Baltimore Evening Sun (8 March 1912): 6.

The boomers are wisely taking no part in the current attack upon the local hotel-keepers. They know very well that the scientific phlebotomization of the convetion visitors, far from injuring the trade of Baltimore, will stimulate and improve it. Buyers, being human, go to that market which gives them the most exciting run for their money.. The legal maxim of caveat emtor, far from alarming them, really sets their blood to leaping. They like to face an alert and powerful adversary. They like to go home feeling that their own high finesse and efficiency have figured in every discount; that they are something in pocket as a result of their own great courage and prowess.

The merchants of Baltimore, in the past, have overlooked this human yearning for combat. Instead of falling upon the visiting buyers like a pack of wolves, they have approached in the character of lambs. Instead of backing the visitors into alleys and fighting them for their watches, they have carried them off to vaudeville shows and entertained them with other such benevolent debaucheries, with what result? With the result that thousands of buyers now avoid Baltimore as they would a pestilence. Instead of coming here, where buying is a parlor game, they go to Chicago, or New York, where it is a battle to the death, or to Philadelphia or St. Louis, where it is a form of voluntary bankruptcy or commercial suicide.

The action of the hotel-keepers indicates that they subscribe to a more sapient psychology and gives promise of a genuine renaissance of Baltimore’s trade. Every visitor who is forced to pay $6 a day for a cot in a room holding three other men will go home warning his friends that Baltimore is a wicked and up-to-date city, and in consequence they will all want to come here. A reputation for virtue, whether commercial or political, is one of the worst things that a large city can acquire. Investors are attracted, not by good government, but by bad government. They do not ask for just laws, equitably administered, but for unjust laws, inequitably administered. In brief, they look for favors and advantages, which are only to be had where corruption prevails. Each believes that he personally will be able to get more than his rivals. Such is his faith in himself. Such is his stimulating egoism.

By the same token buyers like to deal in a town where buying is frankly a form of the duello. Tell them that the local merchants are sharp, that chicanery enters into trading, that prices are fluent and terms elastic, and you will bring them up at the gallop. Each will come with the firm belief that he himself is too clever to be swindled. and each will rejoice over the swindling of the other fellow. Going home, each will wear a grin a mile broad--the effect and consequence of his firm conviction that he has gone up against a lot of hard traders and beaten them at their own game. Such is human nature. The boomers know it. Hence their silence.

Them bum newspapers keeps bellerin’ day an’ night, but Harry ain’t skeered none, an’ Bob Padgett ain’t worryin’ none.

Only three more weeks of bluff and bluster at Annapolis! Then a milking stool for every Solon and the society of the sedative kine!

Up to noon today the following contributions to the fund for the relief of the starving lobbyists at Annapolis were received:

Concord Club....................................$1
The Hon. Bob Crain.......................... 5
The Hon. William H. Anderson........ 5
A Lover of Animals.......................... 2
_______ Total....................................$13
Previously acknowledged................ 25
_______ Total to date........................$38

In addition, the following supplies were received and forwarded to Annapolis:

12 knit jackets.
1 case of Peruna (24 bottles).
1 barrel of flour.
2 umbrellas.

My Annapolis agent telegraphs that the money and supplies sent down yesterday arrived in the very nick of time. Says he:

The blankets were particularly welcome, for many of the lobbyists, after spending three or four nights on the St. John’s campus, were almost frozen. With the money ($25) I provided threr warm meals today for all hands, and sent five of the lobbyists to their homes, where friends will take care of them until they can get work. The situation is now materially improved, but fully $100 more will be needed to save the sufferers from their immediate danger. I passed the hat in the House of Delegates today, but got only $4.10. Many of the members resent the lobbyists’ denunciation of them for failing to burst the Public Service Act. Besides, they themselves are not over-prosperous this session. Times, indeed, are hard in Annapolis. Even the newspaper correspondents are drinking little champagne.

My agent informs me that there in no truth in the statement of the Anti-Saloon League that the Hon. George Lewis, the Hon. Frank Kelly and the Hon. John J. Mahon are in Annapolis lobbying for the liquor dealers. Says he:

These gentlemen are really here in the interest of various eleemosynary institutions. In brief, they are doing free jobs. The liquor dealers’ fight is being handled from Baltimore. It is this very fact that has caused much of the distress among the professional lobbyists, all of whom formerly got their bits.

What sucker was it done all that talkin’ about stickin’ Murray in a watch house?

At 1 P. M.today the vote for a spellbinder to place the Hon. the super-Mahon in nomination on the floor of the Democratic National Convention stood as follows:

The Hon. Francis K. Carey...................................112
The Hon. Isidor Rayner........................................ 98
The Hon. Bob Lee................................................ 52
The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborugh........ 49
The Hon. Jacobus Hook....................................... 30
The Hon. Omar Hershey...................................... 23
The Hon. McCay McCoy..................................... 22
The Hon. William Shepard Bryan....................... 19
The Hon. John M. T. Finney, M. D. .................... 9
The Hon. Trauty Trautfelter................................. 7
The Hon. John Walter Smith................................ 4
The Hon. Eddie Hirsch......................................... 2
The Hon. Bob Carr............................................... 1
The Hon. Alexander Geddes................................ 1
The Hon. William H. Anderson........................... 1
The Hon. King Bill Garland................................. 1
The Hon. John Hubert.......................................... 1
The Hon. Frank Furst........................................... 1

Here is the voting coupon, which is to be sent, when filled out and signed, to the Judges of Election, in care of The Evening Sun:

For the distinguished honor of placing the Hon. the super-Mahon in nomination as Democratic candidate for Vice-President at the United States, I vote for
The Hon. ........................................
(Signed)..........................................

This voting coupon will be printed hereafter on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, on which days the result of the vote will be announced. The poll will close on April 1.