Some Pertinent Questions
By Editor
The secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance of America is Dr. Grannis, of New York, and the secretary of the Lord's Day Alliance of California is Dr. G. L. Tufts. These men are especially active in endeavoring to secure a law for California, which will doubtless be presented this coming autumn, under the Initiative. Dr. Grannis has done very much in securing rest for men who have hitherto labored on Sunday. One of the special victories which he secured was in Pittsburg, in relieving iron-workers, or "slaves," as he termed them, from seven days' work a week, and lessening their hours a day. And he did all this without the Sunday law, for Pennsylvania has a strong Sunday law, but seemingly it did not operate in Pittsburg. Here are some questions for our Sunday-law agitators: 1. If a Sunday law will secure to men the right to rest, as Dr. Grannis and Dr. Tufts claim, why did not Pennsylvania's stringent Sunday law secure relief for the thousands of "slaves" in the iron industries around Pittsburg? 2. In helping those workers, why did not Dr. Grannis appeal to the State Sunday law instead of resorting to moral suasion and personal influence in securing relief for the toilers? Pennsylvania is the headquarters of the National Reform Association, and Pittsburg is the headquarters in that State of that association. 3. If a Sunday law did not secure to men the right to rest in Pennsylvania, what hope is there that it would do just the opposite in California? 4. If a six-day work and twenty-four hour rest law, which Dr. Grannis contended for in New York, is, or would be, sufficient to protect men in their right to rest, why is not a similar law, now on the statute-books of California, sufficient? 5. But why did Dr. Grannis contend for another law in New York, when there is already a strict Sunday law on the statute-books of that State? 6. How many subsequent enactments does it take to make the first effective?