Commissioners Make Mistake Opening Drug Store on Sabbath, Says Smithfield Herald, Aug. 10, 1923

City Board Repeals a Law

The board of town commissioners at their meeting Tuesday night took we believe an unwise step when they repealed the law prohibiting drug stores from keeping open on Sunday for other purposes than filling prescriptions. Be it big city or little town, it is a step in the wrong direction when the Lord’s Day is desecrated by the carrying on of ordinary business simply for money gain. “Six days shalt thou do thy work, but the seventh is the Sabbath, says the Lord thy God.” We have been blessed as a community even in times of financial depression. Business failures have been nominal; no scourge has singled us out; no drought or other calamity has befallen us; but woe unto the individual, city or nation that disregards the purposes of the Almighty.

We would not have this sound like a sermon for we are not a preacher nor the son of a preacher, but the gross uselessness of allowing any store in Smithfield is so evident we cannot refrain from commending. It would seem that the occasion of the Vocal Union a few Sundays ago when the drug stores did such a remarkable business was suggestive of too great a temptation.

This letting down of the bars will cause more complications than appear on the surface. If one place of business has the right to keep open, others will claim the same right. Every cold drink place in town white and colored can demand the exercise of this right, as indeed any other business, including filling stations, picture show, groceries or drygoods.

There has been a tendency in recent months to put forward the younger men of the town in performing civic duties. This idea was advanced by some when the recent mass meeting nominated a number of young men to help run the city government. Such a course seems proper inasmuch as the responsibilities of civic duties must necessarily descend from one generation to another. These young men have it in their power to measure up, not to a standard of progressiveness that means a lowering of the morals of our town, but to a standard of progressiveness that will build not only from a financial standpoint but that of character. We may be old fashioned, but we have a feeling that a mistake has been made in allowing even one drug store to stay open on Sunday—a mistake which the Christian people of the town ought to rectify.

From the editorial page of The Smithfield Herald, Friday, Aug. 10, 1923. The Smithfield Herald, established in 1882; J.M. Beaty Estate, W.M. Gaskin, T.J. Lassiter Estate proprietors.