Boycotts and Personal Liberty
By Editor
THE following is from one of our local dailies, which a short time ago was thundering against the tyranny of trades unions and the religious boycotts:— "At last Mr. Happ, the Seventh Street merchant, has apparently come to his senses, and has agreed not to further antagonize the Clerks' Association. Last Sunday his door had a big lock on it, and therefore the clerks are happy." Mr. Happ, with several other clothing merchants, formerly kept his store open Sunday—a thing which he had a perfect right to do. The Clerks' Association and the Federated Trades induced the greater part of the clothing merchants to close on Sunday, Mr. Happ holding out until it seemed "expedient" in a business way, we suppose, to succumb to the boycott. We do not know Mr. Happ, nor do we plead his case; but there is a principle involved in this matter which ought to be repudiated by every true lover of liberty. Mr. Happ has as much right to keep open Sunday as any other day, and every other man has the same right. The clerks have the right to refuse to work on that day, and no one has the right to compel them to do otherwise. Neither have they the right, by boycott or otherwise, to seek to compel anyone else to do their pleasure. But this is how, if we understand the matter, Mr. Happ "came to his senses." By methods based on the same principle as the modern boycott, tyranny of all ages has brought men to yield their inalienable rights. By the same principles the Inquisition was the means of "converting" thousands during the Dark Ages. MR. EDWARD B. STURGES, a Presbyterian business man in Japan, thinks that Buddhism and Shintoism "are in their death throes," and that "Christianity is already nearing a complete triumph;" and yet he charges Christians with lack of devotion to principle, while of Buddhist zeal he draws the following picture:— "A few days since I saw in front of a Buddhist temple four immense piles of large rope that had been used in collecting and raising to their position the massive timbers of the great temple. That rope was all made of human hair, contributed by men and women mostly still living, as a freewill offering to this dead[?] faith. How insignificant in comparison the slight self-denial that would cause the travelers from Christian lands to at least rest upon the sabbath day [Sunday]!" How much better it would be for the professed Christians of the world to turn from the Sunday of tradition to the pure precepts of God's word! They would have a power then which could dispense with the wanted example of half-hearted professors or "travelers from Christian lands." There is nothing more void of life from God in heathen lands to-day than is the Sunday.