SUNDAY-LAW AGITATION IN CALIFORNIA.
D. R. BOYD, a Presbyterian clergyman of Fresno, delivered a Sunday-law discourse in that city on the 29th ult. The Federated Trades having started a Sunday-closing movement, he took occasion to invite them to his meeting. After going over the stereotyped plea of man's need of physical rest, he asks, "Now what is the remedy for all this?" And his answer is, "A Sunday law." This old plea that the workingman's rest must be on Sunday in order to be effective is getting rather stale. It is a fact that more physical waste is caused by wasted hours at night, which ought to be employed in natural rest, than is caused by seven days of labor with proper use of the night hours. But this fact goes for naught when a Sunday law is wanted. The theory is that a Sunday rest makes up for all excesses. Nine-tenths of the working men, in whose behalf so much pitiful plea is made by people other than themselves, use the Sunday rest to sleep off the Saturday night's excesses, rather than to recuperate from the week's labors. Many of them who do not work on that day come out Monday morning in worse physical condition than they would have been if they had done an ordinary day's work on Sunday. But Sunday-law argument never is very logical, so the refraining from honorable toil on that day is presented as the great antidote for all fatigue. Just how men are to be made to rest who usually get very weary on Sunday by other means than through honest labor is not made clear. But it is intimated that a very effectual ingredient of Sunday rest is worship, and it is only a step from declaring what men shall not do on Sunday to prescribing what they shall do in order to make the prohibition effective. Of course, if men prohibited from work on Sunday persist in doing those things which injure them physically more than honest employment would, the state, in order to be consistent with its physical-rest theory, would have to apply the only antidote—prescribe the manner of rest; have the Sunday institution applied in all its beneficial features. This is the true logic of the physical-rest Sunday doctrine. This is not imagination; it is just what did occur in the very beginning of Sunday laws—about sixteen centuries ago—and the principle is the same to-day, just as sure as human nature is the same. We are not ignorant of the argument that Sunday laws have not gone to that extent in the United States; but it is also true that the leading advocates of Sunday enforcement are not at all satisfied with the character of the Sunday laws of any state. There is a constant purpose to have them more stringent and more effective as soon as public sentiment to that end can be worked up. This Fresno clergyman, whose discourse we have mentioned, openly admits that the question "has its roots in religion." And the eventual purpose has been hindered in the United States by the fact that California has not yet been wrought up to the point of enacting a general Sunday law. This has been a complaint for the last quarter of a century. This is why we have had, time and again, prominent Sunday-law advocates from east of the Rocky Mountains endeavoring to enthuse the people in this state on this subject. It was one of these imported educators who conceived and promulgated the scheme of a physical-rest plea for compulsory Sunday observance. It was thought to beguile the people into accepting this scheme, because on its face it was only a civil, and not a religious, law. But it was and is only designed as an opening wedge. When it was first proposed, it was said in the inner councils—but occasionally let out—that "half a loaf is better than no bread; we will take what we can get, and ask for more as public sentiment can be made to bear it." It has also been represented on more than one occasion that victory in California would be hailed as a victory and as an impetus for a general stiffening of Sunday legislation all over the land. Especially would it be deemed a veritable boom for national Sunday legislation. For several years the advocates of Sunday legislation have been counting on the labor-union element to help out in the Sunday-law scheme, but it is the agitators rather than the laboring men who have much enthusiasm on the subject. The matter of compulsory Sunday labor, like every other argument for Sunday legislation, is very much overdrawn. It is comparatively little of skilled labor that is conducted on Sunday, and in most cases where it is deemed urgent, the men are very willing to make the extra money. It is so also with most of the unskilled labor that is done on Sunday. There is not a tithe of the compulsion about Sunday labor that some enthusiasts represent. But labor unionism is now a political movement, and, like other politicians, its adherents are desirous of making friends for their cause. They, too, are imbibing the idea that the churches as such are coming to be a power in politics; so they are willing to stand for a Sunday law in order to secure the influence of the preachers and other church leaders. They take this stand in some localities, just as some of the unions in San Francisco have lined up with the saloon element in the election of municipal officers. They are becoming quite proficient as politicians, especially in the way of currying favor with any class for the sake of influence. But, bear in mind, it is only the labor unions, and oftentimes only the officers among them, and not the far larger class of laboring men, who are taking any special interest in the Sunday-law agitation; and the unions only take such special interest where they see—or think they see—some other advantage to be gained. But in Dr. Boyd's plea for a California Sunday law, he says there are being affected "two millions of working men who never have a Sunday—a rest day." Inasmuch as the whole population of California is less than two million, we have here a specimen of the exaggeration usually indulged by Sunday-law agitators. He probably has reference to the country at large; but the other states already have their Sunday laws. He is referring especially to railroad employees. But the representation that railroad employees never have a rest is very much overdrawn. Some have daily runs, but these daily runs are short runs, giving ample time for physical rest. Where runs are long, the men have their periods of lay-off. However, these periods of rest are not always on Sunday; they vary as to days and time of day. Ah! that is the point that the Sunday votary is after; his physical-rest law means laying off on Sunday—"it has its roots in religion." If a man were to lie off half of every day, as some of them do, or two days in a week, as many railway postal clerks do, that would not satisfy the Sunday agitator's idea of physical rest. That the thing "has its roots in religion" is further demonstrated by every proposed exemption clause for those who rest on the seventh day. Such exemptions are invariably based on the requirement that those who so rest must do so "religiously" and "conscientiously." Suppose, however, that there are a few—and comparatively they are a very few—who are compelled to work Sunday; why is every one, whether he need such physical rest that day or not, to be compelled to rest because some one else may need it. Why should one man be compelled to eat at a certain time because another man needs to eat. If certain parties are forcibly depriving others of needed rest, let the law cover the offender against individual rights. That is the legitimate province of civil law. But such a law would not please the Sunday agitator. What he wants is to have the rest given on Sunday. A law might compel the offender to give his employees or his family all the rest they need, or can afford to take, yet it would not satisfy the Sunday agitators unless the rest were on Sunday. What they want, and will not rest until they secure, is enforced Sunday observance. It has been demonstrated elsewhere that even exemptions are only pretexts to ward off opposition for the time, and that these will be repeated as soon as the sentiment can be secured. The republican way, the democratic way, the Christian way, is to keep religious legislation, compulsory observance of any religious dogma, out of our state laws. No man's physical needs require any such perversion of civil and religious rights. G.