Baltimore Evening Sun (1 February 1913): 6.

Anonymous note from a tipster in the City Hall:

Col. Jacobus Hook has finally refused to buy 200 chairs for the Concord Club’s new hall, but he will salve his conscience by giving the club an ornate and elegant chair of honor for distinguished visitors.

Proposed design for the said “chair of honor”:

{illustration}

Inquiry from the Hon. H. Joseph Kandel, of 2466 Druid Hill avenue:

Kindly publish your method of computing percentages in the National Typhoid and Tuberculosis Leagues.

Nothing could be simpler. I divide the population of each city into the deaths reported therein and drop out all decimals. Suppose, for example, that Baltimore reports 38 deaths from tuberculosis during a given week. The official population of Baltimore, as given in the Public Health Reports, is 558,495. Dividing 38 by 558,485, I get 645, which is the average of the Orioles. This is the method universally employed in calculating death rates.

Of course, it is not mathematically accurate. The present population of Baltimore, for example, is probably more than 558,485. The city has grown somewhat since 1910. But there is no reason to believe that any other city in the 600,000 group has grown less, and so the advantage, if any exists, is probably in favor of Baltimore rather than against it.

The Concord Club, when it marches in the inaugural parade, will wear dress suits, white silk hats, yellow shoes, purple socks, green neckties and pink carnations. Each marcher will also have an American flag and a clean shave.--Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Take it in the arm! Send your pennies to the Lord’s Day Alliance!

Outraged virtue and the martyr’s flapping chemise! The merit system and Paving Bob! The Sunday-school and the Calvert Bank!

Great thoughts from the leading editorial in today’s issue of the Municipal Journal:

Administrations will come and go; parties will shift and change. The city belongs to the people. Nobody loves to pay taxes. Everybody is willing to see the other fellow pay them. The revenue has got to come from somewhere. The way to do a thing is to do it. So there you are.

Say what you will against Editor Aristides, he is at least a powerful and original thinker, a master of pointed and poignant utterance, a virtuoso of the epigram.

But speaking seriously, this editortal is worth a careful reading by every taxpayer, despite its fustian and its platitudes. Boomery of one sort or another has brought Baltimore into genuine difficulties financially, and there will be heavy bills to pay during the next 10 years. The problem of raising the money now presses, and the administration is trying hard to devise ways and means. But in that efforrt, of course, it is hampered a great deal by public doubts of its intelligence on the one hand and of its good faith on the other. Those doubts, so far, have been sufficiently strong to block all of its schemes. The sewer rental plan and the paving assessment plan have both gone by the board.

Meanwhile, the problem remains. Our system of taxation is outworn and inefficient: before long it will fail utterly to meet our growing needs. The Mayor, in his last message to the Job Hounds, proposed a sort of modification of the single tax–in brief, the single tax with its teeth drawn. The Job Hounds, of course, have no interest in such matters: all they worry about is the job question. Will the general public show more interest? I doubt it. The general public, in Baltimore at least, is suspicious of the single tax.

What we need, of course, is expert advice. We should get some man who understands the problem to go over our accounts and devise a way out. Such professors exist: taxation has been extensively and intelligently studied. One of them, in fact, holds a chair in Johns Hopkins University and has been employed more than once by the Federal Government, and even by foreign governments. But the present administration is so hostile to the Johns Hopkins, and to all organized intelligence, that it is not likely to call upon this man. More probably it will call upon various donkeyish Prominent Baltimoreans and they will give their usual numskull advice--that is, that their own tax bills be kept down. And so the good ship Baltimore will continue toward the rocks.

All the while the band plays gaily. The Hot Towel demands that the slight kink in East Baltimore street be straightened–at a cost of $1,000,000. New plans for concrete bridges, boulevards, white ways and civic centres are launched almost daily. The Job Hounds, whenever they can knock the bung loose, pour out the city’s money like water. In 10 years our annual expenses have increased nearly 150 per cent. We buy the whole pack of every fresh peddler of gimcracks. And the dashing super-Mahon, once so confident that he could solve the problem in 10 minutes, makes discreet preparations for deserting the ship.