Baltimore Evening Sun (6 October 1911): 6.

As painfully conspicuous as an intelligent City Councilman.

From a morning paper of yesterday morning:

The Merchants’ and Manufacturers’ Association * * * will pass resolutions * *

What! * * Again? * * * Nochmal?

“OLD-FASHIONED” JOCOSITIES —— [From the inaugural address of the Hon. James Harry Preston.]

Baltimore is famed as a city without graft. That fame must be and ahall be kept unsullied. * * * To aid in inducing outsiders to invest their money and make their homes in Baltimore, we must maintain our reputation as a city of order and good government.

Sing Hook! Hook the manly! Hook the bold! Hook who “acquiesed”—and then saw the light! Hook who changed his mind between days! Hook the psychic–sensitive to far, faint echoes; to ultra-violet radiations; to calories impalpable and ineffable! Sing Hook!

And in the intervals of your singing give thanks that Numsen is out and Hook is in—that a hero and a gentleman has got a job.

The war of the professors, the battle royal of the diagnosticians:

HOOK—It was done by a few knaves and fools.
MAHON—It was due to zealousness.
HUGHES–Put me down for individual inattention.

Was it Swift who warbled of the big fleas and the little fleas, the little fleas and the littler fleas, and so on ad infinitum? A prophet as well as a poet! Here is Biggs, the apologist, with an ardent staff of apologists of his own. I claw a few strophes from a Biggsiad published in The Sun of yesterday—a few strophes from a Biggiad signed :Fair Play.”

Mr. Biggs has always stood for fair play and clean politics. * * * He has always contended that publicity and frankness with the people to all walks of life, as well as in all organizations, is a fair and honorable course.

An eloquent tribute to a noble Roman! But how is it to be brought into agreement with the Biggsian hymns to the super-Mahon? Does Mr. Biggs still stick to his old belief that Mr. Preston will “add lustre to our civic pride,” whatever that may mean? That his administration will be “distinguished by a halo of * * * solid accomplishment for the people”? (I quote from a letter to The Sun dated July 6, at which time a certain Mr. B——— was in a receptive mood.) And if he has changed his mind, why doesn’t he give way to that remarkable frenzy for “publicity and frankness,” and say so?

Another extract from the Biggsiad of yesterday:

Mr. Biggs realizes that a public man should * * * accustom himself to unreasonable criticism, as well as prepare himself for a spirit of injustice from many unthinking people.

Let us hear more of this. Just what criticism of Mr. Biggs has been “unreasonable”? Anything I have printed to this place? If so, and the passage is brought to my attention, I stand ready to offer the gentleman my sincere apologies. But is it “unreasonable” to call a presumably sane and respectable man to book for affronting the public with gross flattery of a fourth-rate politician, for openly seeking a place under that politician, for getting into the band-wagon of that politician?

If Mr. Biggs were himself a political bravo, his course would be natural and stand in need of no comment. But he pretends to be a business man of sound sense, and it was an a business man of sound sense that he came to the defense of Mahon’s friend. Let us ask him now, in all sincerity and fairness, what he thinks, as a business man of sound sense, of the “old-fashioned” administration that we have suffered for four months. Let us ask him what he thinks of a Mayor who, when war is declared between the people and the political bandits, issues a sneering declaration of neutrality.

I do not invade Mr. Biggs’ privacy. Mr. Biggs has no privacy. He elected himself a “public man” when he projected himself into the limelight as the super-Mahon’s most eloquent eulogist. The thing for him to grasp in the present emergency is the fact that “public life” has its responsibilities as well as its rewards—that criticism of a self-appointed “public man” may be very bitter and ruthless and painful, and yet fall far short of being “unreasonable.”

The Hon. Jacob W. Hook * * * the moving-picture film.

The American language, so Joestingesque, so juicy:

Jake Hook come darn near gettin’ in bad.

Any old charter; any old plan–so long as it bounces the super-Mahon.

Only three years seven months and thirteen days more—and maybe only the seven months and thirteen days!

From the inaugural address of the super-Mahon:

At the beginning I desire to take the people into my confidence.

And behold, he done so! For instance, in the matter of the Calvert Bank.

Another extract from that great state paper, that Magna Charta of the plain people:

To aid in inducing outsiders to invest their money and make their homes in Baltimore, we must maintain our reputation as a city of order and good government.

To which the Greater Baltimore Committee replies with an unexpected, a disconcerting, even a devastating “Aye!”

If it is possible to feel more foolish than the Mayor’s Advisory Committee feels at the present moment, then it must be extremely painful to feel that foolish.

From “old-fashioned” Mayors, and “old-fashioned” City Councils, and “old-fashioned” primary elections–Good Lord, deliver us!

Say what you will against him, Mahon at least has a keen sense of humor–a virtue absent from the super-Mahon. That plan for a “citizens’ committee” is a masterpiece. Watch the “leading” lawyers come out. The “well-known business men.” The “life-long” Democrats. The “prominent Baltimoreans.” The noble survivors of Old Man Rasin’s famous and odoriferous “business man’s associations.” A memorable muster. A rally of the Old Guard. An incomparable opportunity to stop, look and listen.