THE BLUE LAW BLUES

In 1798 a law "for the suppression of vice and immorality" was passed in New Jersey providing that no "wordly business or employment, nor any interludes, plays for gain, dancing, singing, fiddling or other music for the sake of merriment" should be carried on upon the Sabbath day. In 1923, this statute still remains on the books: zealous but simple-minded ladies and gentlemen invoke it to suppress Sunday movies and theatres, while paleoxed legislators seek daily to add more awe of the vintage of 1798 to the already complete collection.

To crown one's mortification, our friends the English look us over and volunteer the information that Americans are a lawless lot. Lawless, forsooth Americans are the most law-ridden, law-encumbered people on the earth. With frenzied politicians catering first to the prejudices of one group having the natural breadth and average intelligence of a CroMagnon man and again to the hysteria of some other group with somewhat the same qualifications, a maze of laws has been constructed which is impossible to respect if it is understood and still more impossible to obey if it is not understood. To make the situation a little worse, those laws which are commonly admitted to be irrational, trivial and ridiculous cease to be enforced: they remain law, enforceable at any time, while common sense prevents their invocation until they are forgotten, only to be hauled out for the confusion of succeeding generations.

The New Jersey justice declared that to obtain the repeal of an obnoxious law "you have but to enforce it". This is sensible enough. But in America obnoxious laws merely cease to be enforced: they are not repealed, and when contempt for the insignificant, puerile attempts of the law makers results as it must, the derision and disregard of really rational laws is not far off. Obedience to law is a habit and so is disobedience. If the energy of law-making and of law enforcement is to be spent on childish, insincere and unnecessary regulations, the main body of necessary law can not be expected to hold a revered or admired place in American minds.