Baltimore Evening Sun (5 December 1911): 6.

The current debate over the Hon. Andrew Carnegie’s list of the world’s 20 greatest men suggests the thought that the preparation of a similar list of the 20 greatest Baltimoreans, living or dead, might offer agreeable divertisement for the long winter evenings that are now upon us. Names of candidates fairly swarm through the mind. Here, for example, are seven—all slapped down as fast as I can write:

The Hon. James Harry Preston. The Hon. James H. Preston. The Hon. J. Harry Preston. The Hon. J. H. Preston. The Hon. Jim Preston. The Hon. Harry Preston. The Hon. the Super-Mahon.

From the esteemed London Standard, an eminent zeitung of the British capital:

A new type of Puritanism has lately made its appearance amongst us which threatens, if too much encouragement is given to its growth, to make life extremely uncomfortable to a great number of people who, although they may profess no particular austerity in their mode of life, are nevertheless respectable citizens. It made its first great manifestation some two months ago, apropos of a certain prize-fight, and a legacy of that agitation is that the fine old sport of boxing, even when conducted under the best standards and between fairly matched opponents who raise no troubling racial question, is in danger of being stamped out in England. * * * * If this took place, it would be done at the bidding of a small secdtion of the population which does not represent public opinion. But the danger of a minority always is that, if it shouts long and loudly enough, it ends by imposing its wishes on the big majority, slow to recognize the danger of so small an opponent.

Substitute Baltimore for London and you have our own story in a nutshell. We Baltimoreans, like the Londoners, are frequently harassed by volunteer moralists. One day they denounce the excellent old sport of boxing. The next day they allege that all of us who use alcohol are drunkards, or in danger of becoming drunkards tomorrow. The day following they plead for an even greater barbarousness in our barbarous Sunday laws. The day after that they go snooping around our theatres, terrorizing the managers with accusations of indecency and interfering with the healthy amusements of normal human beings. Isn’t it high time to organize some effective opposition to all this prowling prudery? Hasn’t the day come for a counter Reformation?

The writer in the Standard points out a fact to which I have several times called attention in this place—the fact, to wit, that these crusading Puritans by no means represent public opinion. As a matter of fact, I believe that publio opinion in Baltimore is overwhelmingly against them. I, personally, don’t know a single Baltimorean, lay or clerical, who believes that Sunday concerts at the Lyric, for example, would be demoralizing and indecent. And yet when Mr. Bernhard Ulrich proposed to give such concerts a small party of specialists in morality, claiming to represent the public, made such a howl that the police were bestirred to interfere and his plans fell through.

Did this small party of specialists actually represent the public? The opinion of the public regarding Sunday concerts is visible every Sunday afternoon in summer at Druid Hill Park, where from 15,000 to 25,000 persons gather to listen to the municipal band. The Sunday afternoon concerts are the most successful of the week. They attract more people than the week-night concerts—and a better class of people. They show very plainly that, among a large number of Baltimoreans, representing the most decent and law-abiding element, there is no feeling whatever that reasonable entertainment on Sunday is in any sense immoral or degrading.

Well, if Sunday concerts do no harm in summer, why ask us to believe that they would do harm in winter? If it is decent for the people of Baltimore, as a people, to hire a band to play for them at Druid Hill on Sundays, why should it be indecent for them, as individuals, to hire an orchestra to play for them at the Lyric on Sundays—or a dozen orchestras to play in as many theatres? If “The Forge in the Forest,” played absurdly by cornets and drums, is moral in summer, why should a Beethoven symphony, or even a Strauss waltz, be immoral in winter?

The Census Bureau’s official report upon the death rates last year in the eight American cities of more than 500,000 population will be published Thursday. In anticipation of it, I hereby make the following offers to the Committee on Bogus Statistics of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association:

1. A barrel of apples to each and every member of the committee if the death rate allotted to Baltimore is less than 18.5 per 1,000 of population per annum.

2. A set of the Elsie books to each and every member of the committee if the death rate allotted to Baltimore is not one (1) clear point higher than that allotted to any other American city of 500,000 or more population.

3. A gold locket to each and every member of the committee who will state publicly on his word of honor that he believes the Census Bureau figures, whatever they are, to be unfair to Baltimore.

A plug hat and a pair of black gloves to any bravo of the League for Medical “Freedom” who can cure any of the following maladies without recourse to the barbarous methods of allopathy:

Katzenjammer. Jiggers. Pediculosis. Chilblains. Bunions.

The constituent colleges of the grand university of boomery:

The Greater Baltimore Committee. The Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association. The Travelers and Merchants’ Association. The City Plan Commission. The Factory Site Commission.

Naturally enough, these allies and rivals have already begun to specialize. The Greater Baltimore Committee tends more and more toward patriotic piety. It composes and circulates official Te Deums and invocations. It is the chaplain of the movement. The Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association confines itself of late to the manufacture of bogus statistics. It is the paralogist, the sophist, the lawyer. The Factory Site Commission, with its artful appelas for money, is the wiskinski. The City Plan Commission, cruelly ravished of its appropriation, is the martyr, the saint, the sobber—wrapper in grave clothes, its shirt on fire. But what of the Travelers and Merchants’ Association/ Alas, we come here to a mere member, a private soldier, condemned to do the hard work, while the others posture in the limelight’s glare.

Tip for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, that amiable kaffeeklatsch:

Of 500 children in London suffering from diphtheria and tretaed with the infamous antitoxin, 28 died. Of 25 children suffering from diphtheria and not treated with the antitoxin, only 24 died. A difference of 4, or nearly 15 per cent., in favor of rational therapy.