Baltimore Evening Sun (9 October 1911): 6.

Only 1,320 days, or 32,680 hours, or 1,960,800 minutes, or 117,648,000 seconds more!

What has happened to the Citizens’ Relief Committee? Do brave men run away?

“OLD-FASHIONED” JOCOSITIES —— [From Article 99 of the Charter of Baltimore City.]

The members of the said Board of School Commissioners shall be chosen by the Mayor from among those he deems most capable of promoting the interests of public education by reason of their intelligence, character, education or business habits.

The newspapers bellow for the commission form, for a ripper bill, for an end of the super-Mahon and his sinister buffoonery. Barbers arguing for the safety razor! Bartenders preaching against the Rum Demon! Revivalists denying that there is a hell! In brief, enthusiasm running away with judgment—the glottis swallowing the pocketbook.

The truth is that “Sonny’s” intimate is the best friend the independent newspapers of Baltimore have had for years. He made them an issue in his campaign. He advertised them from the stump, vociferously and by name. He made the great masses of the plain people read them—if only to see how they would bear his onslaughts. And since he has been Mayor he has supplied them with an endless series of sensations—the very life blood of journalism.

From the newspaper standpoint, indeed, he is almost the ideal Mayor. It is seldom that he permits a day to go by without committing some grotesque faux pas. Every second appointment he makes is good for scarehead honors and an ear-splitting whoop. His efforts to gag the department heads, his attacks on such men as John Finney and George Numsen, his absurd statements, his more absurd silences, his childish vanity, his ludicrous efforts to save his bacon—all of these things must needs give every alert reporter acute delight. And when, by any chance, he himself makes no large and sensational contribution to the day’s news, then one or other of the flatterers and hob-traders surrounding him comes to the bat.

Not since the stupendous carnage of the Hayes administration, when Mayor Hayes and the late Richard M. Venable were locked in a death grapple, has the City Hall turned out more news, or juicier news. The average Baltimore reporter, these days, is working 18 hours out of the 24—and enjoying every minute of his labor. And the newspapers are selling like hot cakes. No need for the independent papers to give away crockery, to cut rates, or to pursue subscribers in any other such fashion. The people are eager to buy. They went to know what is going on. They want to hear the latest news from the grand jury room, from 23 Went Saratoga street, from the City Hall—particularly from the City Hall.

And besides doing a land-office bustiness the newspapers are also winning public confidence—and chiefly through the efforts of the Hon. James Harry Preston. In his campaign for office, it will be recalled, he made newspaper domination a live issue. His piteous plea for sympathy, his maudlin cries that the newspapers were conspiring to ruin him, his pathetic posturing in the martyr’s sheet of fire–all this flapdoodle made an impression upon the public mind, won him votes, helped to elect him–so far as he was elected at all. The newspapers undoubtedly got the worst of that encounter. Tears gained the day. The virtuous public let its heart conquer its head.

But today that virtuous public is doing some tall thinking. It has suddenly discovered that the newspapers were right, after all; that if they tried to dominate, they were still dominating on the right side—that when they prophesied evil they prophesied most accurately–that their estimate of Mahon’s friend was, on the whole, an astonishingly exact estimate. And so the public, looking back, regards the newspapers with a very kindly eye, and not only reads them, but also inclines to believe them. Floored in the first round, the betting on them is 1,000 to 1 in the tenth round.

Yet they bawl for Preston’s scalp! What good would it do them? Imagine the Preston-Mahon camorra out, and a hard-headed, non-partisan, fishy-eyed commission in–with everything running like clockwork—no attacks on good officials–no jobs for sycophants and mountebanks–no orders for secrecy in the departments—no uproar in the Mayor’s office—no horde of ward workers in the anteroom–imagine, in brief, the City Hall as the quiet head office of a lawful and prosperous corporation, with each man in it doing his work, and nothing but his work. How much copy would such a head office turn out to a week? Maybe a few sedate columns. How many scare-heads? Not one.

And yet, as I have said, the newspapers engage in an attack upon the honorable gentlemen now enthroned–spreading the gospel of the commission plan—calling for a clean sweep. To account for this attack two theories come to mind. One is the theory that newspaper proprietors don’t know a good thing when they see it. The other is the theory that their desire, as self-respecting Baltimoreans, for decent government in this old town is far stronger, for some strange reason, than their yearning for a good thing.

The super-Mahon has gone to Atlanta. The Atlantans, let us hope, will be too polite to laugh.

J. Albert Hughes! J. Albert Hughes! Oh, have you heard the awful news?

Advice to the Hon. John J. Mahon: Telegraph to the National Red Cross Society.

How calumny has affected a certain “old-fashioned” statesman:

July 1. Oct. 9.
Chest measurement............... 9 feet 3 feet
Voice could be heard............ 4 miles 4 inches

Two good chances to use a set of honest dice:

When the time comes to choose between Carr and Broening. When the time comes to choose between the super-Mahon and the boomers. ——— Baltimore’s supreme and overpowering masterpieces of art:

The Emerson Tower. The large, hand-painted oil painting in the Belvedere tea room.

Meanwhile, good old Jake holds his job, and bravely tackles his duties–acrobatic and otherwise.