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street, and all the information the justice could elicit from them was, that they all went to a "grand opening." Yes, an opening that's a gateway of hell. About the same hour a man received his death wound while going from such a hole with his can of liquor, and the two ruffianly assailants are now in custody awaiting the result of their crime. Let not this question be mixed and confused with any other part of the Sunday Question." Let not the liquor-seller retreat behind the Sunday newspaper, or the street car, or the mail train; for while I have my own opinion concerning all Sunday desecration, an opinion in which some of you might not join, yet here is a point where we all can agree, where the friend of law, religion, peace, quiet, and safety can all unite for the common good. The law is very plain and explicit. It not only gives the right, but makes it the duty of the executive officer of a town or city to enforce it, and he is liable to penalty if he does not do it. He need not wait for some complaint to be brought to him. He and his public officers are the conservators of the peace, and as such, have the power to arrest, with or without process, of all persons found violating any criminal law of the State, as well as ordinances of their own municipality, and the criminal code of this State declares that whoever keeps open any place where liquor is sold or given away on Sunday, shall be fined not to exceed $200.

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The workmen of the world are arising and demanding an eight-hour day of labor, and some want a week of only five of such days. But there is one class of our fellow-citizens who are abused, and oppressed by exacting task-masters in whose behalf I have never heard a voice raised. The loud voices of the pleaders for the right of “ wage slaves," have never yet been lifted against the wrongs of the over-worked bartender, whose work is like woman's, never done." When all others have their eight-hour days, with Saturday half-holidays, and total cessation of labor on Sunday, then give the same to the bartender. Let the brick-layer and the bartender fare alike, and not a week of five and a half days to one, and a week of seven days to the other. Not a day of eight-hours to the one, and a day of eighteen to twenty-four hours to the other. But then the liquor-dealers will tell you Saturday nights and Sundays are their best seasons, and they cannot close then. In a Rhode Island factory town, a certain employer paid to his employes on Saturday afternoon, $700 in new bills that had been secretly marked. On the following Monday, $400 of those marked bills were deposited in the bank of that town by the liquor retailers. Such a division of earnings would have suited a Pistol or a Falstaff. Who can wonder that the dealer's family fares sumptuously, while the drinker's families starve.

In a late Sunday night meeting where this question was being considered, one speaker said that the open liquor-shop afforded a warm bright, retreat for the laboring man who had no other place to go. A local paper in commenting editorially on the fact says, with a triumphant wave of its editorial pen: "Supposing these places are closed, where are these people to go?" Well, they couldn't go to any worse place, and if they were to spend their money which supports these places, and fix them up a place of their own, they could have more comfortable quarters with far less of dan

ger to life and morals. Churches are spoken against as too expensive places for the poor man to resort to. Yet what church takes four-sevenths of the most devoted worshiper's earnings. At the corner of Monroe and Morgan streets in this city, on the street level of the Second Baptist church building, there is a cheerful bright room, with a large library of books of all kinds, with tables covered with standard periodicals, with writing materials, open every night except Sunday, from six to ten, free to all. Supposing these tempting places with there alluring glitter, and deadly facination were not open, the victims or devotees would find some other more suitable place to attend, and by saving their money from those sink-holes, they might be able to make their own homes more attractive to their wives and their children, as well as to themselves.

THE SUNDAY QUESTION.

BY ROBT. LINDBLOM.

Excellent

To me it seems strange that there should be a Sunday question, any more than a Monday or Saturday question, but my friend Catlin suggests that people in general do not entertain my views, and that this is an opportunity for me to be a missionary. This is my excuse to those in front of, as well as to those behind, me.

The Sunday question can be viewed from two sides, to-wit: In its religious and moral aspects. I was going to add its legal aspect, but as legal enactments are supposed to be for the advancement of morality, the moral really embraces the legal aspect.

The religious aspect of the Sunday question is based upon the assumption that the United States of America is a Christian nation; that the nation has a right to legislate about religious matters; that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath, and that in view of this it is proper to enact laws for the observance of Sunday according to the notions of the Christians, or rather according to the notions of those Christians who happen to be in the majority; for it should not be forgotten, that from the Greek Catholics up to the Unitarians, there are as many shades of different opinions upon this as there are upon other matters of Christianity. This assumption really deserves very little discussion. To those who have given the subject unbiased consideration, the absurdity must be patent, and those whose prejudices blind them to the absurdity of the case would also be deaf to the logic of arguments. The facts are that this is not a Christian nation in any sense, and never can be. The constitution expressly prohibits all legislation based upon religious discrimination. The Jewish Sabbath has as many rights as the Christian Sabbath—no more, no less. Neither is this country Christian by the test of numbers. There are many more people outside the Christian churches than inside of them, and the outsiders are largely tainted by infidelity. There is neither legality nor justice on the side of those who wish to compel all men to observe Sunday in the same manner as they do. I dismiss the religious aspect as unworthy of intelligent discussion and will devote myself to a consideration of the moral aspect of it.

Governments have the undisputed right to declare some days legal holidays, so that those who choose to do so, can relax from their ordinary business cares and suspend for a day their business obligations and responsibilities. In all Christian countries Sunday has been observed as such a day of rest, and at the same time as the Sabbath day.

The founders of this country came mainly from countries where Sunday was thus doubly observed, and the framers of our Constitution had imbibed this Sunday observance with their mother's milk. What was more natural than that these men, knowing the absolute necessity for rest, should fix upon Sunday as the proper legal holiday once in every week. Public opinion assented to it, and has never yet resented the establishment of Sunday as a day of rest; but it has not, nor ever will, assent to its establishment as a religious holiday with compulsory observance in violation of the Constitution.

This is the line on which this question must be fairly debated and settled if it must be settled again.

The framers of our Constitution, well knowing how easy it would be to confuse the character of the Sunday, took special pains to engraft upon the corner stone of the republic the fact that this is not a Christian country.

I intend to be absolutely fair in all I say, and fairness claims that consideration should be given to the arguments advanced by those advocates of Sunday observance who base it upon the necessity for one day of rest in every week. I believe in that theory. I believe that rest is absolutely necessary to healthy activity. I believe that we work too much and rest too little. I believe that if the work necessary to supply all wants was more equally distributed we could all have more rest, and those who now do no work would be rested by doing their share, but I deny the proposition that any set of men can define what constitutes rest to every other man. What is rest to one is labor to another, and if we are to set apart one day in each week as a day of rest, it would fail of its object, were we to prescribe any certain mode of conduct for everybody on that day. If anything, we ought rather to relax on that day the laws of conduct which society imposes, so as to extend the utmost liberty of action, consistent with order, and the rights of others, on that day of rest.

Let me illustrate: The brain workers when they seek rest shoulder a gun and walk thirty miles over bad roads to kill one little inoffensive bird, or they sit in a small boat a whole day cramped up, under a burning sun, to catch 5 cents worth of fish, and call it rest; while the professional hunters and fishermen take their rest in their home smoking and snoring where the wind does not touch them. The farmer who has worked with no excitement whatever for six days, would feel rested to indulge in the excitement of a friendly game of seven up or whisky poker; while the professional gambler would get rested driving out in the country looking at the landscape. The mechanic who works in the dirty shop and sleeps in a crowded home feels rested by spending his day in a park, and a glass of beer and some music don't hurt his feelings at all, while the respectable people who drink champagne at parties or clubs all week, feel rested by going to church for a comfortable hour of inactivity. The preacher and his hired men feel rested by actually exerting themselves on the day of rest, and when they want rest they get up in the mountains or out on the ocean. So you see it is absolutely impossible to say what rest is really made of. What is food for one is poison to the other. But one thing is

sure-hardly anybody can enjoy rest of any kind without somebody else working, and it would seem the essence of simplicity to let individual taste dictate whether to rest while the majority works, and work when others rest. I believe they should have a right to do as they please, so long as they do not interfere with the equal rights of others.

I believe that the church-going people should be protected against disturbances; I believe the park-going people should be protected against interference; and if society has declared that beer drinking should be licensed—and that consequently it is not a crime-then orderly beer drinking on Sunday should be protected. The aim should be to extend to everyone, on the day of rest especially, all the personal liberty consistent with everybody else's personal liberty.

If a picnic party should place a brass band outside of a church I would say that the personal rights of the members of that church were infringed on. If a band of evangelists should try to interrupt the pleasures of a picnic party, the rights of the latter would be violated. The church people are entitled to protection in their mode of Sunday observance, but their rights extend no farther. It would be tyranny for them to demand that anybody should surrender his right to the same privilege and the same protection, simply because his ideas of Sunday observance differed from theirs, and because they naturally assumed that theirs was the proper one. I do not impeach the motives of the advocates of Sunday as a religious day. They are actuated by the purest motives. The leaders of the inquisition were governed by the noblest impulses of their day; they were men and women of pure character, and the purer their character the more bitter their warfare against what they considered impurity. The insincere man or woman will never rise to the dignity of a persecutor. Our forefathers who burned heretics did so as humanitarians, for the benefit of the human race and the glory of God. They were good men and women and they believed they were just. History is full of saintly tyrants, who were tyrants because they could not tolerate vice, and were saints because they represented the highest ideal of the prevailing notion of duty and justice. I do not question the motives of either party to this controversy. The church-goer and the agnostic all aim at the same thing. Both desire the improvement of society. The church people imagine that they can advance morality by observing forms, while the agnostic simply aims to inculcate knowledge. The latter knows that knowledge is impossible without leisure and rest, that with knowledge our ideas of justice and the rights of others expand, and that morality is practically stationary, so they aim to secure as much real rest as possible, in order that our natures may have a chance to expand unhampered by fetters, so that we will reach, as soon as possible, that higher plane of existence, where duty does not bid us persécute others because they differ from us, but where duty commands us to respect the rights of others. Ignorance has made demons of truly good men and women. Ignorance is to-day the basis of the clamor for Sunday laws. The liberals simply don't want to observe Sunday in the same manner as the orthodox, neither do they want to compel the orthodox to change their mode of observing it. Nobody has tried to close the