all amusements where an admission fee is charged. We shall oppose golf, tennis, baseball, football, and other sports, even if purely amateur and void of financial cost to those Dr. Crafts Seeks to Intimidate Congressmen Dr. Crafts, who takes considerable pride in styling himself a "professional watching or taking part, because they set bad reformer" and a "Christian lobbyist " examples for children who otherwise might be content to go to Sunday school. "We shall seek to restrict the sale of gasoline for pleasure automobiles, and urge other measures that will stop Sunday automobiling and joy riding. This will not bring the oldfashioned horse and buggy back, because we believe that the Lord's day should be a day of rest for man and beast. Excursion steamer rides on Sunday will be opposed by us on the ground that they are unnecessary to the moral welfare of Christian America." "How many churches are behind this movement?" the reporter asked. "Sixteen denominations," he replied. "Really, we have seventeen, for while the Lutheran Synod did not indorse this movement officially, the Lutherans are with us. Only the Roman Catholics, the Unitarians, the Seventh-day Adventists, and the Jews are outside this movement. And, to be perfectly frank with you, they will have to conform to the laws if we succeed. The Jew will have to observe our Sabbath. As a matter of fact, he might as well, because Saturday is not, after all, his Sabbath. He is wrong by the revised calendar. Therefore, it will work no hardship for him to attend his synagogue on the same day we attend our churches. "No, I see no reason why the public libraries or the art galleries should remain open on Sunday. We shall seek to eliminate the huge Sunday newspapers, and establish a censorship over the stuff that gets into them on other days.. "Of course, we shall back no law that would compel a man or a woman to attend church. But we believe that if we take away a man's motor car, his golf sticks, his Sunday newspaper, his horses, his pleasure steamships, amusement houses, and parks, and prohibit him from playing outdoor games or witnessing field sports, he naturally will drift back to church. "We propose to close all stores, pharmacies excepted. And it is our hope that pharmacies may be limited to the sale of medicines only on Sundays. "We are not contemplating any drive for funds at present. We have ample financial resources. The Protestant churches and other religious societies and organizations give no [little] money, and we have received large sums from wealthy men." "Mr. Rockefeller?” "Well, I shall not answer 'No' to that, but I shall say that I have no personal knowledge of any gift from him." at Washington "in charge of the morals of the nation," also gave a personal interview to the press during the sessions of the annual convention of the International Reform Bureau, held the same week the last session of Congress opened. during which he threatened every Congressman with a political beheadal by the churches if Congress did not pass the Sunday bills which were then pending. He intimated that he had a million dollars at his command, which would simply be a starter in a campaign that would deluge Congress with petitions demanding immediate action upon the pending Sunday bills. He threatened the Republican party, if it did not carry out his measures during the coming session of Congress, with a greater defeat two years hence than the Democratic party suffered at the recent election. All these proposals for a reversion to Puritan times and all these threats of political boycott at the polls, on the part of these "professional reformers" and self-confessed "Christian lobbyists" at Washington, stirred up and awakened the old-time patriotism of every true American citizen, and a mighty protest went up from all parts of the country against these encroachments upon the rights of American citizens. It was seen that unless something was done, and that quickly, a few well-organized religious zealots might soon succeed in placing the shackles of religious despotism upon all the rest of mankind who were too absorbed in other business to notice the stealthy movements of the enemies of human freedom. The whole press of the country, from Maine to California and from the Great Lakes on the north to the Gulf on the south, took serious alarm at these encroachments on the natural rights of mankind by a religious autocracy that was about to fasten its arbitrary will upon the majority, and the whole news paper and magazine fraternity gave an alarm with no uncertain sound. They have laid the ax at the root of the tree. They have hewed to the line, and have not spared the guilty. The 3,300 daily newspapers in this country joined in this great struggle in defense of the Godgiven, inalienable rights of men, and by combined efforts have brought the old church and state régime to a temporary halt before the legislative bodies of our land. T Many of these splendid newspaper and magazine editorials against the Sunday blue laws and the present campaign for their revival, appear as a newspaper symposium on the following page. Every reader of the LIBERTY magazine will be intensely interested and find much profit in reading these splendid editorials voicing the principles of true Americanism and sounding an alarm against these encroachments upon free republican institutions. Danger of Freak Legislation HE times seem to be out of joint. That this is so is witnessed to not only by world-wide political and industrial unrest, but by some of the means by which it is sought to correct existing conditions. For example, a few months ago there was introduced into the Utah Legislature a bill designed to prohibit the wearing of any shoes with heels more than one and one-half inches high. There can be no question but that the wearing of high heels is foolish, and to some extent injurious; but if such matters are to be regulated by civil law, where shall we stop! Again, a bill introduced into the Ohio Legislature soon after that body met on January 2, "provided that inspectors, acting under the State liquor commissioner, should have the authority to enter private residences without search warrants whenever they suspected intoxicating liquors might be illegally stored there, and that agents of the prohibition commissioner might establish temporary courts anywhere to take evidence." Very properly "a storm of opposition developed, many supporters of the prohibition amendment declaring their opposition to a bill that would do away with the Constitutional provision guaranteeing to the people security against unwarranted molestation in their homes, and make mockery of the judiciary." LIBERTY magazine has always been a stanch supporter of prohibition, but let us not sacrifice freedom in our endeavor to free ourselves from the domination of the saloon. But it may be said that such extreme measures as the two bills referred to can never become laws in this country. We are not so sure of that. Nor can we fully know that if enacted they would be declared unconstitutional. Such an outcome would seem probable, but ultimately almost any measure persistently pushed gets through. Like the unjust judge of the parable of Luke 18: 1-5, legislators are likely to yield in time from sheer weariness. sheer weariness. The thing which at first they recognize as evil, and which therefore alarms them, ceases after a time to be so abhorrent, is later tolerated, and later still embraced, something as Pope wrote of vice. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and no one who values it, no one who would be free to worship or not to worship, can afford to be indifferent to such matters, or trust to the time-honored expedient of laughing out of court the case against liberty of conscience. C. P. B. RELIGIOUS liberty means equality of liberty for every man of every faith or of no faith. The Voice of the Press Ꮤ A PRESS SYMPOSIUM HEN, through its secretary, the Lord's Day Alliance launched its blue law campaign recently, the press of the whole country rallied most loyally to the cause of human freedom and the Constitutional guaranties of civil and religious liberty, by lifting its voice in protest against the encroachments of this un-Christian and un-American ecclesiastical movement to compel all the citizens of the United States to conform to the religious standards and notions advocated by certain "reform societies," which fail to distinguish between human and divine institutions and between civil and religious laws. We present a few of the many comments made by the newspapers and magazines of the country, voicing their opposition to Sunday laws. We have been fighting for many years in defense of the natural God-given rights of every man, no matter what his race, nationality, or religion; and we certainly are happy to have so many able codefenders join the cause of human freedom at this critical hour. We have petitioned and memorialized Congress and our State legislatures whenever an effort was put forth to legalize religion and its dogmas through civil enactments, and we were glad to see victory crown our efforts to defeat religious legislation. The press has responded to our appeals in the past, but never as in the present nation-wide campaign. The Buffalo "Evening Times" Says a The Buffalo Evening Times, in an editorial of January 25, after scoring the blue law advocates for their extreme views which they desire to enact into legislation, makes some favorable comments upon the Memorial adopted a few days before by the General Conference Committee of Seventh-day Adventists, as follows: "In contrast, a hopeful sign of latter-day common sense is shown in the Memorial adopted by the General Conference Committee of the Seventh-day Adventists, made public at their headquarters in Washington, on Sunday, January 16. Asserting that the complete separation of church and state was essential to the country's well-being, the Memorial declared that failure to recognize these distinctions in the past had been the primary cause of religious persecution. The Memorial points out that the present strongly organized efforts to obtain blue law enactments are destructive to both the church and the state, however innocent these efforts may appear; and if successful, will eventually destroy the pillars upon which our government is founded.' The Memorial further contends that 'Sabbath keeping is not a civil, but a religious duty, and Congress therefore has nothing whatever to do with the question of its observance. Only those whose hearts God has changed, can truly keep a holy Sabbath. As no legislation by Congress can change the human heart, to make citizens perform a religious act when they are not religious, is to enforce hypocrisy by law. Honest labor is no more uncivil on Sunday than on Monday. It is only religious prejudices which are disturbed by labor on this day more than on other days. But the bolstering of some particular theological dogma and protecting the religious prejudices of citizens is not the business of Congress.' "Glory be, a Daniel has come to judgment; and from an unexpected quarter. Honor to the Seventh-day Adventists! Whether we agree with them religiously or not, we can strike hands of fellowship with them in the splendid and undying spirit of personal liberty as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and in the whole course of the struggle for civil liberty to which the founders of this Republic dedicated this land." 46 Popular Mechanics" Rings True The editor of Popular Mechanics, in the February issue, gives a commonsense view of the evil effects of the Sunday blue laws, in their reaction upon religion, as follows: "And now the reformers have decided a blue law Sunday is what we need. The Sabbath of the Puritans, who with all their solid qualities were at the same time among the most narrowminded bigots of any time, is no more to be compared with our modern Sunday than was the 'Mayflower' to the 'Mauretania' as a vehicle of transatlantic travel. . . To impose the Sunday of the reformers would be to turn the clock back two hundred years, and would be cruel and harmful. Even if it could be enforced, the hatred of religion, in whose name it is asked, would outweigh all possible advantage gained. Religion and its tenets cannot be legislated into the human heart; and Christ himself, least of all, sought to do so. Unquestionably, a larger attendance at church services, and a deeper respect for religion than exists at present, are to be desired. But blue laws will not win the unbeliever any more than the Inquisition with all its power and physical punishments was able to do. A so-called blue law would not be as extreme as the Inquisition, but it would rest on identically the same selfish, narrow basis. The Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts doubtless means well, although the milk of human kindness must have been wiped from his lips before his latest picture was taken. "Probably the ideal Sunday, spiritually and physically, is the one approved by Theodore Roosevelt. Let the morning be devoted to attendance upon some public place of worship; and for those who are debarred from such For relaxation during the week, let the Sunday af ternoon be spent in open-air recreation. myself, I cannot see any greater sin in the engineer who runs a Sunday train which enables a son to reach the bedside of his dying mother, than the labor of the janitor who cares for the fires, rings the bell, and otherwise makes a congregation at church possible." The New Orleans "States " Scores Bigotry The New Orleans States of Dec. 19, 1920, in an editorial entitled, "A Bigoted Reformer," scores Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts for his relentless attacks upon the Jews. Dr. Crafts advocates that Jews and Seventh-day Adventists should be compelled to observe Sunday also, no matter if they have already observed the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. He says, "The minority must always suffer for the greatest good of the majority." This is true when it comes to civil policies, but is never true in religion. The majority has nothing to do with settling the truth and the duty of religious dogmas and obligations. These are purely matters of the individual conscience. Because Dr. Crafts takes this un-Christian and un-American position, the editor of the New Orleans States says: "We sometimes read with amazement of the persecution of the Jews of Russia, Poland, and other foreign countries, and of the inciting of mobs to rise, rob and murder them; and we cannot quite understand how these things can be in nations professing Christianity. Yet in its way this attack of a so-called American minister of the church is exactly on a level with the spirit behind every pogrom. "No cause can possibly succeed which is Dr. led by men of the type of Dr. Crafts. Crafts would Puritanize the country, and remorselessly crucify those whom he ventures to say stand in his way. But the American people are too liberty-loving, too ardently devoted to religious freedom, and too much opposed to bigotry of every kind, ever to stand with Dr. Crafts in his campaign." "The commander in chief of the tatterdemalion army of reform appears to be the Rev. Dr. Crafts, a self-confessed Christian lobbyist.' His most recent scheme to insure compulsory saintliness is to organize in every church in every community a squad of moral police, whose specialty shall be to spy upon their neighbors. If a weak brother should be so sinful as to fall from grace, the duly delegated character constable would be in duty bound to report him instanter to the authorities. "We had supposed that the detestable practice of the Russian czar in establishing an all but universal military and political espionage was bad enough, but the ubiquitous moral mentor, practising a kind of religious espionage, will be infinitely worse. Under the new theocracy, patrolled by professional meddlers, private conscience may as well throw down its tools and join the ranks of the unemployed." Washington (D. C.) "Times" An editorial in the Washington Times says: "There ought to be some limit to irritating, bossing, and bullying those that work six days and want the right to enjoy themselves on the seventh day. The tailor in the old story delighted in teasing the elephant, and pricked the great beast's sensitive trunk with his needle as it passed along. He regretted that later when the elephant came back. "A body of workers is a huge elephant slow to wrath. But Puritans and others will find it a mistake to overdo the teasing process." Adapted from Columbus BLUE SUNDAY FOLLOW THE LEADER The "North American" Hits Blue Laws of Philadelphia The North American of Philadelphia, Dec. 20, 1920, sizes up the Sunday blue law advocate and his narrow views as inflicting an injury upon the true cause of Christianity and making it intolerable for others. The editor of that paper says truly, and in language well calculated to carry conviction: "A small band of overzealous Sabbatarians, who from unselfish motives, but with deplorable judgment, agitate for laws to compel the nation to conform to their narrow views, thereby create hostility and prejudice toward the very institution they aim to serve. "In matters of individual conduct and the recreations and pastimes of the people no rigid formula of observance would be rational or tolerable; first, because such restrictions are alien to the spirit of democracy, and second, |