Baltimore Evening Sun (20 March 1912): 6.

The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League, for the week ended February 24:

Twenty-five thousand dollars for Harry’s campaign fund, but not a darn cent for typhoid!

As soon as them Prominent Baltimoreans got on the job, I knowed it was all up with the booze brokers. Them wops cert’ny has got the evil eye.

The impulse to blame last night’s lamentable proceedings at Annapolis upon the machiavellian deviltries of the Hon. William H. Anderson seems to be strong within the bosoms of the more mahonic lawmakers, but, like most other impulses and emotions of such fellows, it lacks support in the facts. The truth is that the success of local option must be laid, not to the vlllainies of its friends, but to the stupidities of its foes. Had the campaign of the liquor men been managed with sense--had they waged, from the start, a stand-up and honorable fight--had they sought to prove to the people the genuine snares and dangers of local option–and, most of all, had they shown any disposition to eliminate, as they might have done, the admitted evils of their business--then the campaign of Anderson and company would have presented difficulties sufficient to daunt and flabbergast even so talented a camorra of sophists.

But the agents of katzenjammer did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, they tried to win their fight by brute force, relying upon money and upon the political influence that money would buy. In brief, they made an offensive and defensive alliance with the worst sort of political brigands, and soon they began to suffer, not only for the things done by those brigands directly in their behalf, but also for the things done by those brigands in the general practice of brigandage. In the counties, in particular, it was not long before every decent voter was convinced that the continuance of the saloon meant the continuance of political debauchery. The saloon candidate was frankly a ringster; the anti-saloon candidate, whatever his failings otherwise, was at least a foe to corruption. And so a lot of anti-saloon candidates began to be elected.

Here in Baltimore a similar mistake was made. If the brewers and distillers, at the beginning of the battle, had put their house in order the probabilities are that they would have disposed of their enemies easily. Local option would have became the fad of a few fanatics, like its forerunner, prohibition, or government ownership, or the single tax, or vice crusading, or the war upon Sunday novel reading. But the liquor men missed that chance. Instead of cleaning up they cast in their lot with their own worst element--the keepers of rathskellers, the sellers of nigger gin, the chronic violators of the Sunday law. With what result? With the result that they alienated votes by the thousand. With the result that local option legislators began to be elected in the city as well as in the counties. With the result that even bitter foes of local option began to admlt that something must be done.

Now the accounts are being reckoned up. The liquor men, for half-a-dozen years, have poured money into the pockets of political grafters and blackmailers--and at the end they face disaster. Just how much it has cost them I don’t know: I have heard estimates ranging from $200,000 to $500,000. But whatever the amount, it has all gone to waste. Had the same sum, or even half of it, been spent in intelligent propaganda, there would be a different tale to tell today. The local optionists hired clever men to present their arguments to the people; the liquor men hired politicians to beat the people in line. That the first method was shrewd and the second silly, that the first was bound to succeed and the second bound. to fail--so much must be now apparent to everyone.

Murray laughed so loud about that jail talk that he shook all the ice outen the Susquehanna river.

At noon today the vote in the contest for the honor of nominating H. M. the super-Mahon on the floor of the Democratic National Convention stood as follows (disregarding all candidates receiving less than 250 votes):

The spurt of the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus, who now leads the poll, is due to the receipt of 2,000 ballots from the City Hall. My spies tell me that the honorable gentleman is H. M the super-Mahon’s favorite candidate, but the fact is not to be lightly bruited about, for fear of offending Jim and Jake. Meanwhile, I have to thank my own friends for their support. I am now tied with the Hon. Edward Rossmann, principal agent of the super-Mahon in reorgantsing the public schools on old-fashioned lines--and the Hon. Anti-Saloon League Anderson is not far ahead. Perchance I may yet win. Who knows? At all events, I take time by the forelock and prepare my speech.

Here is the voting coupon. Fill it out, sign your name and send it to the Judges of Election, in care or The Evening Sunpaper:

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

This coupon will be printed again on Saturday, when the progress of the vote will be reported. The poll will close on April 1, promptly at the stroke of noon.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Shampoo the children with kerosene! Take a dose of sulphur and molasses! Help Harry! Swat the fly!

Scratch an anti-vivisectionist statistician and you will find a liar.