“BLUE LAWS”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 9 April 1927, Page 11

“BLUE LAWS”

COUNTRY OF THE EARNEST MIND

is :i country of earnest mind. In the State of New Jersey there is in force a Statute of 1798, which '‘to keep holy the Sabbath Day prohibits tiie playing of quoits and bowls, bars all trade, and forbids any labour of whatever kind.” Many other States have legislation of the saine sort, generally known as ‘‘Blue Laws,” embodying more or less completely the old Puritan doctrine that any form of pleasure is a sin, and therefore ought to be a crime. The enforcement of these measures is. in the nature of things, variable. But the other day Irvington, in New Jersey, awoke from, its slum bers to discover that local zealots had invoked the “Blue Law” to shut up the picture-houses •on Sunday (London “Daily Telegraph”). The motives of

this policy have not- been reported, but its consequences are given us at length. The men of the “movies,’'’ we read without surprise, have not taken it lying down. The law is undoubtedly the law, . but the cinema trade proposes to make clear that it is law for everybody. If man may not work in a picture-house on Sunday he is not to work anywhere else. The Courts of Irvington have had before them vendors of cigarettes, .tooth-paste, petrol, ice-cream, and tin whistles, drivers of trams and# buses, bootblacks, users of the telephone (a large and vicious class), photographers, and reporters. Some of these clamoured to pay their fines and go; some, including the reporters, propose to fight tc the bit ter end. Anxious as we are to defend the freedom . of the Press, we cannot see that they have a leg to stand on. If work is illegal on Sunday, then it is clear that the world can be told noth ing of what happens on Sunday. But the men cf the “movies” are not content with bagging the reporters. They announce their intention of trying for the clergy: It is their fell resign to “arrest every sexton and furnace-man in all Irvington churches next Sunday, thus compelling clergymen either to stoke the church boilers themselves, or allow the congregation to freeze.'' Indeed, whoever stokes, clergy or laity, would seem equally guilty. With this form of torture by cold it is hoped to convince the prosecutors of the impracticability of the “Blue Laws.’ This seems sanguine. A reductio a-l absurdum is only a success with reasonable people.