Baltimore Evening Sun (15 January 1913): 6.

From the current issue of the sanguinary Maryland Suffrage News:

For a long number of years the Baltimore Sun [paper] has occupied a splendid position for truthfulness and integrity in this community. It has been, in the judgment of competent people, as standing for the best in journalism. When the Sun expanded it was the hope that the evening edition would be as excellent as the morning one, but after examination it certainly does fall very short of the standard of a good newspaper. This has been due largely to the daily writings of [the Hon.] Mr. Mencken.

I pass over the “long number,” the “been * * * as standing” and other such characteristically suffragan peculiarities of English, and direct all attention to the incredibly bad politics of the last sentence. For two years or more I have argued for the suffrage constantly, sacrificing my time and health to the business, and attaining, on occasion, to an almost awful horsepower of eloquence. Meanwhile, no other journalist in Baltimore has said a single kind word for the girls. They have been misquoted, they have been ridiculed and they have been denounced, but I alone have praised their cause and cheered their slugging for it.

Now observe their method of giving thanks for this support. Observe their gratitude, their tact, their common sense. Looking about them for some victim to nail to the barn door, they pass over all their enenies and choose their one friend! It is as if the Hon. McCay McCoy were to post the Hon. the super-Mahon publicly as the very pattern of a pothouse politician. It is as if the Hon. Satan Anderson were to print a vile lampoon upon the Hon. Young Cochran. It is as if the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, C. P., were to denounce Dr. Howard A. Kelly as an advocate and apologist of vice.

I stand flabbergasted before such suicidal indiscretion. Can it be that these girls actually fancy themselves politicians? Can it be that they hope to prevail by any such crass errors and outrages? Have they no comprehension of the fact that politics is a game of give and take, that its central principle is the protection and reward of the faithful? Here am I, their one true friend--and they pay me up by trying to scare the proprietors of The Evening Sunpaper into bouncing me! What a lesson for all the other persons, outside of journalism, who have given them aid and comfort! What an ironic testimonial to their sagacity!

However, I make no threat or reprisals. On the contrary, I specifically declare that I am still hot for the suffrage. Before long, indeed, if they do not succeed in having me fired in the meantime, I shall compose and print a series of unanswerable arguments for their cause. But it would be hypocritical for me to say that I am not grieved. I feel exactly as the oleomanical Hot Towel would feel if Harry took away its city advertising.

The 1913 issue of “Appropriations,” entertaining year book of the Hon. James F. Thrift, City Comptroller, shows that the Job Hounds of the City Council closed the year 1912 with a deficit of $800. This is less than the deficit of 1911, which was $5,362, but it is still sufficient to exhibit the Council’s fine lavishness with the taxpayers’ money. Each Job Hound is paid about $25 every time the bunch meets to scratch for jobs, battle against good government and murder the English language, and all of their attendant chamberlains and cup-bearers are as grossly overpaid. The doorkeepers of the First Branch, for example, get about $15 each for every session they attend--and there are two of them for one door! Each of the 33 Councilmen is provided with elegantly embossed stationery at the city’s expense, and when one of them dies the city buys a huge set piece to grace a funeral and sends elaborately engrossed resolutions to his heirs and assigns. It costs $10,000 a year to print the donkeyish minutes, reports and other useless and ungrammatical papers of the two branches. Each branch has one clerk to keep its minutes, another to read to it, and yet another to keep the nonsensical records of its committees. The three together receive $4,000 a year. One intelligent young man, at $25 a week, could do all of the work.

Such is the City Council. It costs the taxpayers $60,000 a year, or 2 cents on the tax rate, and is not worth a bad nickel. I shall not attempt to describe for you the puerility and tediousness of the proceedings of this superfluous and costly sanhedrin. Go down to the City Hall some Monday afternoon and see for yourself. There is a gallery in the First Branch chamber and admission is free. Sit there for two hours, listening to the bad English, observing the mountebankery, and then let me know what you think of it. In particular, let me know if you think it is worth $1,200 a week.

The charter framers are all in favor of abolishing the City Council and of putting a small board of intelligent men in its place. I say the charter framers, but I must except the Hon. the super-Mahon. He is in favor of retaining a Council made up of ward politicians. He is a firm believer in the wisdom and good taste of such gentlemen. He thinks that they are well fitted for deciding the city’s problems and handling its money. I mention the fact without attempting to deduce any moral from it. It is sufficiently eloquent in itself. In particular, it well demonstrates the true character of the City Council.

Various snouters and moralists come tiptoeing into my cage with news that the tainted money poured into pious Havre de Grace last summer has set all Harford county to dancing a devil’s dance. Prosperity, in brief, has gone to the heads of the good deacons, and they are now openly defending race-track speculation as a means of grace. Portraits of Maud S., Salvator, Dan Patch and other eminent race horses adorn every second Harford county home, and many of the clergy, including the learned Archbishop Wegg, issue bulls of excommunication against all persons who presume to maintain that bookmaking is a licentious art.

The climax comes with the issue by the Harford National Bank of an advertising calendar showing a race-track with a race in full progress. Underneath is the suggestive legend “Will It Pay?” So far as I know this is the first time that any national bank has ever issued a racing calendar. The six horses in the race are labeled with numbers, and on a bulletin board in the infield each member is set beside the name of a Harford county bank. The Harford National, of course, is No. 1: it has deposits of $634,362.45 and is in a very prosperous condition. But the First National of Havre de Grace, with $553,153.10, is a close second.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Have the children scraped!