The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-12-10
Tuesday, December 10, 1907.
THE SUsDAY PREposrERoUs.

THE SUNDAY PREPOSTEROUS.
 This is logical heir of the Sunday debatable to which we referred the other day in wondering over the kind of Sunday that would be evolved as consequence of the enforcement of the Sunday observance laws in the great cosmopolitan city of New York. Day before yesterday was the first Sun day after the sweeping decision made by the courts as the result of suit brought to test the validity of the Sunday laws. The court found that not only was the particular offense com plained of illegal, but that the law which outlawed all entertainments was legal and in force. This left the guard ians of law and order but one thing to do and that was to enforce the law without discrimination. The Sunday preposterous was the outcome, a Sum day which the people of that city will never tolerate and which the moralists cannot afford to countenance. Its fu- ture if insisted upon, is so fraught with serious danger to the welfare of that city as to force of itself an intel ligent consideration of how free peo- pie Is to be permitted to conduct itself on the first day of the week.
 Practically no one is satisfied with tho experiment. Even those who orig finally invoked the strong arm of the law in order to be rid of nuisance in their sight have reason to ask if the remedy is not after all worse than the disease struck at; if 1t would not have been better to follow some less strin- gent course in order to escape new and unforeseen difficulties. Tn certain lines the lid was on tight. The places of amusement were all closed, except wnefe certain Brooklyn caterers had fortified thehhselves with an injunction to drive off the police ydntil a hearing could be held. The newspapers agree that It was easily possible for those with thirst and knowledge. of their New York to quench it. That those less sophisticated moved along the line of least resistance and either frequented in large numbers the hotels and res- taurants, where they could eat and drink st pleasure, or crossed the river to New Jersey where hospita- ble theatres and lounging places met them with wide open arms. Says the reporter of the New York World, for example: Refugees of the stricken city of New York tiocked to Hoboken yesterday; to free Hoboken, where Bingham and Sunday shows are not mentioned. Jersey never saw so many silk hats and frook coats; Jersey nev- CT saw so many cocktails Tapped up: Jersey never saw such fair but artif- eial blondes. It was Jerseys gala Sun day" That tells the story of the Sum- day preposterous as it needs not to be told again in language nearer the center of the walk. It is not the sin of concentration of which New York was guilty on Sunday but the sin of repre- hensibie distribution. The gain was nil from a moral point of view. From the point of view of the welfare of society great harm was done and the conse- cuences will be felt far from the side- walks of that single city.
 With a keen realization of the prob- lcms which grow out of such a popu- latIcn as New York has and New York must take care of as best it may. Father Currey of St. James church favors q liberal, not lax interpreta- ton of the Sunday laws, mot only on account of the heterogeneous mass of our cltlzenshtp, but particularly be- cause of the personal liL ,rty of each and every citizen. and of his individ- ual right, not alone to life and liberty. but also to pursue happiness on Sun- day, Monday and every other day of the week, as long as he does not in- fringe upon the rights of others The so-called blue laws that steal the sum- shine out of our lives, and particularly out of the lives of the workingmen and working women of New York are not a. relic of the misnamed dark ages. but the inherited rubbish of narrow-mind- edness, hypocrisy and pharisaism of Puritan days" That is unquestionably the attitude he will take if the question of liberal Sunday Is ever submitted to his judgment at the polls. Then perhaps it will be seen that while in the past the laws have been enforced too laxly at times, in reality less harm was done than may now be accom- Z piished by fanatical insistence upon