SEEMINGLY, nothing could be more deplorable to our National Reform and Sunday-law friends than a city without a Sunday law, and a State similarly blessed. Hence they are putting forth their mightiest efforts to secure a Sunday law in California, which has been for years without any such encumbrance upon its statute-books. Its cities have gone on just like other cities. Most of its business places are closed on that day, not because they must perforce close on Sunday, but because the people have been generally taught to observe the day. Thousands go to church, thousands more seek pleasure elsewhere, as they do in other great cities of our land. One would think, to read the ardent appeals made by Sunday-law men for "graceless California," that without a Sunday law it would be one of the wickedest and most godless places on the face of the earth.

In view of such declarations repeatedly made, we note for the readers of LIBERTY Some opinions on the other side. For instance, Dr. Charles F. Aked, who recently came from the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church of New York to become pastor of the First Congregational Church in San Francisco, does not believe what is said regarding "the city by the Golden Gate." On February

No. 2

28 he said, in reference to a call from the Central Church of Chicago, from which Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus is about to resign:

"It would have to be a very marvelous call put in a very wonderful way to tempt me from San Francisco now.. Nothing that I know of, or might dream of, could make me leave this most lovable city. . . . I came to San Francisco expecting to find it the wickedest city in the world. I had been led to expect evidently by those who knew nothing about the place that it was a sort of

hell upon earth. I have found it an earthly paradise. Gay? frivolous? Certainly, but that is not wickedness. To call a city wicked, you must have wicked men for its citizens; but in San Francisco there is a finer set of men to dwell together and work together than in any other city that it has ever been my lot to know. San Franciscans are primarily honest men. Honesty is a preeminent characteristic of the men of San Francisco. They are clean-souled, strong-hearted, pure-minded men. . . I wish people wouldn't talk as they do, so flippantly about wickedness. It is so easy to stand afar and hold hands up, and shock modesty, at the evils of some place that lights up its streets after twilight." He declares that "in California

one gets at the real American spirit." The Rev. William Rader, of Calvary Presbyterian Church, a noted preacher of San Francisco, being interviewed upon the matter, said:

"I greatly object to visitors, especially clergymen, coming to San Francisco to speak disparagingly of our city. Men who say that San Francisco is the wickedest city in the country have no just estimate of the relative morality of the East and West. . . . The real religion of San Francisco is not in the hands of the churches. The larger manhood outside of the church, which breathes the true, fine, strong spirit of the West, must be reckoned with when we come to sum up the real moral and religious life of this city."

The Rev. Father Joseph McQuaide said:

"Of course I do not believe the town is so bad as it is painted. . . . Throughout the world some people have a notion that we have a sort of hell-hole out here. I think the idea originated years ago when stories of the Barbary coast were carried to the far ends of the world."

Mr. J. Emmet Hayden, member of the Public Welfare Committee, says:

"I have been in all the capitals of Europe, and in many large cities in different parts of the world, as well as most of them in this country, and I fail to see where San Francisco is worse than any of them. I think as a matter of fact that she is better than most of them. I agree in every way with Dr. Aked."

Mr. William P. Wobber, member of the Board of Censorship, declared:

"I heartily agree with Dr. Aked in his expression as to the alleged wickedness in San Francisco. We have no immoral city here."

J. G. Chown, one of the most prominent Presbyterian laymen in the city, said:

"Dr. Aked is a great man, and he has been in San Francisco long enough to know what he is talking about. He came here with a prejudiced mind, not of his own creating, but influenced by

the poisonous sting of rumor that rises from ignorance."

The Argonaut takes up the question, and intimates that the Eastern visitors seem to be more anxious to see the slums than any other part of San Francisco, and the whole city is looked upon in the light of what they see there.

Much more might be given, but this is sufficient to show the general trend of feeling of many in San Francisco who have had opportunity to compare it with other cities.

Possibly some of these very men may be in favor of a Sunday law, but this one thing is clearly evident, that Sunday laws do not help the general morality of cities. What is true in San Francisco as compared with cities of the East, is as true throughout the State of California. in general as compared with States in the East.. People go to church, if they are interested in church matters, and find enough in the church to pay them for going. If they prefer to stay away, they stay away, as they do in the East. If they wish to find a little recreation in going out into the country, they do that, as people do in New York, or Massachusetts, or Pennsylvania. Some of them prefer the quiet recreation of working in their gardens on that day. This would not be permitted in some of the districts in the East, and yet the sermons preached by the plants and flowers. would have a much stronger influence on the lives of the people than sermons preached in churches which a Sunday law would, if possible, compel them to attend.

Now the lesson of all that we have said and quoted is this: Morality, neither general nor particular, is ever enforced or enforceable by law. Religion is not helped by it; personal piety is not advanced by it. All these must have their basis in the heart, in the motive, in the inner man. If the moral principle be within, it will work out in life.

And

the testimony of all the ages is the mightiest confirmation of these statements. What San Francisco needs, what Cali

NATURE has bestowed her gifts upon California with a lavish hand; and nature's liberality seems to have produced a like condition in the spirit of the people.

The population is cosmopolitan, coming from every nation and clime, representing all stages of wealth and poverty, and holding every kind of belief and nonbelief in religion. These people mingle together with a general recognition of one another's rights, not merely with a spirit of toleration and sufferance for one another's views. There are classes and orders of society, to be sure, but there is no caste. Many a millionaire would stop and give a civil answer to a civil question from a ragpicker on the street, and never think it beneath his dignity to do so.

California was for years, before the admission of Arizona, the only State in the Union that was without any form of religious laws. No religious form or precept is enforced, and yet all forms of worship are protected. The maximum penalty for disturbing any religious meeting, on any day of the week, is a fine of five hundred dollars and six months in jail.

Since 1883 the State has had no Sunday-rest law, although Sunday is made a legal holiday. The question of the repeal

of the Sunday-rest law was made a test in the election of 1882. About forty-one thousand votes showed the majority in favor of the repeal. Since then the disposition to maintain perfect freedom in religious matters has prevailed in every session of the State legislature.

There are those in the State who have sought, by every means in their power, to obtain a Sunday-rest law. They have dressed their proposed laws in varied styles according to the character of the class to which they were to be presented. For certain religious people the proposed laws wore the somber garb of "a Puritan sabbath," and claimed to be essential to the preservation of the Christian religion. To the non-religious laboring man they have been presented in the loose, easyfitting dress of "merely a day of rest for the laboring man, not religious at all." They have even been presented by the ministry attired in the fantastic argument that saloon-keepers need a Sundayrest law, and that theatrical performers should be obliged to rest on Sunday (that they may be able to do better work?).

The State now has a law allowing all laborers one day of rest in each seven, one clause of which reads, "And it shall be unlawful for any employer of labor to cause his employees, or any of them, to