Baltimore Evening Sun (23 January 1913): 6.

Taking one thing with another, them stuffers is almost as lucky as the ex-sheriffs.

The members of the Women’s Civic League have been invited to visit the Towel office and see the great goose-grease machines in operation. The ladies will wear directoire skirts, lingerie waists, ostrich aigrettes, patent-leather pumps and silk st——gs.—Adv.

When a citizen goes to the Hon. Dan Loden’s office to get a dog license, Dan has to let a jobholder out in order to let the citizen in. Such is life in the municipal sweat-shop!—Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Weep with Moral Harry!

Additional list of indubitably eminent bachelors:

Zincocaput, n, a subscriber to the Municipal Journal, a zinc-head.

If Jacobus doesn’t come across with the chairs by February 1 the Concord Club will begin sending hints to the directors of the Calvert Bank.—Adv.

Governor Goldsborough’s plan to appoint a Vice Commission for Baltimore city is proof of his intelligent interest in a most important subject, but the value of that committee’s investigation, of course, will depend entirely upon the character of its personnel. If it is made up, either wholly or in large part, of persons who reason chiefly by emotion, its recommendations will leave us as far as ever from the solution of the problem. What it needs, beyond all things, to a considerable admixture of unsentimental, unprejudiced and practical men. I do not mean men who are committed to segregation, or men who view the whole enterprise cynically, but simply men who are willing to examine the actual conditions of prostitution in this city, and to study the enormous literature of the subject, and to think out their conclusions without regard to manufactured clamor.

The average Vice Commission, as it is known in These States, is a ridiculously ignorant and tartuffian body. Its groundwork is the professional reformer element—the Janneys with their intolerance of honest inquiry, the Pentzes with their sentimental statistics, and the Bonapartes with their sonorous platitudes. Upon this groundwork is erected a structure made up, on the one hand, of prima donna clergymen of the sort constantly appearing in the newspapers, and on the other hand, of business men whose desire to appear highly respectable is only equaled by their hospitality to bogus evidence. Add a few inflammatory ladies from the more vociferous woman’s clubs, and you have your typical Vice Commission.

I need not argue, I hope, that the conclusions of such a body are entirely without value. More than half of the members begin work with their minds made up, and most of the others are easily deluded or browbeaten into agreeing. To examine scientifically the evidence brought forward by fanatics and their hirelings requires a great deal more knowledge and skill than the average minority member possesses. And to bring in a minority report, supposing him to remain honestly in doubt, takes more courage than he can muster. His one desire is to emerge from the business to the sweet sound of applause. And he quickly learns that the self-confessed archangels have hard and accomplished hands. Persons who are against the woman-hunt seldom say so “out loud”: it is socially dangerous. All the talking and clapper-clawing is done by the militant moralists.

The obvious thing for Governor Goldsborough to do is to appoint a commission made up of first-rate men who have hitherto taken part in the discussion. To appoint such partisans as Dr. Janney, Dr. Kelly, the Rev. Dr. Huckel, the Ron. Mr. Pentz and the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte would be simply to pack the jury, and worse still, to elevate the plaintiff to the bench. These gentlemen have made up their minds; they don’t want to hear any evidence. And some of them, Dr. Janney, for instance, have reached such a state of complacency that they actually resent any offer of evidence, as an impertinent and indecent invasion of infallibility and chemical purity. To appoint them to the commission would be to make it, from the very start, a joke and a nuisance.

By the same token there would be unwisdom in appointing men who are publicly committed to segregation or who have publicly argued against the proposed safari of the vice crusaders. Such men, I believe, are, on the whole, more practical and open-minded than their antagonists, but it would be unfair to let them take their convictions into the commission’s councils. What the situation demands is the appointment of men who are still undecided—honest, intelligent and courageous men who are willing to hear all sides and who have some skill at analyzing and estimating evidence.

Such men, I. believe, are far from scarce in this town. The average intelligent Baltimorean is committed to neither side. He has heard a lot about the social evil of late, but is still willing to hear more, and he has not yet made up his mind. At any, rate, he has not yet pledged his good name: he is not himself on trial. I suppose the Governor knows plenty of such men, but at the risk of impertinence I rush forward with a few names, to wit:

• The Han. Daniel J. Loden.
• Dr. C. Hampson Jones.
• The Hon. Duke Bond.
• The Hun. William J. Broening.
• Pastor Julius Hofmann.
• The Hon. Oscar Leser.
• Mr. David Bachrach.
• The Rev. Dr. C. F. Thomas.
• The Hon. Edgar Allan Poe.
• Dr. Ernest Zueblin.
• The Hon. A. C. Binswanger.
• Dr. George Walker.

I haven’t the slightest notion how these 12 men view the present system of partial segregation: so far as I know, not one of them has ever expressed any opinion upon it. But I think they are all fair and reasonable men, and most of them, in addition, have had personal experience in the construction and enforcement of laws, or in combating the effects of vice.

If all of the Hon. Dan Loden’s clerks came to work on the same day, a dozen of them would be squeezed to death.—Adv.