7-day work week just a bit too much

Saturday, 06 February 2010 05:00

February 6, 1902. The normal six-days-a-week of work (usually 12 hours a day) is fine, but seven-days-a-week just isn’t Christian, according to the London, Ontario, Advertiser.

Most of us have to work in this country, and practically all of us feel and respond to that need. It is in working that we learn the need of resting; rest is just as much a law of life as work. A preacher in Australia, recently expounding the fourth commandment, laid emphasis on working six days of the seven, and pointed out that those who did not keep that part, did not deserve the blessing of the other part.

There is something in that. The idlers in society are often those who do not appreciate the needed blessing of the day of rest. The toiler appreciates his rest and is the man who ought to have his rest guarded. The demands of modern civilization make inroads into the day of rest, and it will require determination on the part of all classes of citizens to keep them within proper bounds, that, is keep Sunday labor at the lowest point…

In many places it has been shown that the final result of Sunday labor is seven days work for six days’ pay, an increase of slavery and of degradation.