The Sunday Law against Work Unnecessary.

On the other hand, whatever it is safe to legalize it is unjust not to legalize. One shackle at least on Sunday work can safely be removed,—the clause whose words forbid "any manner of labor, business, or work, except works of necessity and charity." Since a Sabbatarian conscience and loyalty to it still sometimes go together, the absurd outrage, now and then reported in the newspapers, of a policeman making a raid upon a quiet individual working for himself in his own porch or on his own grounds, should be rendered impossible. Beyond this point, the difficulty of drawing a line at once begins. If a man may work for himself on his own ground, why not for hire on another's ground? If for hire in that way, why not as clerk in a store? If as clerk, why not as mechanic in a private work-shop? If in a private workshop, why not for a corporation in a factory? It seems as if the law must stand against all hired work whatever, or allow it in all kinds and all degrees. For one, I own my hesitation, but incline to think the latter way,—that is, the repeal of the whole Sunday labor-prohibition would be safe to-day. I think so because, outside of the law, such strong safeguards would still be left to Sunday rest:—

1. That imperious need of the rest, more and more deeply felt in modern life, more and more clearly recognized as need by common sense and science, this need in itself assures the holiday to the vast majority of workers here, as in the lands of Europe. On that continent there is little of our Puritan feeling about Sunday, and, as compared with us, great freedom in the Sunday laws; yet labor on that day is exception, not the rule, and there page 73 are signs of a movement slowly rising to abolish the exception^*. Moreover, the general drift of the modern laborer's demand and of his success is everywhere towards fewer, not towards lengthening, hours of work.

2. The American lack of other holidays relieving work, the rarity of saint-days or festivals—only five a year,—for us makes that assurance doubly sure.

3. Although the churchly word about the Sabbath falls to-day on deafening ears, the religious feeling already organized to shield the rest-day may be largely relied on. We are not without precedents. Abroad, the children are usually drilled in "religion" among other lessons in the public school. Church and State are too far apart with us for that; and in its stead our voluntary Sunday-school system has sprung up and covered the whole land. Again with fear and trembling, our wise men tried the experiment of voluntary churches, also, unsupported by the State laws. The lake was almost unknown in Christendom, and prophecies of ruin were rife. The result is that the nations abroad, with their established churches, point to the free churches of America as the strongest proof in Christendom of religion's vital hold on human nature. It is probable that a voluntary Sunday would turn out as these voluntary church and school experiments turned out.

4. The example of the government in closing its council-chambers, courts, and public offices throughout the land, in giving the Sunday-rest to all its direct employ—s, and in requiring the rest as condition in all the public contracts, would remain a potent influence in its favor.

5. And the fact is that, in this case more plainly than in most cases, it is not the law, but the public opinion behind the law, that really avails to keep the day. "Works of necessity and charity" is a very elastic phrase, and more and more exemption gets squeezed into it. Were it not for that phrase as safety-valve, the Sunday-statute would have been blown out of the book years ago. Things grow so "necessary;" "charity" never faileth! There was a Sabbatarian struggle over the Sunday mail bags forty-five years ago; then a struggle over the Sunday railroad trains; lately over the city horse-cars. Many works are winked at to-day that at the half century's end would have been frowned at, or put down with the strong hand. I doubt if one person in five hundred in Massachusetts is aware that there is still a Saturday evening prohibition in two of our Sabbath-day statutes, so completely has public opinion freed the Saturday evening, though there the clauses linger on the page. Even in France there is a law dating from 1814, against overt Sunday sale and Sunday labor. It has been reiterated more than once; has survived two Revolutions and the Empire, while all the time more or less under discussion; is sustained by the Court of Appeal; the lower courts still pass sentence by it, fining trespassers only a single franc, perhaps. It stands there on the statute book like an old gun in an arsenal, now and then wheeled out to make a little noise,—and shops are selling, workshops working, mechanics building in the street. Public opinion keeps the door ajar, bids the builder go on if he will; and the loop-hole is provided in the statute that he may.

For these various reasons I doubt whether the Sunday law be needed as protection, and whether it is the real protection of the Sunday rest we credit it with being. I believe the institution is inherently so strong that the abolition of the law would have but little tendency to page 75 rob the working-men of it, and am inclined to think that the phrase used at the beginning suggests the just, safe policy: "The State should encourage Sunday rest, without directly enforcing it." As long, however, as it still persists in keeping the workshop and the saleshop closed, it should at least strike out the clause that now makes thousands of us law-breakers by forbidding "any manner of labor, business, or work, except works of necessity and charity,"—should at least strike out a clause like this, and restore to us by law the freedom which plainly harms no other. I know not whether public opinion is ripe for even so much change. I suspect it is, although since 1860 there have been five alterations in the Massachusetts Sunday law; and in four the change, instead of dulling, has sharpened its cutting edge.^*

It is noteworthy: in the old lands, France and Switzerland, with all their feudal memories in Church and State to give them precedent, the reformers, agitating for a better seventh day's rest, deem it a bruise to liberty to use the hands of law, in the ways that we do here, to force the individual to halt. Still greater bruise they deem it to let the religious doctrine of a portion of the citizens determine such a law. Their movement is based on the domestic, moral, and industrial good of a rest-day uniform for all; and, short of individual compulsion, they

^* Massachusetts Statutes, Chapter 84.

1862. §1. "Takes part in" any sport, becomes "is present at."

1863. §1. "Fine not exceeding $10," becomes "not exceeding $50."

1864. §3. (About keeping open places of entertainment, &c.) "Fine not exceeding $5," and upon convictions after the first" not exceeding $10 for each person so entertained," becomes "not exceeding $50" and "$1oo,"-respectively. But the last clause of this section, "and every person so abiding and drinking shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $5," is omitted.

1865. § 1. Use of firearms and fishing forbidden by penalty not exceeding $10.

page 76 would do everything to secure the day for the workman, and win him to accept it.^* In this land certain of the Sunday statutes are as anomalous, under our free institutions, as negro slavery once was: as anomalous,—of course in no other point is the comparison made. When, by the common consent of good citizens, it is a statute which is practically suppressed, instead of the offence, it is the statute which is the offence. Let me repeat: that which it is safe to legalize it is simply unjust not to legalize.

So much for Sunday as the day of rest. On its continuance as the day of rest is conditioned all the other good which the day can bring the working-man. Part of this other good is—