Baltimore Evening Sun (20 February 1912): 6.

It is a pleasure to note the continued mildness of the radiations from the City Council. For at least three weeks not a single frankly idiotic ordinance has been introduced.

Free advice to the saloonkeepers and pothouse politicians of Baltimore:

If it is true, as you maintain, that the Hon. William H. Anderson, camerlengo of the Anti-Saloon League, is a carpet-bagger from Illinois, then rush a committee out to Illinois by fast train to bag another one like him.

The one ineradicable objection to Tom Farnan, as marshal of police, is that he is a man of sense. Throw him out, by all means. And let the Lord’s Day Alliance nominate his successor.

From the phrase book of the Old-Fashioned Administration:

A man of the John Finney type. Mr. Mahon’s warm personal and political friend. The experience won’t do me no harm. The new-fangled merit system.

Only 39 days more of wire-pulling and wind-jamming at Annapolis! Shut your eyes and hold your breath! It’ll soon be over!

What has become of all the smuthounds? Several times lately I have seen stage-plays of a highly agreeable salacity in local theatres--and yet not a single bellow has been heard! Persons who like that sort or thing expect the moralists to keep them informed, so that they may miss nothing. It is impossible, as prejudices now go in this town, for a theatrical manager when he has a salty play at his theatre to advertise the fact frankly. He must depend entirely upon the advertisement inherent in moral denunciation. To deprive him of that advertisement is to make him the victim of what can only be designated as a low-down trick.

Them ex-sheriffs don’t seem to be botherin’ none, nor nobody wouldn’t who didn’t have no more to bother about than what they haven’t.

They do say them bum Johns Hopkins professors is now tryin’ to make the Legislature cough up a million and a half to build a college out at Homewood. More bunk. A person would think we had enough colleges already, but it seems like as soon as one is opened up, some gink goes to work and tries to open up another one. This town is rotten with colleges. We got colleges to teach doctorin’, colleges to teach tooth-pullin’, colleges to teach elocution, colleges to teach lawyerin’. And what good do they do? Not a darn bit. Nobody don’t never get nothing out of ’em.

They say this here new Johns Hopkins college is to teach engineerin’. Something new again! In former times, when a young fellow wanted to learn engineerin’, he went to work and seen the boss down at Mount Clare, and the boss put him to work firin’ a yard engine, and when he knowed how to shovel coal O. K. they put him on a freight engine, and then, in two or three years, he was a fireman and getting good wages. And after that all he had to do was to wait till they needed another engineer, and when they needed one they give him the job, and that was all there was to it.

But now, so they say, all engineers ought to go to college and study geology and all that bug stuff, and brush his hair straight back, and go bustin’ aroun’ in one of them football suits, and play on a mandoleen, and stand in a bunch with a lot of other young muts and holler “Rah, rah, rah; ray, ray, ray; icky-acky, icky-acky; Bing!” So it seems. Shovelin’ coal has went out of fashion. What they do now is to make a dude outen a young fellow--and then give him a engine to run. God help the railroads!

Wait till you see the teachers they hire to learn the scholars. You would say the sensible thing to do would be to go to work and dig up a couple of engineers who knowed the business, and then back an engine up on a siding and let the engineers get into the cab and show the scholars how to work the different handles. But I bet you ten to one they don’t do nothing of the kind at the Johns Hopkins. No, sir. Them roosters does things different. What they will do is to send out for a bunch of professors with a lot of D. D.’s after their names and sic ’em on the scholars. And all the talk will be in Latin! Just think of it! Think of learnin’ a young fellow how to fire a engine in Latin!

The Johns Hopkins don’t give none of its jobs to local talent. They tell me not one out of twenty of the professors are registered voters. Some of ’em, I hear, ain’t even naturalized. A boy has got to learn German or Austrian or some other bum lingo before he can understand what they put to him. You would think the head-guys of the place would dish out the patronage to local people. You would think they would go to see the School Board when they want a few more teachers and get somebody who understands what the people want here. But not at all. Wheu they need half a dozen head of new professors they get ’em from some other college! In other words, the thing is a trust.

Nobody never heerd of the Johns Hopkins doin’ nothin’ for Baltimore. If you give a parade, it don’t send no float. If you pass the hat around at election time, it don’t drop nothin’ in. Half of them professors don’t vote at all, and the rest vote wrong. If you look back you will see they have always fought the organization. How do they stand today? Every darn one of ’em is against Harry. First they set up a holler when Harry fires Finney, and then they give a blow-out to Finney and knock Harry half the night. Look ’em over. Do you see any Mahon men? Any Kelly men? Any Loden alen? Any Garland men? No, sir. All you can see is a bunch of reformers.

And now they want a million and a half to learn engineers in Latin. Just think of the waste of money! A million and a half would pave a hundred miles of streets and give work to thousands of good organization men. First, they holler when George Lewis or some other hard worker gets $5 a day for handin’ out towels--and then, on top of it, they ask for a million and a half! That’s what you call the merit system!

But let ’em ask all they please! Before they get so much as a cent the city delegation has to put its O. K. on it, and before the city delegation puts its O. K. on it they have to hear what Harry has got to say. Harry ain’t no sucker. He knows that the Johns Hopkins is against him, and that all us boneheads is with him. And you can be sure he won’t make no mistake when it comes to cutting up the veal. If he does, then all I got to say is, he ain’t the high-class man a person would of thought he was.