Baltimore Evening Sun (14 June 1911): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Just who will be the next Governor of Maryland nobody knows, but that Governor Crothers will not be the man seems to be agreed by all the prophets. The chief objection to him, so far as I can make out, is that John Walter Smith, or young Gorman, or Fred Talbott, or some other professional politician, or all of them together, is or are against him. Apparently the people of Maryland have no voice in the matter. They seem content, as usual, to let a crowd of fourth-rate wire-pullers do the choosing.

It would be easy, of course, to imagine a better Governor than Mr. Crothers, but isn’t it a fact, after all, that he has done pretty well, and isn’t it a fact also that all save one or two of the men who aspire to succeed him are obviously his inferiors? Why not give him four years more? Why not give him a chance to carry out his program of reforms and improvements? Why not indorse that program and so hearten him in the good work he has undertaken? Why discard him for some follow who, at best, couldn’t be appreciably better? Why throw out a man who has tried his darndest and put in a man who may not try at all?

A man in public office, like a man in private office, gains in efficiency as he gains in experience. Supposing him to be animated by common honesty, he will be a better official during his second term than during his first term, and a still better one during his third, fourth and fifth terms. It would seem to be the part of a sensible people to take advantaige of this fact--but the American people, unfortunately, show little sense in matters of government. Here in Baltimore we lately dismissed an honest, and increasing efficient Mayor--a man in whom experience had begun to implant courage and foresight.

No doubt the people of the State of Maryland will follow the example of the people of BaIttmore. Mr. Crothers will be sent back to Elkton. His schemes of retrenchment and improvement will go with him, and some new and probably fourth-rate man will take his place. That fourth-rate man, in the course of four years, will advance, perhaps, to the estate and dignity of a third-rate man--maybe even to that of a second-rate man. But before experience can make him a first-rate man he will be turned out and some novice will be given a trial.

I voted against Mr. Crothers, I don’t know him and like many other persons, I have often wondered why, in seeking men to carry out his plans, he chooses so many fools and obstructionists. Therefore, I by no means qualify as a press agent for him. But it seems to me that he has made a sincere effort to improve the government of Maryland, that he has urged more than one good law upon the Legislature, that he has kept a reasonably close watch upon public expenditures, that he has devoted hard thought and tireless enerrgy to his job, that he is less the windy dignitary and more the hard worker than any other Governor, save perhaps one, that Maryland has had since the war.

Here is a little list reform laws passed during his administration, many of them at his instance and all of them with his hearty (and sometimes frenzied) support:

Of these laws, the first-named is especially his, for he has been the head and forefront of the whole good roads campaign. The first fruits of that campaign are already evident. Good roads are multiplying throughout the State. Even the wilderness of Southern Maryland, once as remote as the upper Amazon, is now penetrated by navigable highways. Eight or ten years more and Maryland roads will be as good an those of New Jersey or New York.

Why not let the man who has begun the job finish the job? Why throw him out and try some other fellow? What sense is there in this doctrine that the high and responsible offices of State should be passed eternally from man to man? Why not let well enough alone? The chances are but one in ten that we will get a better Governor by changing. The chances are ten to one that we will get a worse.

Those anti-vaccinationists who leap to the war upon the typhoid vaccine are more eager than wise. Why don’t they wait until some of the good old family doctors have reluctantly yielded to the new idea--and amiably extended the pasturage of the streptococci?

Some croaker sends in the following gloomy prognostications, accompanied by a request that they be printed, and a box of Pennsylvania cigars:

1. After August 1, 1911, no more will be heard of typhoid vaccination in Baltimore.
2. During the year 1912 there will be at least 2,500 cases of typhoid in Baltimore.
3. During the year 1912 there will be at least 200 deaths from the disease.
4. During each of the 10 years following there will be at least 200 deaths from the disease.

A leak in the reservoir is worth two in the imagination.

Which recalls the fact that the Poe monument fund, like the Cuban steamship enterprise and the sugar refinery scheme, is heard of, alas, no more!

Two Johns Hopkins men, whose names I forget, lately discovered a new heart stimulant. I have no means of estimating the value of that heart stimulant, but upon this guess I venture: One ounce of it is worth more to the human race than all the resolutions passed by the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association since January 1, 1898.

Why all this hubbub about Mayor Preston’s quite natural effort to get a share of the city’s money for his bank? The bank is sound, the money to amply protected and it is only by a grotesque distortion of the law and the facts that the transaction can be given an illegal color. The one real objection to it is based, not on its unlawfulness, but on its doubtful taste.

The Voice of the People, as overheard on the public street:

Well, even if that reservoir don’t leak, that faller Quiet ought to get the hook. Why don’t Preston fire them Republicans? You can’t scare me bout no typhoid fever. I already gad it twice.