Baltimore Evening Sun (4 July 1912): 6.

Once more the amateur politicians have scored a clean victory over the professionals, a thing that happens nearly every time the two forces come to the grapple. The manner in which the Hon. William F. McCombs, a newcomer and outsider, bucked and broke the line of the Hon. Charles Francis Murphy in the late convention was truly marvelous for to see. Where were all of Murphy’s tricks? What became of his miraculous acumen? What poppy poisoned the serpent? What fever palsied Hercules?

The truth is, of course, that the sagacity of professional politicians exists only in the imagination of the public. They are, as a class, not shrewd men at all, but merely crooked men. Drag them out into the open, make them fight on the square—and any half-intelligent gladiator can beat them. When they win, it is almost always by foul tactics. Let them stuff ballot boxes and pack registration lists and ladle out money to their swine, and they have a likely chance. But make them face the daylight, matching their socalled wits with the wits of their foes, and nine times out of ten they quickly take on the aspect of feeble-minded children.

If the public only understood this clearly, the professional politicians would have a harder row to hoe. As it is, they profit by the popular tendency to credit them with a stupendous and irresistible sapience. People think that they can’t be beaten and therefore make no genuine effort to beat them. But they are beatable all the same, swiftly and easily, and by any intelligent man who goes after them in earnest.

Their most conspicuous characteristic, indeed, is not a superior intelligence, but an almost entire lack of inlelligence. Taking them as they come, they are tedious jackasses—as deficient in brains as they are in morals. Go through the whole list of local “leaders,” Democratic and Republican, and you will not find half a dozen men who can think clearly or state a proposition intelligently. Their average intelligence is that of so many car conductors or bartenders. They win so often, not because they have sense but merely because they have no decency. They do things that most men of self-respect would shrink from doing. At their best they are successful bullies, at their worst they are pitiful imbeciles.

When an educated and intelligent foe takes the field against such a mob of numbskulls—a foe, for example, of the Hon. Mr. McCombs’ quality—their defeat is almost foreordained. It they beat him at all, it is by sending sluggers to attack him from the rear. So long as he can keep them fighting in the open his chances of knocking them out are 20 to 1.

If there were as much honest malt and hops in the average seldel of American beer as there is in the average cigar given away by the Hon. Jacobus Hook, the world cert’ny wouldn’t be no worse.—Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Make your will! Insure your life!

May blessings rest upon the head of the Board of Estimates, the Phœnicians, or whoever it was that kept the Back Basin to its cage during the sessions of the Democratic National Convention!

The judges in the yell contest have decided to give the prize, a set of Bulwer Lytton’s works, to Max Ways, with honorable mention for Dan Loden, Sol Warfield and Paul Quinn. Max lost 22 pounds during the week and his physicians report that he will be hoarse for six months.

Daily thought from “The Physiology of the Human Body and Hygiene,” by Geheimrat Prof. Dr. John Turner, Jr., surgeon-general to the Loch Raven waterworks:

Fruits are found in great abundance all over our country. They are essential to life, but not necessarily so. * * *

Just before the convention was called to order Tuesday night the Hon. Henderson Martin, of Marion, Kan., chairman of the Kansas delegation, came to the press stand and asked that The Evening Sun print a little piece in praise of the Hon. Messrs. Fred. W. Cook and Arthur Durham, members of the Baltimore police force. The thing was forgotten yesterday, but today it is a pleasure to comply. The Hon. Messrs. Cook and Durham, it appears, served in the hall near the place of the Kansas delegation and officiated professionally at all of its fights. So suave was their demeanor and so humane their effort to keep order that the Kansans took a great liking to them, and thought it only decent to say so. Therefore, let the Police Board remember these excellent men—Patrolman Fred. W Cook, of the Western district, and patrolman Arthur Durham, of the Southwestern.

It is always a pleasure to praise policemen, for the work they do is hard work and usually it gets no thanks. People remember their occasional surliness and forget all about their difficulties and fatigues. But is it any wonder that a man on his feet for 10, 12 or 14 hours, clad in a hot uniform and mauled by a struggling crowd, should now and then show a bit of temper? The real wonder is that the cops are always so good-natured. From end to end of the convention they kept their heads admirably, and if the politicians had let them alone they would have handled the crowds to perfection.

Even those cops who helped to usher in the Hon. Trauty Trautfelter’s brigades of ward heelers deserve less blame than they got from some of the delegates. After all, it is necessary for a policemen, if he would prosper in his profession, to avoid offending the politicians. The current Police Board is a fragile and transient thing, here today and gone tomorrow. But the politicians go on forever. They are on the job day and night. One year they may be knocked out, but they come back the next. And they have long memories for contumacy!

The patriotic Orioles still keep the city well to the front in the National Typhoid League. Standing of the clubs for the week ended June 8:

During that week 7 per cent. of all the deaths from typhoid reported in the American cities of more than 100,000 population were in Baltimore and 5½ per cent. of all the new cases.

Thirty-one cheap but sterile cigarros to the Hon. Henry A. McMains, etc., carnerlengo, etc., etc., of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland branch, for any proof, etc., etc., etc., that etc., etc., etc., etc.

Schnell, Colonel Pabst! Mach geschwind! Presto! Allegro!