"COMPULSORY PIETY."

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17155, 26 May 1921, Page 8

"COMPULSORY PIETY."

THE "BLUE LAW", CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA. "

(FBOM OUB OWN COBBESTONDENT.) SAN FRANCISCO, May 1

The craze to reform everybody .residing .hi the United Spates continues with unabated energy, and four c express carloads of anti-tobacco campaign literature hare been sent from New York to California, followed by a. special Pullman car crowded with men and women from Manhattan to work on the Pacific Coast in a virulent antitobacco crusade' One of- the members of the delegation of workers said that 500 carloads of anti-tobacco literature had been sent out for distribution throughout the United States. The literature deals with _the alleged physical and economic evils of all forms of tobacco, and urges the passage of laws in every State to make tho growth, sale, and use of the weed a prison offence. An effort will be made in the near future, one of the crusaders stated,, to get religious denominations to unite with the campaigners in raising funds to. promote a movement to amend the Constitution of the United States to prohibit tfee production, manufacture, sale, and use of tobacco in the United States and territories. One of the crusaders is Mrs Hale Francis, wife of a wholesale tobacconist of San Francisco.

It should be said to the credit of the "Blue-law" leaders that they are honest and above-board as to their intentions. They let the country know the worst, and from the beginning. 'JDhey do not want to "sneak in"- the blue Sunday as the other measures have been sneaked into the Constitution.

in an interview with a representative of the Philadelphia "Public Ledger," the Rev. Harry L. Bowlby, national secretary 'of the movetftent for making Sunday a day of gloom, declares quite'frankly: "We are well financed. Our lolbby at Washington will be an effective and experienced one. We shall work in every Congressional district in every State. We shall agitato and spread, propaganda, and cause voters to write,, unceasingly to their' representatives in Congress until no* Congressman who cares to stay in Congress will dare refuse to vote for our measures." He says that the movemenfc is not to legislate' people into church., but proceeds to givo & list ot the things that are to be prohibited, so that there will be nowhere else to go without danger of being arrested. "We shall try," he added, "to close baseball parks, the golf links, tlhe motion nictures and other theatres, the concert halls, the amusement parks, the battling beaches, and so on.- We shall oppose golf, tennis, football, baseball, and other sports, even'.- if gprely . amateur. . . . Wo shall seelc" to lestrain the sale of . gasoline for' pleasure automobiles, and urge other measures that will stop Sunday automobiling and joy-riding. Excursion steamers on Sunday will be opposed. . . . We believe that if we take away "a man's-motor-car,-his golf sticks, his Sunday newspaper, his horses, his .pleasure steamship,, amusement houses and parks, and prohibit him from playing outdoor games or- witnessing field sports, he naturally will drift back' to church."

Unbiassed citizens are- now asking each other: "Is there no way of.get-ting-people'into dhurch except by prohibiting every other way of spending Sunday?" /

Outspoken, Pastors.' Not all- w}io preach the Gospel are supporting the movement ijo make Sunday so miserable, that church will be the only-place to go. TJhe voice of the empty pew is heard in the land, bub preachers' who rely more on moral suasion and spiritual impulse than upon legal compulsion have no sympathy with the attempt to substitute law\for religion. They do not believe in making every innocent amusement a crime for twenty-four hours out of every 168. nor in manufacturing crimes by legal enactment. Believing in the ■ church, tihey do not think that all its powers should be usurped by the law. Speaking at Chico,* California, a few days ago, the Rev. R. S. Eastman declared that "blue laws'' were unnecessary and contrary to the spirit of American liberty. ' He was opposed to legislating people into church, and said: "The religious viewpoint of the individual is. not a matter of law, for all religious belief is guaranteed by the Constitution."

On the-same day, at Salt Lake City, the Rev. Elmer L. Goshen said that tine Utah law against the cigarette was passed by a "d—n fool Legislature." He asserted , that "the saloons were hellholes, and prohibition is a hell-hole. Ifc is not freedom. It brings us perilously close to a nation of hypocrites." ," Whether or not one agrees witih. the preacher's views on prohibition, ,he must be classed with the large number of clergymen opposed to legislative and Congressional attempts at compulsory piety. . There are . human as well as "blue" pastors.