Baltimore Evening Sun (25 July 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Free reading notice: Genuine Pilsener, straight from the wood, is to be had at—but I suppose I had better not!

The Hon. J. B. Aldred, at the opening of the Bee Hive Building:

What we need is not to boom Baltimore, but to develop the resources of Baltimore.

And one of the principal resources is, or should be, reasonable decency in the city government—not, perhaps, chemical purity, but, at any rate, as much frankness, fair dealing and good intent as you will find in the average barroom.

Bilious poetry by the Hon. Henry Edward Warner:

Plumes, tawdry baubles, artifice and wiles,
And choking perfumes, manners gone to rot—
Your smartest women dress your basest styles,
And smartest talk is slangy polyglot.

Refresh me, dreams! Come take me back, I pray!
Show me a woman, for I must confess
Fate’s somehow lost our women by the way
And left us only addlepates and dress!

Oh, pooh, pooh, Henry! Go to, my dear! Certainly you don’t mean It. What could be more disconcerting, more uncomfortable, more pestiferous than a sensible woman? And don’t bawl against frills and cosmetics. Have you ever seen a woman they didn’t improve? Or, rather, to put it plainer, one who didn’t need them?

A Progressive is one who is willing to admit anything to get the job.

A reactionary is one who believes that the common people are even more crooked than he is himself.

If you want to know more about the new science of chiropractic, which I praised last week as the latest and greatest boon of medical freedom, you can do no better than get the prospectus of the Palmer School of Chiropractic of Davenport, Iowa, of which the learned “Dr.” B. J. Palmer is president, dean, chancellor and collector. “Dr.” Palmer is a son of “Dr.” D. D. Palmer, inventor of chiropractic, and is himself responsible for the development and enrichment of the science. He will teach it to you by correspondence for the sum of $100 cash, or $25 down and $20 a month for four months. And after you have absorbed all you can by mail he will let you walk his hospital wards at Davenport for the sum of $150 additional. After that you will be free to practice chiropractic in any State wherein medical freedom has prevailed against the Medical Trust, and to enjoy the $5,000 a year which goes with that practice.

“Dr.” Palmer’s prospectus is a mine of revolutionary information. His course of study, he says, is divided into 49 distinct branches, many of which are entirely new, as, for instance:

The learned doctor defines all of these novel sciences very carefully, and in addition he gives interesting definitions of certain more familiar branches. For example:

Going further, the doctor gives much valuable advice to persons who have mastered chiropractic, showing them how to do effective press work for medical freedom, how to undermine the practice of the hellish allopaths, and how to wriggle out of it when the allopaths have them pinched for practicing without licenses. Thus he divides his discourse on the subject of working the newspapers:

In this department of press-agenting and lecturing, of course, the Christian Science healers have blazed the path, but in the department of handling courts and legislatures “Dr.” Palmer offers many new thoughts, Thus he tickets some of them:

So far, it would seem, chiropractic has made no progress in Maryland. At all events, I can find no Maryland professor in the lists of graduates printed by the three chiropractic colleges at Davenport. The thirst for medical freedom in this state, I suppose, is now almost satisfied by Christian Science, osteopathy and Peruna, with perhaps a slight dependence upon rabbits’ feet, the Emmanuel Movement, Swamp Root, Dr. Bye’s Cancer Cure and sulphur-and-molasses. But with the press matter of medical freedom now filling all the newspapers and the allopathic plutocrats of the Johns Hopkins on the run, there should be a rapid growth of interest in the new science. It is cheaper than Christian Science, more palatable than Swamp Root and even sillier than osteopathy. Therefore, its appeal to the common people, once they hear of it, must needs be irresistibly powerful.

The initiative and referendum: the osteopathy and chiropractic of politics.

Every lover of the manly art will hope that the present haggling between Young Anderson and Kid Price betokens only the skittishness of the artistic temperament. The boys must and shall get together. The public has heard so much of each—of Anderson’s terrific left hook, of the Kid’s almost supernatural capacity for taking punishment—that it will never rest content until they stamp the rosin together. If, by any chance, they fail to come to terms, the obvious remedy will be to appoint a committee of arbitration. And in anticipation of that necessity, I hereby propose the following arbitrators:

The point, of course, is for the lawyers to decide, but meanwhile I throw out the suggestion that any Baltimorean who pays his taxes without holding back something may lay himself open to an inquiry into hissanity and a suit for nonsupport by his wife.