Baltimore Evening Sun (1 October 1912): 6.

Anonymous note from a fair (at any rate, I hope so) reader:

The suffragettes would make four times as many converts if they didn’t always argue thus:

• If you are not a suffragette you are crazy.
• "   "   "   "   "   "   "   "   a ganov.
• "   "   "   "   "   "   "   "   a hussy.
• "   "   "   "   "   "   "   "   no lady.

Today is the day set by the mongers of public rumors for the blowing up of the Evening Sunpaper. Oh, la, la! Try again, gents; try again!

Today is also one of the days set for the trial of the case against the ex-sheriffs. Oh, la, la, la; Oh, la, la, la, la!

The titanic struggle of the platitudinarians:

• I saw Baltimore before the fire in 1904, and it looks like a different city.--The Hon. H. P. Keller, Mayor of St. Paul.
• Death is too grave a matter to make merry over.–The Hon. John F. Clarke, the Arlington Heracleites.
• The pulpit always is a power when there is a power in the pulpit.--The Rev. Dr. Goorge R. Grose.
• [The Hon. William H.] Anderson has a wonderful gift of gab.--A Salisbury correspondent of the Sunpaper.

Some say the ex-sheriffs are getting tired of it themselves, and have almost made up their minds to let the case go on.

Grand juries, it appears, have sunk into such disrepute that they themselves don’t put any faith in their doings. Baltimore County vs. Mattfeldt, et al.

Plays lately printed and well worth reading:

• “Milestones,” by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblauch. (Doran).
• “The Honeymoon,” by Arnold Bennett. (Doran).
• “Rutherford & Son,” by Gilda Sowerby. (Doran).
• “Such Is Life,” by Frank Wedekind. (Brown).

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! A tiger for the ex-sheriffs!

More money for sewers! More money for conduits! More money for Loch Raven! Laugh, suckers; laugh!

The boomers! The boomers! They’re busy, one and all! While one squad holds the death rate down, another lifts the pall!

Those local statesmen who awake at night from sweet dreams of newspapers butchered and busted should send in their subscriptions to the Editor and Publisher and delight themselves with its terror-stricken articles on the new postal law. That law was slipped over in the closing days of Congress and is full of wormwood for public gazettes. It requires them to print sworn and accurate statements of their circulation, to add the plain word “advertisement” to all reading matter inserted for a consideration, and to publish a full list of their officers, stockholders and bondholders twice a year. Protests! Bellows! Lawyers on the job! Solemn talk about interfering with the “freedom” of the press.

And yet, for all that yowling, it is probable that the working newspaper men of the United States are in favor of the new law by a majority of at least 98 to 1, and that 100 per cent., or even 150 per cent., of thoughtful laymen are with them. The fact is, indeed, that the newspapers of the United States need an airing, and that they ought to get it forthwith. The press has dealt in buncombe and false pretenses long enough. It is high time for it to be made to feel that responsibilittes go with its privileges, that the first essential of leadership is is good faith, that an honest press is even more valuable and important than a free press.

The objections made to the new law are nearly all specious and ridiculous. They are put forward, in the main, by gentlemen with something to conceal; and nine times out of ten that something is not altogether to their credit. Why should any honest man object to the world knowing that he owns stock in a newspaper? Why should any decent newspaper try to conceal the fact that it has borrowed money from such-and-such a bank, or such-and-such a man? Why should it be afraid to publish its actual circulation? Why should it protest against a law aimed at editorials bought and paid for, at news distorted to fit the trade, at the docilel boosting and defending of rnountebanks and rogues?

The newspapers of the United States have improved vastly in 25 years, even in 10 years. The old-time party organ, with its slavish and incessant apologies for professional lawbreakers, is on the rocks. It lives into our own day only by throwing overboard its ancient cargo of bogus virtue and silly evasion. And as political harlotry thus declines, the whole tone of the newspapers improves. They are more careful about the advertisements than they used to be, they are less subservient to dishonest advertisers, they spend more money for news, they pay their employees better and they move steadily toward employing a cleaner and better educated class of men. The frowsy booze-grafter still survives in journalism, true enough. But he is no longer typical. The evolution of the newspaper is plainly toward his extinction. Newspapers themselves gain self-respect, and so they have more use for men with self-respect.

But many evils still beset the trade. The circulation liar yet flourishes in every town. As the better papers labor toward honesty, lesser papers fatten modestly on the discarded grafts. Politicians and other such fellows lend money to doddering papers and so get the support that deceives the stupid. The man with a thousand dollars to spend for advertising can still find journals willing to approve his bile bean, his ladies’ entrance hotel, his political chicanery. It is still possible to buy editorials, though the cost is going up, as the actual price goes down. It is still difficult to determine the ownership of a paper by the names appearing on its flagstaff. Journalism, though it now shaves clean, still keeps a pair of false whiskers in its trunk.

Against all this lingering disingenuousness and worse the new postal law takes aim. Its mark is the fraud, and so far as I can make out, it can do no permanent damage to anyone save the fraud. The honest newspaper owner, for the moment, may resent the espionage it prescribes. He may argue with some apparent justice that his private business is his private business. But let him think it over calmly, and he must see inevitably that the newspaper business is not a private business. If it is right and wise to turn the searchlight upon public service corporations, then it must be right and wise to turn the searchlight upon newspapers. If they have anything to conceal, that very thing is the thing that the public should hear of. But most of the decent ones, I believe, have nothing to conceal.