The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1888-07-11
THE HALF HOLIDAY.
II Is Best Financially and Morally 20 Close
Saturday Afternoon.
II. DEWITT TALMAGE.

In cold weather 10 keep stores and shops
and factories going all Saturday may be a
question that will evoke difference OF
opinion, but there can be no doubt that
in hot weather it is best financially and
morally 10 close Saturday afternoon. We
hail this movement in the name of hui
manity and religion, and suggest that all
styles OF business join in it. We shall
never have our Sabbaths properly OBJ
served until a portion OF each secular
week be proclaimed a holiday. Keep
clerks and employees at the counter and
the wheel from Monday morning 10 Sat
urday night and all your preach ing from
now until doomsday on the text "Re-
member the Sabbath Day to Keep 1t
Holy" will for the most part be wasted
breath. High sense of religious obligation
may lead few, after being indoor all the
secular week, TO remain indoor on Sabbath
for spiritual profit; but the vast multitudes
will 90 to the fields or the beach. | am
not talking about what ought to be, but
about what is. There must be some time
for outing and II t is not taken from man s
time il will be taken from the Lord S time.
We who can have q day off whenever we
want il must remember there are hun
dreds OF thousands of people in all our
cities who can not have a day off. IL is
all the time grind, grind, grind. The year
is an ever-present monOtony. We punctu-
ate the paragraph of our life by an occa-
sional pause, but their chapters of fatigue
90 on without comma or semi-colon or
period or intersection point Sunday
morning comes in midsummer, and the
father sees around the breakfast table his
pale wife and dropping children and all
his own bones ache, and he has 10 choose
between the church and open air. The
thermometer before noon will be in
the nineties. Their house stands in the
center of block. and the windows are
not so situated that they can tempt a cool
draught TO enter. The father puts il to a
vote: "All in favor of church will say
aye. All in favor OF Prospect park will
say no." The noes have IT, Do not call
that family wicked That father has toiled
since early manhood to support his house
hold, and the mother has drudged for the
last fifteen years TO keep her children
we'll and respectable. Witness those liv-
ing Witness those dead. Now, what is
needed is free Saturday afternoons. Then
the toiling millions have no
excuse for Sabbath-breaking. Sat
urday afternoon for an outing,
Sabbath day for the soul. II by grand
conspiracy all the business men OF these
cities would plot for the overthrow OF Sab
bath Dissertation let them unharness the
six hours OF the closing week and turn
them out into the sunshine and the fresh
air. "What an absurd thing you have
DONE" | said to a committee who had adj
vertised me TO lecture in Exeter hall,
London, at > o'clock Saturday afternoon.
"Why that is the time when all the peO-
pie are busy in winding up the work of
the week and we shall have no audience"
ooh, no" they said, London is free on
Saturday afternoon, and tits the best time
for all STYLES of entertainment" So |
found thronged assemblage at an hour
when in our Steinway hall or our Academy
of Music n gathering OF that sort
would he an impossibility. Now, what
is good for London and Manchester is
good for American towns and cities. The
trouble is, we do not exercise enough
common sense in these matters pertaining
to the welfare of the public and in regard
to the advancement of the Christian re-
ligiOn. We lay out some plan that suits
our case, but do not recognize the fact
that that plan may fail TO suit the cases Of
vast multitude of our population. |
advocate this Saturday afternoon closing
on the ground of economics as well as on
the ground OF fairness. You all know the
difference between cheerful labor and dull
labor, between healthy work and sick
work, between a tired brain and rested
brain, between a weak arm and strong
arm. Put it down in your minds as
S statement for which challenge contra
diction, that clerks, mechanics, employees
of all sorts will do more work in five days
I.,lF 10, -,
posed release and YOU reinforce your
store, your shop, your factory. You put
another wheel into the mill-race, you put
another salesman behind your counter,
you add another line of profit to your ac-
count book. You fatten ali the other
days OF the week ON the Saturday after
noon banquet. 1t means more money
instead OF less for all capitalists and bust
ness firms. Does the physician have less
prosperous profession because he an
nounces his office hours only from 10 to u
or from 8 TO 3? No. That arrangement
concentrates and augments. Instead OF
much OF the time having your
clerks lounging about the store
with nothing to do they would be
more consecutively busy. Your pros
perity depends not on the number of
hours your establishment is open. but
upon the amount OF work done while IL
IS open. OF course, to accomplish this
there must be a combination OF effort. If
few dry-goods establishments close and
others are kept open the open stores will
rob the others OF custom. If q few grocery
stores close and others decline to join in
the movement these last will take the pat
ronage OF the former But ii the movement
be rightfully set on foot all the respectable
establishments will join ii, and those that
defy the general settlement on this sub
ject will be marked as unsympathetic and
put under the ban o: public opinion, and
all good men and women viii say: Let
us patronize these establishments which
are kind to their employees, and let us
turn our backs on the commercial Grail
grinds." ! would like TO sound the key
note of n humanitarian and Christian
movement which shall enlist all dealers in
dry goods, in groceries, in hardware, in
shoes, in confectionaries, in books and
stationary, and would liberate wheelrights,
plumbers, carpenters, masons, paper
hangers and foundrymen, saying to all the
people: ''Take Saturday afternoon for
your body and Sunday for your soul"
But let all the freed populations of Sat-
urday afternoon stand clear of the liquor
saloons. The only argument that can be
made against the Saturday afternoon clos
ing is that this weekly vacation may be