The San Francisco call., 1896-04-18
MAY WELD A
SUNDAY RAZOR.
The BARRIERS Law Declared
Invalid by the Su-
preme Court.
SPECIAL AND ILLOGICAL.
No Reason in Closing Sunday
Afternoons for BARRIERS
Only.
CAN WORK WHEN THEY PLEASE
Severe Criticisms Passed by the
Justices on the Latest Labor
Law.

There is no further necessity for the
beardless to attend the Saturday night
sessions at the barber-shop, or crowd
around the chairs to be shaved before II
o'clock on Sunday. The BARRIERS can work
all the holiday if they please, for the Su-
Supreme Court has laid the BARRIERS law"
level with the dust.
The 'barbers law" was secured only
after long and persistent work by the more
liberal-minded EN- mployers and byth greater
number of the journeymen. 1t was passed
by the last Legislature, and by its terms it
was made misdemeanor for any shop to
keep open, or for any barber to draw scis-
sors or razor between II o'clock Sunday
noon and II o'clock Sunday midnight.
The law was not long in force when Otto
Jentzsch, keeper of a small shop in this
City, made himself liable to arrest under
its terms. He was industriously removing
a three-days' growth about o'clock one
Sunday when lie was arrested on COM
plant of one of the committee, whose duty
it was 10 see the law obeyed, and he was
charged with misdemeanor. He petitioned
for writ of habeas corpus, and the Su-
preme Court has granted his petition and
ordered him discharged.
In discharging the defendant the Su-
preme Court declares the "barbers' law"
unconstitutional, ana then proceeds to
criticise it most severely. 1t was framed
to protect the laborer from the capitalist,
the opinion says, but it is not easy to see
how it does so. 1t deprives man of the
right to labor and to ENJOY the fruits of
his toll. 1t is curious law for the protec-
ton of labor which Furnishes the iaborer
for working, yet It is precisely what the
law considered does. Continuing, the
opinion says:
The laboring barber, engaged in a most re-
spectacle, useful aud cleanly pursuit, is
singled out from the thousands of his fell
lows in other employments and told that
willy-nilly, he shall not work upon holidays
and Sundays after IL o'clock noon. His
wishes. tastes or necessities are not consulted.
If he labors he is q criminal. Such protection
to labor, carried a little further, would send
him from the Jail to the poorhouse.
How comes it that the legislative eye was so
keen to discern the needs of the oppressed bar
Der, and yet was SO blind to his toiling brethren
in other vocations? Steamcar and streetcar
operatives toll through long and weary Sunday
hours, do mill and factory hands. There is
no Sunday period of rest and protection for
the overworked employees of our daily papers.
bare suggestion of these considerations shows
the injustice and inequality of the law.
The law is special, and it violates the
provisions of the constitution which
secures to man the right of personal free
dom, says the opinion, and also the right
to labor where and when he pleases, and
in whatever form he sees fit. It is special
because il singles out BARRIERS alone; it has
no concern whatever with the vast army
of men who in other trades toll through
Sundays and holidays as we'll as upon
week days; it is only the barber who must
suffer if he runs his work over the Sunday
noon hour. For that reason the court
considers it special and unequal and also
unreasonable. If it were general, the
court comedies there might be something
TO be said on the ground that it was a
police regulation. but in its present form
the Supreme Court can see nothing in the
law that is not harmful. In concluding
the opinion contains these words:
In law such as this no reason has been
shown why the followers of one useful and un-
Objectionable employment should be debarred
from the right to labor upon certain days and
not on others. When any such class is sin ged
out and put under the criminal ban of such
law this the law not only is special unjust
and unreasonable in its operation, but it
works all invasion of individual ltberty-the
liberty of free labor which it pretends to pro-
tect.
The decision was written by Judge
Henshaw and vas concurred in by the en-
tire court.