Baltimore Evening Sun (7 October 1911): 6.

Another day has gone thundering down the dim corridors of illimitable time. Only 1,321 days more!

The sad but true words of the Hon. Alcaeus Hooper:

But let me tell you the trouble with Baltimore–eminent respectability. A man is selected for office, or for a board, or to give his views on political questions—why? Because his grandfather, or, in some few instances, his father, made a big success of something.

Are we to take this as a confession, a chapter of autobiography?

From the clarion call of the Greater Baltimore Committee:

A special charter commission, after much careful study, has submitted a form of charter which will go far toward making the present political wrongs impossible. The experience of over 100 cities has proved that many political abuses and much of the frightful waste and necessary inefficiency of our preseet system can be eliminated by what is known as the commission form of city government. We believe that the time has come to demand these reforms.

Just what reforms? What are you indorsing, senors—the proposed new charter or the commission form? Or are you in favor of both? I have read your clarion-call 22 times, and I still grope painfully for your meaning. * * * Maybe Jake was right after all—which is to say, in the end.

Why not abolish the city government altogether? After all, there is no real need for it. Could the alleys of Baltimore be much dirtier if there were no Street Cleaning Department? Could the death rate be any higher if there were no Health Department? Could the street pavements be any rougher and rockier if there were no city engineer?

Would our drinking water be appreciably worse if we drew it frankly from the gutter? Do we actually need a low comedy City Council, costing $60,000 a year—with two comfortable burlesque theatres and 150 moving-picture parlors open day and night? Do we need elaborate and expensive boards of estimates and awards when one man could—and actually does—do all their work?

What useful function does the School Board perform? Why not let each principal run his own school as he pleases, each teacher her own classroom? Why not let the parents of the children in each ward–or the children themselves—elect teachers and principals? Elect them, boss them, pay them?

But public works must go on! The sewers, for example, must be built. Nonsense! We have got along without sewers for 170 years. Most of us have already had typhoid–and the rest of us, you may be assured, will have it before the sewers are ever completed. But the parks? Don’t worry about the parks. Open woods—wild woods—woods without paths or cops—would be 10 times as attractive as the fussy lawns and adamantine walks we now have. But who would feed the animals? Let the animals starve—or feed them on politicians. Sell them. Eat them.

But some one must levy and collect our taxes, sur-taxes, super-taxes, assessments, benefits, water rents? Go to! If we had no city government there would be no such charges to levy and collect. As it is, nearly half of the city departments are engaged in this tedious and unprofitable work. Half of the departments devote their whole time to levying, collecting and borrowing. For example, the Tax Department, the Appeal Tax Court, the Bureau of Water Rents an Licenses, the City Register’s Office, the Comptroller’s office, the Finance Commission, the Board of Awards, the Board of Estimates, the Building Inspector’s department—all leeches—all parasites upon the body politic. Not one of them turns in a cent. Not one of them helps us to make a cent.

And than the purely ornamental drpartments—the Bureau of Municipal Research, the City Library, the kitchen cabinet, the Municipal Art Commission, and so on, and so on. Every one of them costs us money; not one of them makes us money. If all of them were abolished at one swoop, not a single taxpayer would lose a cent—or a wink of sleep.

A few boards and departments remain. The Harbor Board, for one. Is it worth the hard dollars it costs us every day? Go smell the harbor! The Department of Charities and Corrections? Go smell the slums! The Department of Lamps and Lighting? Why not let the police light the lamps? Besides, most of them need no lighting.

One department remains–the Fire Department. It is theoretically necessary, even indispensable. It protects our property. It saves us from ruin. But let us proceed from the theory to the facts. Most of us have no property—and those of us who have didn’t get much protection in 1904.

This disposes of all the departments. Why not abolish them all? Without departments there would be no jobs, and without jobs there would be no need for a Mayor, no need for a City Council, no need for political organizations, no need for politicians. Ten thousand job-holders would have to go to work. The city’s productive industries would gain 10,000 workers. Their labor would be worth $6,000,000 a year to the community. In addition we would save $7,000,000 in taxes, sur-taxes, super-taxes—or $12,000,000 in all.

Anarchy? Not at all. The Police Department would remain—and the Police Department, by the strange favor of fate, is perfectly independent of the city government.

From the inaugural harangue of the super-Mahon:

Our * * * death rate is relatively low.

Perhaps I was wrong in denying the honorable gentlemen a sense of humor.

Meanwhile, what has became of the anti-vivisectionists? Still distributing that Berkley pamphlet? Still flirting with the theosophists, the fruitarians, the New Thoughters, the ex-charwomen? Still “editing” evidence?

A week or so ago I offered four cheap but clean cigars to any reputable person who would state publicly, upon his word of honor, that he believed the Hon. James Herry Preston was elected Mayor of Baltimore in May. No reputable person having come forward, the offer is hereby withdrawn.

The State Board of Health has decided to administer the typhoid vaccine to all the lunatics and paupers in the State asylums. Meanwhile, the report of Dr. Bosley reposes upon the table of the City Council, while the scaramouches of that gay troupe cavort upon their rings and leap-ticks.