Baltimore Evening Sun (11 July 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

A PETITION TO THE CITY COUNCIL.

To the Honorable City Council of Baltimore City:

Whereas, at a meeting of your honorable body, holden on or about the eighth day of July, in this present year, at or about the hour of five o’clock post meridien, a resolution was adopted in due form of law thanking certain public prints or gazettes for their alleged services in bringing the Democratic National Convention to Baltimore, and

Whereas, The Evening Sun, a newspaper hitherto of good and decent repute in this city, was mentioned and included by name among the said gazettes, and Whereas, your orators are members of the staff of the said Evening Sun, in good standing, and have been appointed members of a committee to represent their associates

Now, therefore, your orators, complaining, say:

That up to this time all members of The Evening Sun staff, both individually and as a body, in private life and in their public character, have enjoyed the reasonable confidence and respect of the community at large, and

That any praise coming from your honorable body is calculated to evoke feelings of mistrust in the public mind, and so to impair grievously the high standing and good repute until now enjoyed by your orators, and

That your orators respectfully show unto your honorable body that they are unaware of having committed any act or acts which would justify your honorable body in thus holding them up to public ridicule and contempt, to the damage of themselves, their families and their children unborn, and That the publication of this unsolicited and unwelcome praise from your honorable body in the various newspapers and alleged newspapers of Baltimore city in an insult per se and an act in violation of the common law of this country and England,

To the end, therefore, your orators respectfully petition your honorable body that it forthwith and with all possible speed adopt a second resolution withdrawing the name of the said Evening Sun from the said resolution of the eighth day of July,

And as in duty bound, we will ever pray, etc.

Henry Edward Warner.
Alex H. McDannald.
H. L. Mencken. Committee.
Philip B. Perlman, Solicitor for Complainants.


Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Go to Back River next Sunday and help smash the Blue Laws! Swat the fly!


It is the bounden duty of every good citizen to violate the Blue Laws whenever and however he can—just as it is his bounden duty to evade the payment of taxes whenever and however he can. The first are devices for giving a few Puritans a high old time by torturing all other folks; the second are devices for giving a few politicians a high old time by robbing all other folks. In the present Blue Laws there is not 30 per cent. of virtue; in the present city taxes there is not 30 per cent. of necessity.


McCAY-McCOY. Yes, [the Hon.] Mr. MeCay [McCoy] told me that the contractors objected to me and that he was compelled to drop me for that reason.—The Hon. JAMES A. PAIGE, late assistant city engineer.


My barristers have drawn up the following proposed ordinance of the Mayor and City Council, and I have engaged a complaisant numskull to introduce it in the First Branch at the next Council meeting:

AN ORDINANCE to prevent cruelty to human infants for gain or for purposes of political agitation.

Be it ordained by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore,

That no person within the limits of the city of Baltimore shall arrange, advertise, manage, direct or give a so-called baby show, or exhibition of human infants of either sex, in any park or other public place or in any public theatre, armory, hall or other building, whether for gain, for prizes of any sort or for purposes of political propaganda or controversy; nor shall any person knowingly enter a human infant for exhibition in any such show, nor suffer his or her infant to be so entered by others; and

Be it further ordained, That the term infant, as used in this ordinance, shall be taken to mean any human being between birth and the age of twenty-one (21) years; and

Be it further ordained, That any person who violates this ordinance, or any section of it, shall be fined not less than one thousand dollars ($1,000) nor more than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000) or imprisoned in the Baltimore City Jail for not less than one year nor more than 20 years, or both fined and imprisoned within the discretion of the court, and

Be it further ordained, That whenever any person is so fined or imprisoned for violating this ordinance, the infant or infants so exhibited by him or her shall be given into the custody of the Henry Watson Children’s Aid Society, the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Children, or the Prisoners’ Aid Society, for such periods and under such conditions as the committing magistrate may direct; and

Be it further ordained, That this ordinance shall take effect from the date of its approval by the Mayor.


McCAY-McCOY. This is a Democratic organization administration * * * We say frankly that * * * we will take care of the men who voted for us. They are our first care.—The Hon. McCAY-McCOY.


Col. Jacobus Hook has chartered the steamer Louise to carry cigars between his factory at Matanzas, Cuba, and Pier 9, Light street wharf, beginning October 1.—Adv.


The more them stuffers think it over, the more they wonder what they got out of it.


McCAY-McCOY. Investigation at the City Hall today developed the fact that tho Hon. Paving Bob Padgett’s concern is just completing two pieces of paving for the city for which no contracts were ever let by the Board of Awards—The Evening News of July 8.


The six intolerable curses of the world:

Blue laws, Newspapers,
Baseball, Mosquitoes,
Theology, Fake Pilsener.