Baltimore Evening Sun (13 January 1913): 6.

In a few weeks, it will be four years since the late Governor Crothers decided that the ex-sheriffs would have to disgorge the money. Oh, la, la! Oh, la, la, la!

DENY IT WHO CAN!

I know of many prejudices against woman suffrage, but of nothing which deserves to be called a reason. The reasons are all on the other side.--Prof. Dr. Borden P. Browne.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Wait for the message to the Job Hounds!

The grand jury’s plan for the creation of a commission to study the social evil in Baltimore, composed of the Judges of the Supreme Bench, the State’s Attorney, the Police Commissioners and the marshal and deputy marshal of police, has at least this to recommend it; that it leaves out the professional moralist, with his set theories and his hysterical intolerance of facts. In other cities the moralist has had control of all so-called vice commissions, and as a result the reports of these bodies have been commonly compounded of 10 parts of pious piffle to one part of sense, and their recommendations have excited the impatience and scorn of all serious and well-informed students of the problem.

But the moralist, unfortunately for the public security, is always a very noisy and pertinacious fellow, and so he makes a considerable impression upon the unthinking multitude. What is worse, he has great skill at browbeating the newspapers, which seldom have much courage, and at terrorizing the politicians, who never have any. In consequence, he often succeeds in making it appear that his narrow and unsound view is the only view that is defensible. Here in Baltimore, for example, practically all the talking about the social evil has been done by such virtuosi of virtue. They have made it unsafe for their more respectable opponents to meet them in open debate, and in consequence some of their worst fallacies and misstatements of fact have gone almost unchallenged.

And yet it is a fact that a great many intelligent and perfectly decent Baltimoreans, including most of those who have any practical acquaintance with the problem, are convinced that the mad woman-hunt proposed by the crusaders would do far more harm than good. The Judges of the Supreme Bench think so, the police captains think so, most of the magistrates think so, and, as we have just seen, the majority of the grand jurymen think so. Going further, the same opinion is held by many other men, whose capacity for sound judgment must be admitted by every fair person. I give three examples: Mr. Eugene Grannan, Mr. John J. Grgurevich and Capt. John Logan, of the Volunteers of America.

Mr. Grannan, now one of the Commissioners for Opening Streets, was a police magistrate for many years, and a large part of his service was in the Western district, the so-called Tenderloin. It is universally admitted that he brought intelligence and honesty to the discharge of his duties: in the opinion of many Baltimoreans he was the best police magistrate that Baltimore had ever seen. And what is his view of the current vice crusade? In brief, he believes that it is unsound in principle and dangerous in its probable effects. He thinks that segregation, whatever its defects, is immeasurably better.

Turn now to Mr. Grgurevich. He is the special agent in charge of the local enforcement of the Federal White Slave law, and he has four years’ experience in Baltimore behind him. Under the present system he has actually enforced that law: there is today no white slavery in Baltimore. Well, what does he think of vice crusading? He thinks that it is unwise and hazardous. He believes that the full adoption of the crusaders’ plans would encourage the barter in women; that it would make his work 10 times as difficult as at present and, perhaps, downright impossible. He is wholly against this woman-hunt.

Finally, there is Captain Logan. He is the only man in Baltimore who has done any actual rescue work among prostitutes. The vice crusaders are full of pious protestations of their pity for the fallen women, but they cannot point to a single fallen woman that they have lifted up. Captain Logan can. He and Mrs. Logan have done hard and faithful service in the so-called Western Tenderloin and they have achieved gratifying results. Furthermore, Captain Logan is a witness whose intelligence and good faith cannot be questioned by any one: he is an educated man and he has constantly devoted his own private means to the cause he believes in. And what does he think of crusading? He thinks that it is intolerably foolish, vicious, cruel and daugerous. He is uncompromisingly against it.

The vice crusaders, in their dealing with criticism, constantly adopt a dialectic device characteristic of all over-earnest moralists. That is to say, they denounce their critics as defenders of corruption. Argue that segregation to a better means of reduring vice than dispersion, and they will immediately charge that you are in favor of augmenting vice. I myself, entering the discussion uninvited, have had to meet that accusation a dozen times. But I challenge any vice crusader, however careless of the truth, to make it against Mr. Grannan or against Mr. Grgurevich, or against Captain Logan. Going further, I challenge any crusader to question the sound knowledge of these men, or their intelligence, or their honesty. Taken together, it seems to me, they know 10 times as much about the social evil as all the vice c crusaders in Baltimore, and so I urge every good citizen to give them a fair hearing before yielding to the clamor of extravagant enthusiasts, self-confessed archangels and professional bearers of false witness.

The estimable Democratic Telegram, in its current issue, questions the bona fides of the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus’ melodraniatic conversion to prohibition, denounces bitterly the initiative, the referendum and the recall, points out sapiently that the decision of Judge Bond will play hob with the Archangel Harry’s paving schemes and lavishes praises upon the Hon. William Ambrose Larkins, commissioner-general of street cleaning. It is a great pleasure to agree with the Democratic Telegram upon all and sundry of these points. Were it always so shrewd, so astute, so sagacious, life to its faithful readers, of whom I have the honor to be one, would be a grander, sweeter song.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Larf, and the world larfs with you! Weep, and it larfs at you!