Baltimore Evening Sun (4 November 1911): 6.

Only 1,295 days more! We have stood it for nearly 200 days. We can stand it for 1,295 more.

After all, why deny and belabor the super-Mahon? Why this foul conspiracy to discredit and humiliate him? Why all these fantastic schemes for getting rid of him? He is standing squarely on his platform; he is clinging firmly to his published faith; he is making a sincere and painstaking effort to do the very things he promised to do. If, at times, he makes a mess of it--if his very earnestness gives him, now and then, a low comedy aspect–then why not snicker kindly and let it pass? Asininity is not so rare in Baltimore that we can get into rages about it. We are all human, and, being human, we are all mountebanks, more or less.

In only one particular does the super-Mahon differ, to any noticeable extent, from the average Baltimorean of his class–i. e., from the average Baltimorean of comfortable opulence, political ambition, commercial morals and defective education–and that is in his superior loyalty to the theory of democracy. Baltimore is alive with so-called democrats. The doctrine that the people ought to rule, that they are fit to rule, that their judgment of men and measures is never wrong, is preached here incessantly. It is the chief stock in trade of all our prophets and rabble- rousers, of whatever party. It is an axiom which no public soothsayer, least of all a Prominent Baltimorean, would ever think of denying aloud.

And yet how many reflective men actually believe in it? How many prove their faith in it by their acts? Not many. The Red Cross Committee, a body fairly representative of Bettmore’s upper classes, commercial and intellectual, had before it the other day the draft of a new charter. Some one proposed that that new charter, after being passed by the Legislature, should be submitted to the people at a referendum election. The proposal was hastily voted down. And why? Simply because the members of the Red Cross Committee feared the issue of such a referendum--because they knew very well that the common people, with the charter before them, would probably decide against it–and not because it was bad, but because it was good!

But did the members of the Committee express their fears honestly, openly, without evasion? Of course they did not. Instead they talked vaguely and absurdly of bosses and rings; of a mysterious conspiracy to thwart the will and nullify the sapience of the common people; of a small group of men, apart from and antagonistic to the people, who could yet overcome the people at the polls. What rot! How long would a political ring last without the voluntary and active support of the rank and file! How long would the Hon. John J. Mahon last if the majority of Democrats of Baltimore were not frankly on his side?

Professors of orthodoxy, of course, put forward various answers to these question--answers inadequate and unconvincing. It is argued, for one thing, that the politicians win by fraud. It is argued, for another thing, that they win by promising jobs. But let us proceed from the theory to the facts. The super-Mahon defeated the late Mahool last spring by 10,000 votos. Was it by fraud? Certainly no fair man, with the results of the recent recount before him, will call more than 2,000 of the spring vote fraudulent. Was it, then, by promising jobs? Perhaps, perhaps--but don’t forget that hundreds of the job-seeking and job-holding class believed that the late Mahool would win, and that they were thus on his side!

No; we can’t account for Mahon and his merry men by arguing that they exist in spite of and in defiance of the people, that they foist themselves upon the people by stealth or chicane. The fact is that the people are with them; that the people respect and revere them; that the people, generally speaking, are in favor of the doctrines and messures put forward by these men, that the people approve and admire the artfulness, the technique of these men. And if you will accept this fact as a natural and inevitable outcome of universal manhood suffrage, of the doctrine that every man, merely by virtue of being a man, is capable of clear thinking, of deciding complex and difficult questions, of choosing intelligently between this leader and that--and if, going further, you will bear in mind that the Hon. James Harry Preston, as a sincere Democrat, does so accept it and does think it inevitable, then, perhaps, you will attain to some fair notion of his philosophy and to some fair judgment of his acts.

The Hon. James Harry Preston, I have no doubt, can imagine a better, a more reasonable state of affairs than that which exists. He, too, as a man of the upper, reflective class, must have his ideals, his private notions of progress, of improvement. But his desire to get on in the world is evidently far stronger than his desire to make the world better. So he accepts things as they are. The people want a Mahon: therefore he is for Mahon. The people are for the spoils system: therefore he is for the spoils system. The people want the old order in the schools: therefore he is for the old order in the schools. The people want to have their feelings harrowed, their passions aroused, their tears pumped out of their eyes: therefore he appears before them in his diaphanous chemise of martyrdom, hurling objurgations at his imaginary enemies one moment and dissolved in crocodile tears the next.

Dignified? Moral? Perhaps not. But the struggle for existence is never dignified, never moral. Who among us, trying to get on in the world, does not compromise constantly with ideals, with the truth, even with self-respect? The thing to be said in favor of the Hon. Mr. Preston--the big, the almost unique fact in his favor–is that he puts his heart into the game, that he plays it openly and for all it is worth, that he is not afraid of hisses, that he is 10 times as successful as any rival.

Perhaps, at times, his earnestness actually converts him from a player into a mullah. Perhaps, he occasionally finds himself believing his own rubbish. Who knows? We are all eternal mysteries, one to the other. Let us admit that his tears and rages, at times, may be real. Let us grant him the virtue of honest delusion.

And let us not deny him, meanwhile, his other undoubted virtues–his honest egoism, his persistence, his couraga, his quickness of decision, his lack of false delicacies, his general forcefulness, his extraordinary efficiency. The game he plays may not be elevating, either to him or to us; it may make the judicious grieve; it may end in disaster–but only the bilious will deny that while it lasts it is darn good cricket.