Baltimore Evening Sun (13 December 1912): 6.
First the “boys” do some repeating at the polls–and then the taxpayers try their hands at it.
The boomers! The boomers! They come again, by cricky! And once again their captain is the Hon. Chas. H. Dickey!
From a moral letter of protest in Wednesday’s Letter Column:
“Fanny’s First Play,” Shaw’s latest, is a revel of rot and rudeness, the disgraceful attempt of a degenerate to reform a degenerated audience by slapping slime it their faces. * * * G. B. S. * * * seeks to disgust us by forcing us to gaze into a cesspool.
A perfect example of moral whooping. What are the facts? Simply that “Fanny’s First Play” is an entirely harmless and amusing piece, a sort of satire upon modern playmaking and playmakersm in which Shaw takes many delicious shots at himselg. It ran in London for more than a year and was seen by thousands of persons, and yet no one, I believe, complained that it was indelicate. It has been running in New York for three months or more, and yet no objection to it has been made. It is, indeed, one of the cleanest dramas of the day.
And yet this moralist attacks it as “degenerate” and a “cesspool,” and talks of its “rot” and “rudeness.” I call attention to the matter because of the light it throws upon the moral mind. We of this town are constantly aroused by the loud bellowing of moralists. If they are not denouncing one thing as criminal, they are denouncing some other thing as indecent. It is my belief that this indecency they are always talking about lies chiefly, if not wholly, in their own minds. Once that fact is clearly understood, the public will estimate their indignation and their good faith more accurately.
Meanwhile, don’t miss this week’s Maryland Suffrage News. There you will find, for the first time, the complete program of the estimable vice crusaders, carefully set down by one of the first and most earnest of them. I do not ask you to accept my account of this program; all I ask is that you got the Suffrage News and study it for yourself. Does it convince you, or does it make you laugh? Does it show a genuine desire to remedy an ancient evil, or merely a hot yearning to manufacture a military utopia and flay and butcher the erring? This is an important matter. Every good citizen should examine the facts and make up his mind. The vice crusaders are making a lot of noise and hurling ugly charges right and left: it is of the first consequence that the impulse behind their jehad be accurately determined.
What has the Hon. William H. Anderson to say to the returns from Georgia? Between 1880 and 1904, under license, the homicides there average 12.7 per 10,000 of population per annum. Under prohibition they have averaged 17.3.
And what of the annual report of the Health Commissioner of Atlanta? Under license the death rate from delirium tremens was but 14.2 per 100,000 of population per annum. Now it is 33.7. Near-beer forever!
Questions respectfully addressed to the pious rabble-rousers of the Lord’s Day Alliance:
On what ground do you hold that tennis games on Sunday afternoons in summer would promote immorality? On what ditto do you ditto that good music on ditto dittos in winter would ditto ditto?
Pathetic picture drawn by the Hon. William H. Anderson, that insatiable foe of gemuethlichkeit:
A man goes into a kaif for a single glass of beer. He finds there five friends. He hasn’t the nerve to walk up to the bar and lay down his nickel and get the single glass that he wants, but he invites up the five friends and then the sextet stand around like animated slop cans until each one of the other five has solemnly discharged his obligation at the expense of the internal economy of the bunch.
Sad, sad--and no doubt true. But how would local option help it? Would there be any rule against treating in the blind pigs? Would six glasses of wood alcohol do less damage than six glasses of beer?
And if Col. Jacobus Hook is not inspired to contribute 100 chairs for the new meeting room, the Concord Club will be glad to take a dozen chairs, or even two chairs.--Adv.
The boomers! The boomers! They’re up again, b’gosh! A-passing round the loving cup, and handing out the bosh!
Scandal! Scandal! The American history books used in the public schools contain no pictures a Certain Party!
My spies bring me news that most of the Back River beer parks are now closed, even on Sunday. Score a three-bagger for the Lord’s Day Alliance.
A little experiment in simple arithmetic:
Salary of a Senator in Congress............................$7,500
Salary of the Mayor of Baltimore.......................... 6,000
__________ Price of the super-Mahon’s patriotism..................$1,500
We trusted him--and now he prepares to desert us! We loved him--and now he turns his back!
CORRECTION Readers are requested to call attention to any errors or other immoralities appearing in the column of The Free Lance.
By the error of a bibulous compositor yesterday I was made to promise to cut my throat the day the Hon. Robert J. McCuen succumbs to matrimony. What I actually promised was that I would cut his throat.
In today’s Letter Coluinn one subscribing himself “Harford” takes me to task for an alleged error in moral geography. However, I remain unconvinced. The Hon. Mr. Wegg constantly assumes the spiritual defense of the Havre de Grace deacons, and so I still believe that they are in his diocese. The boundaries of all dioceses in partibus infidelium are vague and unfixed. They shrink as the ordinary shows sloth, and bulge as he shows zeal. Certainly, good “Harford” will not deny that Wegg is zealous. In all the history of moral endeavor there is no record of a more ardent, eager, fervid, glowing, energetic, earnest, intensive, hearty, enthusiastic, passionate, incandescent, insatiable, valiant, ,bold, bouncing, sonorous, vociferous, rambunctious suffragan.
This same Mr. “Harford” and Bishop Wegg himself join in notifying me that the polecat whose suicide I lately elegized chose Bel Air as the scene of its mad act, and not Havre de Grace. I can only offer my apologies to Bel Air and lament the polecat’s lack of humor.