Mr. Jones. -- Let them be so if they choose; but what I am striking at, is that these men have no right to say that I am an atheist simply because I do not believe in keeping Sunday.
Senator Blair. -- You come here and seriously argue against these people, because they and the atheists blackguard each other. What have we to do with that? They abuse each other. It is worse in the Christian than in the atheist, because the Christian has some rules to guide his conduct, which the atheist has not. Here seems to be some strong intemperate language which one human being makes use of towards another. An atheist or a Christian alike may find fault with that. I do not know any way that we can interfere with it; but if you claim to argue against this bill because these people abuse atheists, I reply to that by saying that many atheists are for this bill just as these people are. They unite in support of this bill, therefore mutual recriminations amount to nothing.
Mr. Jones. -- But the mutual recrimination amounts to this, that although this is confined simply to words between them now, --
Senator Blair. -- I do not think you ought to argue to us by taking this precious time of yours and ours to show that these people use intemperate language towards each other.
Mr. Jones. -- But I am doing it to show that they use the intemperate language now, but if they get the law, they will use more than the language against them. These men only want to make the State a party to their religious disputes. They want to get the nation by law to commit itself to the defense of religious observances, so they can add its power to their side of the controversy, and send to "hell" or some other place where the Devil is, those who even accidentally disagree with them. But the State has no business to allow itself to be made a party to any religious controversy. That has been the bane of every nation except this, and God forbid that this one should be dragged from its high estate, and made the tool of the irregular passions of religious parties. The State will find its legitimate employment it seeing that these parties keep their hands off each other, and that the ebullitions of their religious zeal are kept within the bounds of civility. It is not safe to put civil power into the hands of such men as these. But that is just what this Sunday bill will do if it shall pass.
Senator Blair. -- The atheist is for this proposed law. He is not intelligently going to support a law which enables these people to burn him at the stake.
Mr. Jones. -- I know he is not intelligently going to do it.
Senator Blair. -- He is liable to be as intelligent as they are. Mr. Hume was a very intelligent man; so was Voltaire; so was Franklin, if Franklin was an atheist; Franklin was a deist, at all events.
Mr. Jones. -- It is safe to say that not one in ten of the people whose names are signed in behalf of this Sunday law know what is the intention of it, and what those will do with it when they get it.
Senator Blair. -- Then it is a lack of intelligence on their part.
Mr. Jones. -- I know people who signed that petition who would now be just as far from signing it as I would.
Senator Blair. -- That is because you told them of those terrible consequences which they had not believed would follow. The masses of the people do not believe that the Christian people of this country have united in every State in this Union for such a purpose.
Mr. Jones. -- Here is the principle: Here are six million Protestants and seven million two hundred thousand Catholics --
Senator Blair. -- Cardinal Gibbons has written a letter which is in evidence. He is for it, and a great many Catholics are also for it; but it does not follow that those Catholics are for it simply because Cardinal Gibbons wrote that letter. They were for it before Cardinal Gibbons wrote the letter. You must remember that the Catholics in this country are intelligent, as well as we. Some of them are ignorant, some of us are ignorant.
Mr. Jones. -- But here is the point. These people are complaining of the continental Sunday --
Senator Blair. -- They do not complain of it because it is Catholic; they complain of it because it is not as good for the people as our form of Sunday --
Mr. Jones. -- Certainly. And in this movement, the American Sunday, they say, comes from the Puritans, and these people know --
Senator Blair. -- Do you argue against it because it comes from the Puritans, or because it comes from the Catholics? It comes from both, you say; we say it is for the good of society, and that God is for it, because it is for the good of man.
Mr. Jones. -- But let me state the point that I am making: I think everybody knows that it is perfectly consistent with the Catholic keeping of Sunday for the Catholic to go the church in the morning and to the pleasure resort if he chooses in the afternoon. These men stand here in convention, and cry out against the continental Sunday and against its introduction here. Everybody knows that the continental Sunday is the Roman Catholic Sunday. Yet these men, while denouncing the continental Sunday, join hands with the Roman Catholics to secure this Sunday law. They have counted here six million Protestants and seven million two hundred thousand Catholics. Suppose this law were secured in answer to these petitions, would they then have a Puritan Sabbath, or a continental Sunday? In other words, would the six million Protestants compel the seven million two hundred thousand Catholics to keep Sunday in the Puritan, or even the Protestant way, or will the seven million two hundred thousand Catholics do as they please on Sunday, and let the six million Protestants whistle for "the breath of the Puritan" which Dr. Herrick Johnson invokes ? More than this, if it should come to compulsion between these, would not the seven million two hundred thousand Catholics be able to make it unpleasant for the six million Protestants?
Senator Blair. -- I have been all through this that the working people go through. I have been hungry when a boy. The first thing I can remember about is being hungry. I know how the working people feel. I have tugged along through the week, and been tired out Saturday night, and I have been where I would have been compelled to work to the next Monday morning if there had been no law against it. I would not have had any chance to get that twenty-four hours of rest if the Sunday law had not given it to me. It was a civil law under which I got it. The masses of the working people in this country would never get that twenty-four hours' rest if there had not been a law of the land that gave it to us. There is that practical fact, and we are fighting with that state of things. The tired and hungry men, women, and children, all over this country, want a chance to lie down, and rest for twenty-four hours out of the whole seven days.
Mr. Jones. -- So have I been through this that the working people go through. I have carried the hod by the day. I have swung the hammer and shoved the plane by the day. I am a working-man now just as much as I ever was, though not in precisely the same way; and I say to you that I never was robbed of that twenty-four hours' rest. Nor are there so many compelled to lose it as these Sunday-law advocates try to make out. Dr. Crafts said last night over in that convention that he had had communication with people in every nation but two, and --
"In the world around he could not find a man who had financially lost by refusing to work on Sunday. But many have gained by the conscientious sacrifice."
Much testimony was borne in the Chicago convention last month to the same effect in this country; and in the convention now in session in this city, the Hon. Mr. Dingley, member of Congress from Maine, said last night that the American working-men are indifferent to the efforts which are put forth in this direction.
Senator Blair. -- He is wrong about it. Mr. Dingley didn't know what he was talking about when he said that.
Mr. Jones. -- He said he had investigated the matter.
Senator Blair. -- I have investigated it, and I say that Mr. Dingley was simply laboring under a misapprehension.
Mr. Jones. -- Dr. Crafts said this morning that he talked two hours with a convention of laboring men at Indianapolis, answering their questions, until at the end of two hours they indorsed this movement. If they are crying for it, if they are fairly tearing their hair for it, how can it be possible that he had to talk two hours to persuade them that it was all right?
Senator Blair. -- Take his statement in full, if you take it at all. He says they are crying for it.
Mr. Jones. -- Then why was it necessary to talk to them for two hours?
Senator Blair. -- Then you simply say he did not tell the truth? You discredit the witness?
Mr. Jones. -- I do.
Senator Blair. -- You say perhaps he did not tell the truth, that is all. I think he was right.
Mr. Jones. -- But the two things do not hitch together properly. If they are calling for it so loudly, certainly it ought not to require two hours to convert them. The fact is that the laboring men are not calling for it. Great effort is being made to have it appear so. But the Knights of Labor never took any such step except at the solicitation of Dr. Crafts. This bill had scarcely been introduced last spring before Dr. Crafts made a trip to Chicago and other cities, soliciting the indorsement of the Knights of Labor. Instead of their petitioning for this Sunday law, they have first been petitioned to petition for it; the object of it had to be explained, and objections answered, before they could even be brought to support it. The object of the petition for this bill was explained by Dr. Crafts to the Central Labor Union of New York, and its indorsement secured. the Central Labor Union embraces a number of labor organizations, and the Christian Union declares the Central Labor Union to be a "radically Socialistic" organization.