A mass meeting in the interests of the five day working week was help under the auspices of the Jewish Sat? bath Alliance, which has for its purpose to secure for the seventh-day observers the opportunity of observing Saturday as a day of worship.
The meeting was held at the Seward High School. Hester and Essert Streets, New York.
Carlyle B. Haynes, president of the Greater New York Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, and opponent of religious legislation in New York, was the principal speaker.
“Sunday laws are relics of the superstition, the bigotry, the intolerance and the fanaticism of mediaeval times, and have no place in the twentieth century. They should be repealed in every state and nation. And Sunday law reformers are an anomaly in this otherwise progressive century. Mr. Haynes declared.
“There is a certain type of narrow minded, intolerant bigotry in religious circles in America, upon which the liberalizing tendencies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have had no effect at all. It is this from which nonconformists, and especially Jews, have suffered during the centuries, and from which they will suffer now unless they conform. It is this which displays its faires fruitage in such organizations as They Lord’s Day Alliance,” he further stated.
He pointed out that exemption clauses in Sunday laws, favoring those who observe the seventh day, and making exemptions from prosecution for them, do not protect the rights of the Sabbath-keeper. He declared that exemption clauses were put in such legislation in order to give it a more liberal appearance, and thus make its passage easier, but that as soon as Sunday laws were on the statute books, campaigns were started to repeal the exemption clauses.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
