Puritans and Work
Jeff Jacoby (whose columns are one of the few things I miss from living in Massachusetts) has a typically wonderful column on the Mass. AG's efforts to shut down Whole Foods Markets attempt to violate the state's "blue laws" forbidding stores from being open on Thanksgiving (and other holidays). The article includes such great details on the origin of blue (and similar) laws as the fact that "church doors were bolted during Sunday services [in Puritan Mass.] to prevent restless congregants from leaving early." Read it all here.
Here's the excellent conclusion:
Right. Let's hope the Whole Foods workers denied the chance to earn double pay, the consumers denied the chance to buy last minute items, and the rest of the Massachusetts electorate tell AG Reilly that the state has no business engaging in such coercion. Tradition "wins" for Mr. Reilly, whose got a nice job where he isn't paid by the hour. What about those folks who would prefer the money - perhaps to earn enough to enable their family to have a particularly nice dinner on Friday or to visit relatives for Christmas? Do they get a vote on whether tradition "wins"?
Here's the excellent conclusion:
''Thanksgiving is not like any other day," [Mass. AG] Reilly insists. ''It's been the one day when people didn't have to work. People should be allowed to be off that one day, to have a day to spend with their family. This is one of those issues where tradition wins over for me."
Tradition is a fine thing, and Thanksgiving is suffused with it. But what Reilly is defending is not tradition but coercion. Americans are able to decide for themselves how to spend Thanksgiving. Given a choice, some will opt for family and turkey. Others will grab the chance to go to work for double pay. It isn't for the attorney general of Massachusetts, or any other state official, to make that choice for them.
The blue laws are and always have been obnoxious deprivations of liberty. That Whole Foods might have sold carrots or cinnamon to a Thanksgiving Day customer who needed them is no crime. What is a crime is that there are still laws on the books that make such a sale illegal -- and latter-day Puritans who defend them.
Right. Let's hope the Whole Foods workers denied the chance to earn double pay, the consumers denied the chance to buy last minute items, and the rest of the Massachusetts electorate tell AG Reilly that the state has no business engaging in such coercion. Tradition "wins" for Mr. Reilly, whose got a nice job where he isn't paid by the hour. What about those folks who would prefer the money - perhaps to earn enough to enable their family to have a particularly nice dinner on Friday or to visit relatives for Christmas? Do they get a vote on whether tradition "wins"?
Posted by Andy Morriss on
Wednesday November 23, 2005 at 2:00pm
Massachusetts law permits convenience stores to open, so I think we can dispose of the argument that emergency runs for carrots or cinnamon are significantly impeded.
I lived in Massachusetts, when the Sunday closing laws were relaxed, and I admit that I enjoyed the option to shop on Sunday. It definitely improved my life, and the requirment of premium pay for Sunday work improved the lives of those required to work on Sunday. I can see the same logic applied to TG and Xmas, but I also see the law of diminishing returns applying as the closing law applies to fewer and more significant holidays.
There is no reason to expect that to be so. Most people don't really want to shop on Thanksgiving, so it would probably not be profitable for all, or even most, stores to remain open.
That's why here in Ohio--where stores can be open on Thanksgiving--I found absolutely everything closed yesterday except the Wal-Mart Supercenter. (I went, and am glad the state was kind enough to allow me to do so.)