The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1920-12-24
CONGRESS OPPOSED
TO SUNDAY BLUE LAW
Regard IL As Puritan Revival For
That Reason Measure To
BE Knocked Out.

NdohihBtOH, DeC. IO-ClamOr fOl
the enactment of national "blut
Sunday" law, which has been started
by Wilbur Crafts, head of the Ma.
tional Reform Bureau, will receive
scant encouragement at the hands OF
the newly elected Republican mem
bers of the Sixty-seventh Congress,
to be called into special session in
March, by President Harding.
The movement, which has as its
aim a return to the tyrannical and
narrowminded restrictions of the
Puritans, is taken seriously every
where except in the National Capt.
tai, where political gossip is CENTER
ing upon the makeup of the new adj
ministration.
Senator Jones of Washington, who
has year after year introduced a bill
of this sort "by request" of some of
his well-meaning constituents, ad-
mits he has never read all of its pro-
visions and that he has not the slight
est intention of ever, asking for hear
rings on the measure, to say nothing
of pushing it to conslusion. Repre-
sentative Sims, of Tennessee, who has
also introduced several bills of the
kind, has been defeated for reelec-
ton. Representative Randall, of
California, author of the wartime
prohibition law, who will be super
seeded in the next Congress by Re-
publican, says he will have nothing
to do with blue laws. Speaker Gill
lette and Majority Leader .Mondell
Iscoff at the idea and declare that they
have no chance of being put thru
Congress at any time in the near flu
ture.
While Republican leaders in the
Senate and House and the members
generally are opposed to any attempt
to deprive the people of the country
of innocent Sunday amusements
which would do them no harm they
are quite as determined that the pro-
hibtion question has been settled by
| the ratification on the part of forty
five out of forty-eight states of the
eighteenth amendment, and by the
enactment of the Yolstead act and by
the majority of six millions given last
month by the electorate to Harding
and Senate. Hence, they have no in
and Coolidge and Republican House
Hence, they have no intention of re-
viving dead issue.
Those moral forces in the country
which secured the passage of both
the liquor and woman suffrage
amendments to the constitution will
probably be guided so far as Republi-
can leadership is concerned, into the
fild of education, where is fertile
field of intelligent accomplishment.
For some time those who are influen-
tial in Congress on the Republican
side have been impressed by the fact
that eight millions of people who live
within continental United States do
not know how to read and write the
English language. They are concern
ed also over the fact that the pay of
school teachers has so far declined,
while that of other vocations has been
increasing, that the earlier grade of
ambitious school as a stepping-stone
to other things or while receiving
higher learning at some higher insti-
tuition is no longer to be had.
: 1t has been proposed in the Towner
bill that Department of Education
Ie created so that the head of it might
have place in the Cabinet and so
that all its energies might be devoted
to the one purpose of doing away
with ignorance in the United States
and laying the foundations of an edu-
cational system so broad and deep
that such a condition as at present
exists could never return. Yet be-
| cause the powers of the federal gov
eminent in this respect are confined
to the District of Columbia and the
territories 1t is believed by many of
tle national legislators that such de-
partment would be too great a piece
of machinery for the task. 1t is more
likely that the scope of the bureau of
Education, now in the Interior Depart
ment will be enlarged so as to fur
ther spread the gospel of the need of
| education.