Baltimore Evening Sun (17 February 1912): 6.

The dailly thought from :Also sprach Zarathustra”:

Far too many are born. For the superfluous the state was invented. Even the superfluous put on airs about

Dramatis personæ of the nigftmares of the Hon. Mahoni Amicus:

Finney, Craig, Solter, Riggs, Numsen, Fendall, Frank, Rother.

Some anonymous scorpion sends me the following definition of democracy, too good for the waste-basket:

Government of the common people, by the commoner people and for the commonest people.

From the harangue of the Vice-President-elect to the City College alumni:

Formerly there was politics mixed with the school system. Now, you will admit, there is no politics.

The truth, perhaps, but not the whole truth. * * * No politics—and no sense.

Official pronunciamento by the Right Hon. S. S. Field, LL. D., Lord Chancellor of the Old-Fashioned Administration:

Mayor Preston will support the Mahool charter. On two things, however, he will insist—that he and the other present city officials shall be allowed to serve out their terms, and that the referendum shall be provided so that the charter may be submitted to the people.

An intelligible statement of a straightforward, defensible position. If, as certain persons think, the voters of Baltimore made a bad blunder when they put the Hon. the super-Mahon and his merry men in charge of their affairs, then they deserve to suffer the whole consequences of that blunder, without mitigation or means of escape, that they may learn a salutary lesson and be more critical of balderdash and chest-heaving in future. And if there is any truth whatever in the central theory of democracy—the theory, to wit, that the common people are infallible, that their average judgment is always perfect, that they invariably know what is best for them—then it certainly follows that a scheme of reform so radical and so important as that contained in the Mahool charter should be placed frankly before them, to be judged by them on its merits and in the light of their omniscience.

The effort of the boomers to run the Hon. the super-Mahon out of office in 1913 is disingenuous and evil—not so much because the supr-Mahon himself doesn’t deserve it as because the people of Baltimore don’t deserve it. If it is important that the people should be free to vote as they please, then it is even more important that they should be forced to bear unflinchingly every consequence, however remote or appalling, of their voting. It is by bitter experience, and by bitter experience only, that all of us learn sense—large groups as well as individuals. The best evangelist for vaccination is a smallpox epidemic. And the best argument for good government is a four-year term of thoroughly bad government.

The thing to fear, indeed, in the present emergency is not that the super-Mahon will actually give us the frankly Old-Fashioned Administration he promised, with its uncompromising exaltation of ignorance and worse and its open and indecent battle for the spoils, but that he will swap horses and try to be good. His constant bellowing against the newspapers, his pathetic protestations that they are persecuting him, his efforts to prove that they have entered into an incredible, comic opera “conspiracy” to ruin him—all this shows how much real courage is in him. The truth is, of course, that he is enormously sensitive to criticism, as all vain men are, and that, in consequence, his first yearning is to stave it off. And if he can’t do that by conquering, he will probably do it by yielding. That is to say, he will revive his plans, paying more attention to the needs and desires of the community and less to the needs and desires of his little band of political bravos and sycophants. A beginning, in fact, is already made.

With what result? With the result that he will probably go out of office with a very fair record of achievement—not, of course, the excellent record of a Hayes, but the mediocre, good-enough record of a Hodges or a Latrobe. And with the secondary result that the voters of Baltimore, convinced that they have been reasonably well treated, will elect some other cadet of the Royal Family to succeed him. In brief, the present rumble-bumble is likely to go on, once the super-Mahon himself retires, for four more years, with other abbreviated lustrums of chicanery to follow. Would it not be better to take a dose of the undiluted stuff now—and then get well? Wouldn’t it be better to have one really genuine Old-Fashioned Administration, uncompromising and frankly atrocious—and then a sharp emotional reaction, a new Hayes, and eight or twelve years of straightforward good government?

Meanwhile, let no one forget that the super-Mahon, whatever his defects, is at least entitled to a fair chance. In view of the pass to which he has already brought the Departments of Health and Education, to name only two, it may appear very unlikely that he will keep the paving job and other such big things out of the hands of the bandits and boneheads. But whatever the appearance, the event may show him capable of the trick, and so he should be permitted to try. To elect a man one year, after a campaign of unexampled free discussion, and then try to get rid of him, by ambush and flank attack, a year later—that is a maneuver which must always be repugnant to fair and decent men.

Remark by the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O., camerlengo of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch:

Freedom is essential to progress in medicine, as in all else.

That is to say, the freedom of the amateur, but not of the professional. The fraud who offers to cure cancer by reading out of a book must be protected by the law, but the pathologist who seeks a cure by patient and intelligent experiment—upon him the whole fury of the police power should launch itself.

My offer to be hanged on July 4 on the sole condition that I be permitted to name three Baltimoreans to be hanged with me has brought me many suggestions of candidates. Too late, good friends. The three are already picked, and I have catchpolls watching them, that they may be quickly seized in case the plan is approved. This fact also forces me to reject the proposal of my old friend, the Hon. Edward Hirsch, who offers to be hanged, too, if only he be permitted to nominate the Hon. William H. Anderson to accompany him. Keep out, Eddie. This is my party.