The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1911. “BLUE LAWS'.”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 26, 15 September 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1911. “BLUE LAWS'.”

Recently Mr Upton Sinclair, author of “The Jungle,” was apparently made the subject of one of those laborious jokes of which Americans are fond. Last week a Mr Brown disturbed a meeting, at Arden, Delaware, of the single-tax enthusiasts of whom Mr Sinclair is chief, and got five days’ imprisonment. When lie came out be changed Mr Sinclair and some of his friends with breaking the “blue laws,” which are old Puritan ordinances on Sunday observance, so called because of their melancholy effect. Mr Sinclair and several professors and lawyers—all “single-taxers” and members of the colony over which Mr Sinclair presides—were found guilty of having played golf and tennis on their grounds on Sunday, and sentenced to eighteen hours’ imprisonment. Mr Sinclair treated the constables and pi isoners to ice cream before serving his sentence and fasted while in gaol rather than take the non-vegetarian fare provided. As fasting is Mr Sinclair’s chief hobby he need not be given much sympathy on that score. Ho now announces that by way of revenge he means to prosecute several judges and the Public Prosecutor, whom he says he recently saw playing tennis at a country club on a Sunday morning. A Home paper in noting the matter remarks that Britain has some “blue laws” of her own which have been invoked comparatively recently. An Act of Charles I. prohibited people taking part in sport*’ or pastimes on Sunday out of their own parishes. In the absence of any local restriction a cricket match, say, would appear to ho allowable under the Act only if the opposing ream® live in the same parish; but even when, iu 1S!)7, some boys were picTcutod under it for playing football in a neighbouring parish the justices dismissed the charge. As late as 1906, however, the R.S.P.C.A. instituted a prosecution under this Act to prevent extra-parochial rabbit-coursing on Sunday. Mr Sinclair and bis friends would clearly have been exempt from its provisions, for they wore cm their own ground, hut what of the golfer who regularly plays his Sunday game several parishes away? our contemporary asks.