Baltimore Evening Sun (7 December 1911): 6.

Boil your drinking water! Chase and mallet the lingering, senile flies! Dodge the tax men! Send your little mite to the boom-boomers!

The bulletin on mortality statistics in American cities, issued last night by Director Durand, of the Central Bureau, shows that the death rates last year in the eight cities of more than 500,000 population was as follows:

Cleveland..........14.3 Chicago............ 15.1
St. Louis............15.8 New York......... 16
Boston...............17.2 Philadelphia......17.4
Pittsburgh..........17.9 Baltimore 19.2<>/p

All of which should give pause, as it were, to the committee on bogus statistics of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association. The connoisseur of boomery will recall how that committee, early in the past summer, issued a folder entitled “Baltimore; a Brief Budget for the Busy Bee, by Boggs,” in which the following ridiculous statement appeared:

The present mortality rate [in Baltimore] is 16 per 1,000 of population per annum.

He will also recall how I questioned that statement, in terms of the highest courtesy, and offered to give the Hon. Thomas G. Boggs, secretary of the association, a can of French sardines if he could prove that the death rate in 1910 was actually less than 18. He will also recall how the Hon. Mr. Boggs, appealing to the Health Department for help, was given a sophisticated certificate showing that the rate was 17.41—not 16, it will be observed, but 17.41. He will also recall how I, appealing to the facts, then proved that it was not 17.41 at all, but at least 18.88. He will also recall how the Hon. Mr. Boggs, rushing back to the Health Department, was then given a new and revised certificate, showing that the rate was 18.33—half a point less. He will also recall how the Hon. Mr. Boggs, disconcerted by this unexpected confession, discreetly changed his original guess from “16 per 1,000 of population per anuum” to “from 16 to 18.” And now, after all that controversy, here comes the Census Bureau, that den of snakes, that sty of anti-boomers, that nest of traitorous woodpeckers, with the abominable and indecent (but probably true) allegation that the actual rate was 19.2!

Let us now rehearse, in tabular form, them various and conflicting estimates, thus:

The original guess of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association (still circulated in its boom literature)..........................16.
The fake estimate of the Health Department.........................17.41
The revised estimate of the Health Department....................18.33
My own estimate....................................................................18.83
The estimate of the Census Bureau........................................19.2

Why is Baltimore such a pesthole? Why have we a death rate higher than that of any other first-class city in Christendom? Aha, pestiferous niggero! The niggero is to blame! Wherever he lives and has his being, there the death rate soars. Here in Baltimore, according to the ingenious figure jugglers of the Health Department, the death rate last year among whites was but 15.6, while among blacks it was 26.9—a ratio of 1 to 1.78. The real figures are even more appalling. They show a death-rate among whites of 17.4, and among blacks of 30.7. In brief, more than 3 per cent. of all the darkies in town die every year!

And no wonder! We permit them to live in filthy hovels; we pay no heed to their condition; we encourage them to breed disease. A negro with tuberculosis, before he dies of it, may infect a dozen, or even a score, of others. He is not forced to keep clean. He is not isolated in a hospital. Eudowood won’t take him. Sabllasville won’t take him. If he goes to Bayview—a place regarded with superstitious fear by all negroes—he must go of his own free will. The district nurse may advise him, but she can’t make him take her advice. If he wants to remain in his hovel, cheek by jowl with his fellows, infecting them one by one, he is free to do so. If he has smallpox, we rush him to quarantine; but if he has tuberculosis, which is 10 times as dangerous to the community, we let him alone.

Well, what is the consequence? Simply that tuberculosis is now so common among the negroes of Baltimore that probably 1 out of every 30 of them has it in an active stage. Figure it out for yourself. Just 495 of them died of it last year, and physicians estimate that the ratio of deaths to active (but, as yet, not fatal) cases is as 1 is to 4. Multiply 495 by 4 and add the 495 fatal cases and you get 2,470. That is just about 3 1-3 per cent. of the total negro population.

But who cares? The negro is an unwelcome citizen. Let him climb his golden stairs! Noble words—but don’t forget that he has a habit of dragging white men with him! The tubercle bacillus is no respecter of persons. Bred in a darky waiter, it (or its grandsons) may perchance invade and finish a bank president. Every negro consumptive, running at large and spreading the infection, is a menace to all of us. So long as he is permitted to die in the fashion of his race, snugly beside his stove, his family will be in danger, and so long as his family is in danger your kitchen will be in danger, and so long as your kitchen is in danger, you yourself will be in danger. Last year, in Baltimore, 130 domestic servants died of tuberculosis. Physicians estimate that every such victim, dying unisolated, infects an average of at least four persons. Four times 130 is 520. How many of the 520 were white?

Our white death rate tells the tale. Last year, as I have said, it was 17.4. Compare it with the death rate in those cities which have no negroes, or very few—death rates calculated upon exactly the same basis. The rate in Cleveland—our chief rival—was 14.3; in Chicago, 15.1; in San Francisco, the same; in Milwaukee, 13.8; in St. Paul, 11.9; in Portland, Ore, 11; in Seattle, 10.1. No wonder those Western towns grow! No wonder they beat us! If our white death rate, between 1900 and 1910, had been as low as Cleveland’s, Baltimore would still be in sixth place among American cities.

From a current catalogue of autographs for sale:

GILBERT (W. S.). Dramatist and Poet. A. N. S. October 18, 1893. . $3.00. Written in answer to a joke in one of his operas: “There is so obscenity so revolting as the obscenity of the over-nice.”

Respectfully referred to the volunteer play-censors of this fair republic.

Down go taxes! Three cheers! Up go water rents! And a tiger!

A bag of peanuts for any evidence supporting the theory that Sunday concerts in Baltimore would cause an increase of crime.