obligation to observe the requirements of Sunday closing. In all probability they will order the gates to be opened on the workingman's day of leisure, and so the necessity for desecrating the sabbath by ordinary labor will be avoided. THE Bulletin, of Des Moines, Iowa, says that in an address before the Evangelical Alliance at St. Louis, March 27, Rev. Henry George urged that the Sunday mails be stopped, with the argument that the "carrying of letters on the Sabbath is iniquitous." Dr. George is field secretary of the American Sabbath Union. He recounted the victories of the union in the World's Fair Sunday-closing strife, and then said:— Our next fight will be to stop Sunday mails. We will go before Congress on that issue. That's the iniquitous traffic that causes one-quarter of a million of people to desecrate God's day. That's the abomination that makes trains run on Sunday, and makes the Sunday newspapers possible. Resolutions indorsing the position taken by Dr. George were passed by the Alliance, and a committee was appointed to assist in putting an end to the "abomination."