The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-09-13

annulment of an ancient charter, and it is high time that we bestir ourselves" Yes, yes, Bishop Huntington well spoke the truth. The Sabbath day is to be a great factor in the future in teaching the laboring classes how to spend their even ings, because now the Sabbath day as a day of rest has been stolen away. It must be recaptured. It is high time that the labor unions of this land and the church of Jesus Christ join hands to win back that Sabbatic treasure which Lord Bea- consfield-who like King Solomon, was a Jew-once declared was the greatest blessing ever given to God or man"
 A Restful Sunday.
 The labor unions may logically base their claims upon physical grounds. Rest, rest Give us more rest! cry the barber unions and the grocery clek unions and the drug clerk unions and all other unions "Ohr men must have physical rest--perodical rest for the eye, the hand, the brain, the roart; rest. and complete rest on physical grounds" And thank God. a beginning has already been made, for the labor -~'0''~ are everywhere pre- senting their just claims for a restful Sabbath.
 On the other hand, the church of Jesus Christ must go into this battle for restful Sabbath emphasizing the spiritual as well as physical claims. The church of Jesus Christ must have at least one whole day per week to tell the people about God: one whole day per week to teach men how they should be good hus- bands and good sons and good fathers one day per week to teach a man his duty to his fellow men and to his state; one day out of every seven to teach man how his life may be spiritual and his death glorious. Rest! Rest" A Sabbath for sacred rest and worship should be the cry of the church. May this Christian pulpit on this Labor Sunday help to be the means of leading the church and the labor unions to clasp hands in the holy conspiracy of capturing the Sabbath for God, recapturng it for physical and men tai and spiritual rest and invigoration.
 A consecrated and gospelized ballot box is also to be a great factor in teaching the laboring classes how to spend their evenings This means that by the elec- ton of the proper health officials and dis trict attorneys and municipal representa- lives the better classes shall be able to go into the city slums and clean out the vile formations and accumulations of filth. Jacob A. Riis in his great book, How the Other Half Lives" declared that in some of New York's back alleys. a-choke with refuse piles, the light of the sun, as in Devils canyon. in Arizona, can never shine. He declared that the walls of one tenement in Blind Mans alley" were so covered over with filth that though 1t caught fire six times in winter 1t could not burn. The filthy incrustations accumu- lated upon the walls of that tenement did literally smother the flames. It means that these elected officers shall see that each family must have rooms for itself. No moral lessons can ever be taught where there are four or five married couples. with their children. occupying the same apartment. Dublin missionary said that once he found five different fam flies all living within the same four walls of one room-one husband and wife for each corner and one family for the cen ter of the room-and lone of those fam lilies was taking in boarders." It means that no criminals as class shall be all lowed to collect in one region. Those haunts if necessary shall be razed to the ground and turned into parks, as New York city is now constructing small parks at street corners which were once fa- nous for their infamies.
 The Uncrowned King.
 But some one again interrupts me: "In these charges against the city tenements, are you not slandering our laboring class es? You surely do not compare the Ann erican army of labor with those wild. desperate crowds of frenzied men who. emerging from the cellars ana 1oul hauntS of Paris started on their famous jour- nev to Versailles, which ended in the death of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the hauthy daughter of the Austrian war queen Maria Theresa? Do you charge the la boring classes with being the physical and spiritual menace of the world? Oh, no, my brother. I am in no way slandering the laboring classes. l believe that some of the world are found among of the laborers as well as among the capitalists. But this is what I do assert: The laboring man is the uncrowned king of the AmerI- can ballot box. What he votes is law. It