Baltimore Evening Sun (10 September 1912): 6.

Shut the windows! Get out your clothespins! Here comes the City Council again!

Score another great victory for the boomers. The Fifth International Congress of Chambers of Commerce and Commercial and Industrial Associations (I give the name in all its solemn splendor) is to be held in Boston September 24-28. Delegates from Europe, the Far East and all the countries of South America will be present. After the Congress these delegates will be taken upon a tour of the United States. They will visit many industrial centres, including such small ones as Dayton, Ohio, and. Worcester, Mass. But though they will pass through Baltimore on their way from Washington to Philadelphia, they will not stop off. Sing hey for boomery!

The example of the Hon. James P. Thrift, I daresay, has somewhat shaken the nerve of the Hon. Robert J. McCuen, that noble bachelor. And the baleful rhetoric of Mayor Preston and the Hon. Jacobus Hook, as reported in the Hot Towel of this morning, has doubtless given him pause. But he will recover! He will come back! Such faith, indeed, have I in the tenacity and resourcefulness of my distinguished friend that I hereby offer 1,000 to 1, in dollars or doughnuts, that he will not be married during this present calendar year.

The estimable Hot Towel in defense of its dear:

The Mayor added that when he contemplated the removal of Mr. Palmer he did not know the important work that that official did.

It is, of course, no part of a Mayor’s duty to find out whether a man is competent or incompetent, useful or not useful, needed or not needed, before throwing him to the jobhounds.

The Hon. Charles J. Ogle, champion of the Single Tax, on the evils of the present system of taxation:

Under a light tax upon site values [as now] two tenants pursue one landlord.

All of which goes to show that a landlord may be pursued by tenants and yet not know it. If you doubt it, ask any owner of dwelling-house property south of North avenue.

Baltimore, so far as I know, is the only big city in Christendom without a public ambulance service. When a citizen is injured on the street in this town, he lies on the sidewalk until the patrol wagon comes, and then he is hauled to a hospital like a drunk, attended only by policemen. These policemen do their best for him. They are humane and willing men. But they know no more about surgery than a hog knows of predestination, and so they lose a good many patients. It is a common thing, indeed, for an injured man to bleed to death on his way to a hospital, or to bleed so much that he dies soon after his arrival.

In other cities there are public ambulances and in each ambulance rides a surgeon. This surgeon, true enough, is usually one but very lately issued from his medical college, but at all events he can distinguish between the esophagus and the carotid artery, and so he often saves a life. Again, he can render efficient first aid in cases of poisoning. Yet again, he learns the difference, after a little practice, between sunstroke and katzenjammer. Finally, he has apparatus at hand for holding minor injuries down to minor effects.

But in Baltimore the injured man is in the hands of the police, and all they can do for him is to beat their horses. It happens every day that an ambulance call comes in at a time when the patrol wagon has gone after a drunk. Then the victim has to wait. Sometimes he waits half an hour, and so gives up the ghost just as the wagon heaves in sight. A workman injured at Locust Point, if there is much bleeding, often dies before the Southern district police can get him to the University Hospital, three miles away. Not infrequently the wagon goes first to the hospital, and then to the morgue. Ask any policeman.

Incidentally, there is no effective inspection of public hospitals in Baltimore. As a police reporter, some years back, I saw the results of this. Somettines an injured man, delivered in the accident room by the police, would wait 15 minutes while a surgeon was being sought. At other times the young surgeon who appeared was obviously scared and incompetent. Once I saw the accident. staff of a hospital in liquor. Amusing to all save the blackamoor who came in with a broken hip.

Such things, of course, are probably not common. But certainly their very possibility shows the importance of official control. The city of Baltimore gives the hospitals a good deal of money every year. It should take a little more interest in the way they are run. There are cow-stable inspectors and bakeshop inspectors and tenement-house inspectors in the Health Department, but so far I have heard of no accident ward inspectors.

But it is the lack of ambulances that chiefly disgraces us. And that is a lack that concerns all of us. Not only longshoremen and visiting countrymen reach the accident wards. You yourself may be walloped by an automobile tomorrow, and have one of your arteries opened. Well, how will you enjoy lying in the street until the police arrive, and then going to hospital in the patrol wagon, and perhaps losing a couple of carboys of blood en route? Think it over a bit--and dream of it tonight.

Second and concluding canto of an ode to the Right Hon. Frank Kelly, honest sport, by the Hon. Alexander Geddes, poet-laureate:

I like him cause he’s good at home; this counts a lot, you bet.
And with the women folks his deeds somo never shall forget;
He’s helped their husbands get a job, their brothers and their friend,
And all the good he can afford Frank’s willing to extend.

I never knew a better man, although some folks must knock.
If Frank sees you are down the hill, he’ll never chop your block;
He’ll roll down fast to pick you up and help you all he can.
And this to me seems like the type my father called a man.

Whenever nothing else ain’t fitten to raise a scarce outen, them bum newspapers let on that the ex-sheriffs to going to be tried.

Contumacious remarks of the Hon. Gilles J. Shaw. member of the late grand jury:

I want to say publicly that I disagree wtth the jury in regard to the penihtentiary * * * the report will show that but two visits were made to the institution * * * and that but four hours were spent there. Three witnesses, all criminals, were also examined.

Another hunker. Another intransigeant, who refuses to believe the secret testimony of convicted crooks and scoundrels. Another enemy of the true, the good and the beautiful.