National Sunday Law

THE NATIONAL SUNDAY LAW, ARGUMENT OF ALONZO T. JONES BEFORE THE United States Senate Committee on Education and Labor; AT WASHINGTON, D. C., DEC. 13, 088. AMERICAN SENTINEL, 76 AND 28 COLLEGE PLACE, CHICAGO, ILL.; 1059 CASTRO ST., OAKLAND, CAL.; 43 BOND ST., NEW YORK, 1892, Coeivk\Akiu 1889, BV la101A7.0 1. JONES• 4r INTRODUCTION. THIS pamphlet is a report of an argument made upon the national Sunday bill introduced by Senator Blair in the Fiftieth Congress. It is not, however, exactly the argument that was made before the Senate Committee, as there were so many interruptions in the course of my speech that it was impossible to make a connected argument upon a single point. By these questions, etc., my argument was not only forced to take a wider range than was intended when I began to speak, but I was pre- vented from making the definite argument that I designed to present. I do not speak of these interruptions and counter- arguments by way of complaint, but only to explain why this pamphlet is issued. Nevertheless it is a fact that while there were eighteen speeches before mine, occupying three hours, in all of which together there were only one huildred and eighty• nine questions and counter-arguments by 'all the members of the Committee who were present, I was interrupted by the Chairman alone, one hundred and sixty-nine times in ninety minutes, as may be seen by the official report of the hearing.— Fiftieth Congress, Second Session, Messages and Documents No. 43,0. 73-102. National Sunday legislation, is matter of national interest. While it is true that this particular Sunday-rest bill did not be. come a law—the legislation• having died with the expiration of the Fiftieth Congress—it is also true that those who demanded, formulated, and promoted this legislation never slackened their efforts, and they hive now, 1892, attained the grand object of their ambition—they have the national Government fully com- mitted to the whole course of religious legislation exposed in this argument. In the Fifty-second Congress, first session, the Sunday-law advocates concentrated all their forces and all their energies upon the point of securing the closing of the World's Fair on (iii) iv 'INTRODUCTION. Sunday, by Act of Congress. They sent to Congress, " petitions" backed up by threats so overbearing that their threats were denounced on the floors of Congress as an abuse of the right of petition. The following is but a fair sample of these petitions " : — "Resolved, That we do hereby pledge ourselves and each other, that we will from this time henceforth refuse to vote for or support for any office or position of trust, any member of Congress, either Senator or Representative, who shall vote for any further aid of any kind for, the World's Fair, except on conditions named in these resolutions." Nevertheless, arrogant and abusive of the right of petition as they were, they had their intended effect—Congress surrendered, and in spite of the ConStitution, and in disregard of solemn oaths to maintain the Constitution, this legislation was enacted, as religious legislation, at the demand of the churches and because they demanded it. That the legislation was religious, and consciously and intentionally so, 'is clearly shown by all the proceedings.- Senator Hawley, who was the chief advocate of the measure, said of it these words: — " Everybody knows what the foundation is. It is founded in religious belief." And in advocating it he regretted that he was not "the most eloquent clergyman," that he might do the subject justice, Upon this he said :— " I wish, Mr. President; that I were the most eloquent clergyman, the most eloquent of those staunch old sturdy divines who have honored American citizenship as well as American Chris, tianity, that I might give something more than this feeble ex- pression of my belief in the serious importance of thiS vote. But I can quote a feW words—only a few- out of the many." - Then to make up what he himself lacked in this line,- he quoted from letters from ArchbishOp Ireland; ArchbiShOp Gross, and Archbishop Riordan, of the Catholic Church and. froii•ihe bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church ; and then in another speech the next day, further supported this by citing all the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church, both North and South. INTRODUCTION. V Senator Peffer said flatly :— "To-day we are engaged in a theological discussion concern- ing the observance of the first day of the week." So entirely was the discussion theological, that the chaplain of the Senate, in reporting it to the New York Independent, July z8, 1892, said :— "During this debate you might have imagined yourself in a general council or assembly or synod or conference, 'so pro- noiaced was one senator after another." That it was done distinctly and positively at the demand and under the threats of the churches, is equally clear. Senator Hiscock, who was second only to Senator Hawley in his advocacy of the measure, said :— " If I had charge of this amendment in the interest of the Columbian Exposition, I would write the firovision for the closure in any form that the religious sentiment of the country demands, and not stand here hesitating and quibbling about it. Rather than let the public sentiment against the Exposition being opened on Sunday, be re-enforced by the opposition in the other House against any legislation of this kind in the interest of the Exposi- tion, I say to the junior senator from Illinois [Mr. Palmer], he had better yield to this sentiment, and not let it go out to the country that there is the slightest doubt that if this money is 'appropriated, the Exposition will be closed on Sunday. If I were interested in this measure as I might be interested if it were located in my own State, I should make the closure provision satisfactory to those petitioners who have memorialized us, against the desecra- tion of the Lord's day." By taking the 13,000,00o people who, according to the census of 189o, are church members in the .United States, and then adding to these, " attendants, associates, and sympathizers " " who have a profound respect for " the church, " whether they believe in it or not," Senator Hawley succeeded in creating from forty-five to fifty millions of the people of this country who have more or less of religious profession or sympathy." Then upon this he made the following argument : — " There is no use in endeavoring to escape responsibility. If the Senate to-day decides that it will not close that Exhibition on - Sunday, the Exhibition will he opened On that clay, and you-,will have offended more than 40,000,000 of people —seriously and solemnly offended them. No wise statesman or monarch of modern times, no satrap of Rome, would have thought it wise to fly in the face of a profound conviction of the people he governed, no matter if he thought it a profound error. It is not wise statesmanship to do it. " Now if gentlemen repudiate this, if they desire to reject it, if they deny that this is in the true sense of the word a religious nation, I should like to see the disclaimer put in white and black and proposed by the Congress of the United States. Write it. How would you write it ? . Word it, if you dare ; advocate it, if you dare. How many who voted for it would ever code back here again ? None I hope. You endanger yourselves by opposing it." Upon these and other evidences which he had obtained, " Rev." H. H. George, a National Reformer from away back, and who had spent the whole session at Washington as an avowed "Christian lobbyist," declared in a speech in Patter- son, N. J., Aug. 7, 1892:— " I have learned that . we hold the United States Senate in our hands." And in reply to the proposition that the Sunday Closing Act might be repealed at the next session, he declared : — It cannot be repealed. We mean to maintain it at the point of the bayonet." And another one of the same kind of preachers, in a sermon in Pittsburg, July 17, i8gz, said : — "That the church has weight with great political or govern- ing bodies, has been demonstrated most effectually in the late World's Fair matter, when the United States Senate, the highest body in the country, listened to the voice of religion and passed the World's Fair $5,000,000 appropriation bill with the church- instituted proviso that the gates of the great Exposition should be opened upon Sunday. That grand good fact suggests to the Christian's mind that if this may be done, so may other equally needful measures. The church is gaining power continually, and its voice will be heard in the future much oftener than in the past." These facts and evidences plainly show that in this legislation the government of the United States has been handed over bodily INTRODUCTION. vi i to the churches ;. that the churches know it, and that henceforth the government is to be used by the combined churches as a tool by which they will execute upon all, their arbitrary - These evidences also 'demonstrate that a number of points made in my argument before the Senate Committee in 1888 have now been met to the full, and that therefore those statements were not made at random and without knowledge. This is not only true of these statements, but it is equally true of the other statements which remain — these too will yet be met to the full in the progress of this great evil of religious legislation now so positively and so fully entered upon.

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