Mexico Weekly Ledger · Mexico, Missouri · 1905

Oh! But what do we care for the poor working man

One issue of the Mexico Weekly Ledger, August 1905: a statement against Sunday baseball read at the Methodist church, and a reply from A Working Man who saw no harm in a clean moral Sunday game and wanted to know when else he was supposed to see one.

In the summer of 1905 Sunday baseball came to Mexico, Missouri, and the Mexico Weekly Ledger of August 3 carried the whole argument in a single issue. The first piece was read at the Methodist church “just preceding the sermon.” Its author had been “watching with growing regret the Sunday base ball games that have been so frequent in Mexico this season,” calls them “a backward step” and worries about educating the public mind “up to the point of quietly tolerating open Sabbath desecration.” He is careful to say he is “a believer in clean open air sport” and that base ball, our national game, “has a place in college life and in town life.” Just not on Sunday.

A few columns over, the reply. “A Working Man, E. E. T.” had read the minister in the previous night’s paper and was unmoved. Whatever profanity and gambling may plague other localities, “I know it never has happened here.” The promoters, he reports, invited the city officers out to the games to check for Sabbath desecration in person. He is a Christian, his family attends church and Sunday school every Sunday morning, and he sees “no harm in a clean moral Sunday base ball game like we have been having here.” Then the swing that clears the fence: “How Mr. Editor, could a poor working man and his family have a chance to enjoy our national game? Oh! But what do we care for the poor working man; if he can’t get off week days let him do without.”

In 1905 the working week ran six days, and E. E. T. is just doing the arithmetic: baseball on week days only is baseball for somebody else. The Ledger got the last word, a note that it is “pleased to have public questions discussed in its columns, but must insist that in the future or in the past, communications of this character be signed by the writers full name.” How E. E. T. was supposed to sign a letter in the past, the Ledger did not say.