A politician agrees with a woman labeled “W.C.T.U.” and a man holding a Bible, who are standing on the right. Behind them are the locked and barricaded doors to a cafe on which is a sign “Closed Sunday.” On the left, behind the politician, is an open door labeled “Family Entrance” from which the cafe owner is placing a bribe in the politician’s right hand. Further to the left is a police officer leaning against the building, pretending not to notice the illegal transaction. Caption: Politician (to Temperance Element) — You’re right! The sanctity of the American Sabbath must be preserved!
comments and context
Comments and Context
The cartoon illustrates an anomaly in long-running debates about “Sunday closings” of saloons. Even today in much of the United States, local ordinances restrict liquor sales on Sundays, so the controversy has only quieted, not ended. At the time of this cartoon, the WCTU (Women’s Christians Temperance Union) and other groups including religious, social, and feminist, advocated a range of reforms from Sunday closings to full-fledged prohibition of spirits (and, often, tobacco). In many places, Sunday-closing laws were circumvented by reclassification of saloons as restaurants or hotels, rebirth as “private clubs,” or by outright bribery of police and judges. Gallaway’s cartoon portrays the depth of hypocrisy — the political establishment that not only enabled circumvention, but its virtue signals to prohibitionists. When Theodore Roosevelt enforced Sunday-closing laws as Police Commissioner of New York City, he endured criticism, for instance, from common laborers and their families, whose only days of rest were Sundays. But he maintained that the remedy was to change the regulations, not condone corruption.
