Report of a speech (pp. [89]–94) and a reply (pp. 96–97) delivered by Kuyper at the first congress for the abolition of night work in the baker’s trade. At the time there were no legal protections in place to guarantee a night’s rest for bakers. Kuyper was one of the thirty-two honorary members of this congress. In his speech, Kuyper argues that abolishing the night shift for bakers and their staff is a matter of conscience. He contends that the rhythmic periods of day and night, low and high tides, are ordinances of God—a general revelation intended to order the rhythms of work and repose, waking and sleeping. However, he states that bakers who run their own family bakeries must remain outside the law at present because the fundamental right to an autonomous home life ought not to be violated by the state. Kuyper did not support the bakers’ draft law, which the Anti-Revolutionary A.S. Talma (1864–1916), minister of agriculture, trade, and industry, had submitted. The draft was rejected in 1912.

This first congress against night work for bakers was an initiative of the secretariat of the Roman Catholic Employer’s Organization for Bakers and Confectioners. Kuyper based a meditation in De Heraut (no. 1553, October 6, 1907) on a faulty exegesis of the second half of Hosea 7:6 (“their baker sleeps the whole night”), a fact that did not pass unnoticed by his readers.