Sunday-Law Agitation in New York.
By Editor
REV. DR. CHARLES H. PARKHURST has presented a formal request to Governor Hughes of New York to have Mayor McClellan and Police Commissioner Bingham removed from office because they are not enforcing the Sunday ordinances of New York City. Dr. Parkhurst has been before the country for a good many years as a very staunch reformer, his reform work, however, partaking very much of the nature of detective and police methods. When he first introduced himself to the public in a prominent way, it was by the advertisement that was given him because of his going into the dives and dens of New York City in order to get the evidence that would enable him to bring convictions against them in court. And his work has continued to partake more or less of this nature all thru the years. And so in getting the evidence to present to the governor in order to induce him to begin proceedings against New York's mayor and police commissioner, he has employed detectives to visit various saloons on Sundays in order to see if they were doing business the same as on other days. In the argument presented, Mr. Parkhurst cites the fact that the mayor and police commissioner were able to combine their influence in such a way as to close the theaters for several successive Sundays; and if they could close the theaters, they could also close the saloons. This paper has no use for either the theater or the saloon. The theater does a great deal of harm in the vile tastes and low morals that it inculcates; and it can not be doubted that this evil is much greater than any possible good that can come from the so-called ``high-class'' theater, if there can be any such. But if these things are right for the state to foster on any day of the week, why not let them run just as they see fit. To have them closed on Sundays merely is to put them in the category of being all right on any other day of the week. We could not favor the closing of the saloons on Sundays alone for this very reason. We could not go into partnership with this business by saying to them that if they will close on Sundays, we will let them go on the other days of the week. The facts are that Sunday is a religious institution; and if you take the religious notion out of the day, you will take away the cause that is at the bottom of the desire to have certain things illegal on that day that are declared all right on other days. The only Being in the universe that can make a thing wrong because it is done on a certain day is God. Neither the state nor the police force has any right to prescribe the relations that are to exist between man and his Maker. We should not fail to note how that precedent is urged in this Sunday movement. It is urged that since the theaters can be closed on Sundays, therefore the saloons may also be closed. No effort is lacking in following up anything that has already been done. And when one thing after another is accomplished in the Sunday-law movement, it will be seen that the ultimate that is finally reached will be to take away the religious freedom that we now enjoy. We have been pointing out for more than a quarter of a century that the country would be driven upon the rocks of religious intolerance and medieval persecutions thru the enforcing of the Sunday laws that have crept into the statutes of nearly all our states and into the ordinances of almost every city. There is a very strong wave of Sunday-law enforcement sweeping over the country just now, and it is ominous.