Baltimore Evening Sun (26 December 1912): 6.

Anyhow, it was a merry Christmas to all them ex-sheriffs.

My old friend Doc Tinthoff, secretary. and wiskinski of the American College of Mechano-Therapy, of 81 Randolph street, Chicago, Ill., is still on my trail. So long age as July 17, 1911, he tried to get me to study mechano-therapy, which is the foreordained successor, he says, of the romantic mayhem taught at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. At first he wanted $100 cash, or $37 down and $23 a month for three months, but, when I hung back coyly, unwilling to risk so much mazuma, he came down to $50 cash, and then to $47 cash, and then to $25 cash, and finally to $1 down and $3 a mouth. And when I still refrained he went back to $100 cash and began all over again.

Now he is at $47 cash, or $4 down and $6 a month for eight months. What is more, he essays to alarm and inflame me by threatening to raise the ante to no less than $280 on January 1. To quote:

After this year we will not only ADVANCE the price of the complete course to $280, but we will make the term TWO years of resident instruction at the college instead at a few months’ correspondence course, as at present. We expect to abolish the correspondence course entirely after 1912.

Nevertheless, I do not bite. I know the big heart of Doc Tinthoff. His prices will not go up, but down. In a few weeks he will be offering to make me a full-fledged. medical freedomist for $25 cash, and later on he will come down to $1. The man is a true philanthropist.

VIRTUE BY STATUTE. From “The Enforcement of Law in Cities,” by Brand Whitlock, Mayor of Toledo:

There are, to be sure, on the scrolls of the State, and on the books of the city, statutes and ordinances which forbid the commission of certain sins, and even enlarge venial offenses to the proportions of crimes for the sake of prohibiting them; and, having enacted this legislation, society seems to be content, because the theoretical remedy has been provided against evil. All that remains, according to the theory, is to “enforce” these statutes and ordinances, and the evils will vanish, the sins cease. But these remedies are theoretical only. They do not search out the mysterious and obscure causes of crime; they are concerned solely with the symptoms or surface indications of those deeply hidden causes. But, however that may be, these statutes and ordinances can be administered only by human agencies, and in their administration are encountered human obstacles.

From a forgotten letter from the Hon. Charles Levister, suffragan to the Hon. Satan Anderson, in the Sunpaper:

From 1870 to 1893, the date of the birth of the Anti-Saloon League, the per capita consumption of all intoxicating liquors in the United States increased from 7.70 to 18.20 gallons per annum, or 146 per cent. From the organization of the Anti-Saloon League, in 1893, to 1910 the per capita consumption * * * increased from 18.21 gallons to 21.86, or 20 per cent. * * * If the rate of liquor consumption had increased during the first 18 years of the Anti-Saloon League as rapidly as it did during the preceding 23 years, the per capita consumption * * * in 1910 would have been 39 gallons instead of 21.86.

A plain claim (a) that the organization of the Anti-Saloon League cut down the rate of increase, and (b) that it would have gone on as before it the league had not come into being. But does the Hon. Mr. Levister really believe any such nonsense? I doubt it. If the rate of increase between 1870 and 1893 were still undiminished, the per capita consumption today would be about 43 gallons. And, supposing it to remain undiminished in future, this to how the consumption would grow:

1927................ 82 gals. 1978........................... 758 gals. 1944................102 gals. 1995...........................1,542 gals. 1961................361 gals. 2012...........................3,743 gals.

But does the Hon. Mr. Levister commit himself to any such absurdity? Of course he doesn’t. He knows very well that the per capita consumption of “all intoxicating liquors” in the United States increased 142 per cent. between 1870 and 1893 because of the gradual substitution of beer, a bulky drink, for whisky, a concentrated drink. And he also knows very well that the Anti-Saloon League had nothing whatever to do with it.

Despite the whooping and monkey-shining of the league, the consumption of liquors kept increasing between 1893 and 1910, but naturally at a lesser rate, for the substitution I have mentioned was gradually coming to its maximum. Between 1910 and 1925 an even smaller increase will be noted, and so on afterward, I have no doubt, untuil the per capita consumption reaches a state of equilibrium. It is even likely that it will show a gradual decline thereafter, due to the decay of drunkenness by natural selection. But it will be just as fair to thank the brewers of the United States for that change as it will be to thank the rabble-rousers and bogus statisticians of the Anti-Saloon League.

Letter from Rabbi Rudolph I. Coffee, of the Pittsburgh Morals Efficiency Commission, to the New York Evening Post.

The great problem of what to do with the girls * * * Three members of the commission took girls who professed to be willing to earn honorable livelihoods and engaged them in their own homes. * * * In every instance, the experiment failed, and within a month, all had left their places. A girl who makes $20 and $30 each week does not care to do harder labor for $5 or $6 weekly.

A frank statement of a genuine and insuperable difficulty. And yet the local vice crusaders talk gaily of reforming the girls by wholesale and in a pious stockade. The truth is, of course, that they will not reform one in a hundred. The rest will continue as before. The only difference will be that all of them will be at large in the community, whereas at present most of them are penned up.

Some kind friend calls my attention to the fact that I forgot to forgive Doc McMains, the medical freedomist, on Christmas Day! Well, well, what an oversight! I hasten to remedy it by wishing the learned doctor the best of good luck in 1913. May he live to see Doc Flexner hanged!

The Concord Club is split over the question of inviting William Jennings Bryan to its annual ball. Some say it would insult him to overlook him, while others think his presence would embarrass Woodrow.--Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Do your Christmas shopping early!