There is no Federal Sunday Law, although the distillation of spirituous liquors on the first day of the week is prohibited. California only prohibits labor by any employee on more than six days out of every seven, but not specifying any compulsory day of rest. In Colorado only trafficking in liquors and barbering are prohibited on Sunday and in Montana there is a law against barbering only.
In most of the other States, as well as in the Territories and in the District of Columbia (which is also counted as a Territory), there are more or less stringent laws, most of them forbidding not only manual labor but also the carrying on of trade or business. There are eleven States—Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, South Dakota, Texas and Virginia—where servile or manual labor is permitted on Sunday to those who observe Saturday as their day of rest. In thirteen more—Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin—the exceptions in favor of Seventh-Day Sabbatarians affect both manual labor and trade or business. But the statute is not always a criterion of the observance or enforcement of Sunday laws in a certain locality. Some of the laws, like that of New York, decree that “it is a sufficient defense to a prosecution for work on the first day of the week, that the defendant uniformly keeps another day of the week as holy time, and does not labor on that day, and that the labor complained of was done in such manner as not to interrupt or disturb other persons in observing the first day of the week as holy time.” In many localities, especially in large cities, the Sunday laws are simply obsolete, and are usually revived in the name of Reform after the success of a Reform Party at the polls, only to become obsolete again when that party is voted out of office at the succeeding election. The defeat usually comes for no other reason than the dissatisfaction of a large number of citizens with the strict enforcement of the Sunday laws. Jews are by no means the only element of the population which resents stringency in these matters. It may be said that the coupling together of strict enforcement of the Sunday laws with the good government movements in the large cities has been a greater drawback to municipal reform in the United States than any other single cause.
Of all these three problems which are of special interest to the Jews of the United States, the first, or the passport question, seems at the present moment to be nearest to solution. The immigration question is certain to remain open for many years to come, as neither side of the conflicting interests who work against each other is likely to yield in the near future. The trade unions, which see in the immigrant a menace to the highly-paid laborer, and the so-called patriotic societies, which fear a deterioration of the American race or stock by the admixture of people from nationalities and races which they consider to be inferior, keep up a constant agitation for more restrictive measures against the influx of strangers. On the other hand, there is a constantly increasing demand for workmen in the expanding industries, for farm laborers and for domestic servants, and the million or more immigrants who now arrive in a year of ordinary business activity are so easily absorbed that their usefulness cannot be denied. While the adoption of some restrictive legislation may be forced on Congress by the pressure of those who agitate for it, real restriction seems to be out of the question before the country is filled up and built up; and this will take so long a time that all speculations as to what may happen afterwards are at present premature.
There is hardly any agitation for or against the Sunday laws, as such. New and mostly restrictive measures are adopted, either against the liquor business as a concession to the Prohibition element, which is backed by the churches; or against single trades, like those of butchers or barbers, as a concession to the sentiment in favor of overworked laborers. The time for abolishing the Sunday laws or for adopting explicit exemptions in favor of Jews, making the observance of Saturday not a defense against prosecution but a security against molestation, has not yet arrived; but the sense of justice and righteousness is unmistakably growing, and there is no doubt of the ultimate triumph of liberal tendencies over this heritage of intolerant ages, when nobody considered himself bound to respect the rights, especially the religious rights, of helpless minorities.
CHAPTER XXXV.
END OF THE CENTURY. THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR. THE DREYFUS AFFAIR. ZIONISM.
Jews in the Spanish-American war—Commissioned and non-commissioned officers, privates and “Rough Riders”—Jews in the Navy: Simon Cook, Joseph Strauss and Edward David Taussig—The career of Rear-Admiral Adolph Marix—His part in the Inquiry about the “Maine” and in the war—The significance of the Dreyfus Affair—Its influence on the spread of Zionism—The American press almost as pro-Dreyfus as the Jewish—The Zionist movement in America—The rank and file consists of immigrants from Slavic countries, under the leadership of Americans.
In the short war between the United States and Spain in 1898, in which the most progressive and liberal of modern nations was pitted against a nation whose greatness began to wane soon after it expelled the Jews in the year of the discovery of America, a large number of Jews enlisted as volunteers, besides the number who were in the regular service of the Army and the Navy. It is roughly estimated that about four thousand Jews were found in the military and naval forces which operated against Spain[51] most of them immigrants of the last period, of whom a considerable proportion had served in the armies of Russia, Austria and Roumania before their arrival here. The Jewish army officers of the highest rank were four Majors, who were officers in the army before the outbreak of the war. They were: Major Surgeon Daniel M. Appel (b. in Pennsylvania, 1854) and Major Surgeon Aaron H. Appel (b. 1856), both of whom are now colonels in the Medical Corps of the regular army; the third was Major (of volunteers) George W. Moses, a native of Ohio, who graduated from the Military Academy of West Point in 1892, and was a Lieutenant in the 3rd Cavalry Regiment when he was assigned to duty as a major of volunteers and returned to the regular service in 1899; the fourth was Major Felix Rosenberg of Cleveland, O., who was stationed at Fort Thomas. There were also in the army about a half dozen Captains, one of whom, Moses G. Zalinski (b. in New York, 1863), a graduate of the Artillery School (1894), is now a Lieutenant-Colonel in the regular army. There were also about a dozen Lieutenants, most of whom graduated from the Military Academy of West Point.
Several hundred Jews served as non-commissioned officers and privates in the regular army, or enlisted as United States Volunteers. The bulk of the Jewish soldiers, however, served in the regiments of State Volunteers, and were represented among the soldiers of every State of the Union, having among them a goodly proportion of non-commissioned officers, and also a number who held commissions from the State organizations. They were naturally represented in largest numbers in the regiments or companies which were organized in the large cities; some companies in New York regiments containing between twenty-five and thirty Jewish recruits. At least a half dozen Jews are known to have served in the First United States Volunteer Cavalry Regiment (known as the regiment of “Rough Riders”), which was organized by Theodore Roosevelt (b. in New York City, 1858), who later served as President of the United States, from September 14, 1901, to March 4, 1905, as the successor of President William McKinley (1843–1901), and then served a full term (March 4, 1905, to March 4, 1909), until he was succeeded by the present incumbent, William Howard Taft (b. in Cincinnati, O., 1857).