Baltimore Evening Sun (3 February 1913): 6.

The Hon. Richard Gwinn, City Register of Baltimore and wiskinski of the super-Mahon’s Calvert Bank, in the Evening News of Friday:

I have only one friend among the Baltimore banks--the Calvert Bank--and any proper advantage that I can give that bank you can rest assured that it will get it.

All that remains for the Hon. Mr. Gwinn to do is to tell us whether this friendship is based upon pure altruism or upon the lowly fact that it pays.

So rigid to the present enforcement of the anti-spitting ordinance that Supplee, Jr., lately fined an Italian laborer $2 for spitting on his hands.

My learned friend, the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton, preaches at me with earnestness and eloquence in today’s Letter Column, and I do not hesitate to say that I feel much benefited by his discourse. I am no angel, but a lowly sinner, and one of my sins is that of contumacy. In brief, I sometimes grow over-bumptious,offering free advice to the reverend clergy, the heads of the State and other such men of eminence, and so I need an occasional corrective. It is the solemn duty of those in holy orders to administer such correctives. When they shirk that duty I scorn them, but when they perform it I revere them. So I hope my sincerity will not be doubted when I offer Dr. Straton my thanks.

But all the same I cannot grant the complete truth, nor even the common fairness of some of his allegations. Because I attack local option, on the ground that it would deluge us with speakeasies and so promote drunkenness, he accuses me of defending drunkenness. And because I attack the dispersion of prostitutes, on the ground that it would make prostitution more widespread and more dangerous, he accuses me of defending prostitution. Such is the moral dialectic. Such is the syllogism a la the Rev. Dr. Straton. Thus is Aristotle draped in crape and made to stand upon his head.

Ah, that Dr. Straton were the only offender! He is a reasonable man: I could convert him, mellow him, show him the light. But he is merely one of many. When I argue that the man who gets used to good beer will not drink whisky, and that the man who doesn’t drink whisky is not on the road to delirium tremens, I am accused of arguing for delirium tremens! When I laugh at Dr. Janney’s pious balderdash, I am accused of laughing at decency! When I argue that the local optionists, the vice crusaders and all other such self-confessed archangels are not agents of good government but agents of very bad government, then I am accused of denying that good government is worth while!

Do you wonder, good doctor, that I tire of answering such bosh, and so turn to laughing at it? How, indeed, could a man of ordinary sanity throttle his chuckles when such preposterous fowl as our purifiers are on the mat? When I think of the old maids going into fits because a few thousand tired workingmen go to Back River on summer Sundays and drink a few carboys of beer, it makes me rock with mirth. When I think of the effort made by professional rabble-rousers to prove that these working men are debauchees and murderers, I laugh even more. And when I think of the money put up by the virtuous to drive these theatrical murderers back into their hot, stuffy houses, there to sweat and suffer and damn the laws, I come close to the verge of busting.

So with the Vice Crusade and all other such schemes of pifflarians. I respect the earnestness of the crusaders, but I mock at their remedy. If they had their way, they would not put down vice at all, but merely make it secret and romantic. In the same way the local optionists would not dispose of the Rum Demon, but would merely make him more alert and dangerous. As for me, I am against such vain and costly jehads. I believe in publicity for all evils. Put up a signboard; wave a red lantern; sound a warning blast upon the whistle. And if after that certain men are foolish enough to walk straight into the buzzsaw, then let us be thankful that we are not of them.

As for the good doctor’s competence to discuss vice as an expert, I no longer question it. He tells of authentic murders in Ohio, Texas and Tennessee, and of lewd, levantine deviltries that he has seen with his own eyes in Chicago. But we are not discussing Ohio,Texas, Tennessee, nor even Chicago; the community now before the house is that of Baltimore. Does Dr. Straton maintain that Baltimore is as homicidal as Texas, as indecent as Chicago? Then let me set him right. Baltimore is neither the one thing nor the other. As towns go, it is a very orderly and respectable one. Our bartenders are not professional murderers; our police are not blackmailers and thieves; we do not permit women to “stalk” the streets “in a condition of absolute nakedness.” In brief, we have maintained so far a reasonable decency, and if we are spared the soft ministrations of MM. Janney, Pentz, Anderson, Davis, Hooker, et al., we shall continue to maintain it.

In closing, let me ask the zealous doctor a few short questions. Does he think he knows more about vice and intemperance in Baltimore than Mr. Eugene Grannan? Or than Capt. John Logan? Or than Mr. John J. Grgurovich? Does he know more about Back River than Father Connelly? Or more about the difficulties of enforcing the law than Director Porter, of Philadelphia? Or more about municipal government in general than Brand Whitlock? Or more about the whole subject of vice than Havelock Ellis? If not, how does he explain the fact that all of these men are against him, that not one of them believes in shouting and wind-music, that they stand unanimously against the panaceas he preaches. Dr. Janney, if I do not mistake him, accounts for this dissent on the ground that they are ignoramuses. Does Dr. Straton agree?

Tribute of the Hot Towel to a pure spirit:

Wizard Hendrick.

Wizard of the sewers, enchanter of the Baraca classes, sorcerer with the goose grease.

Boil your drinking water! Swat the fly! Send your pennies to the boomers! Forward the Vice Crusade!

Meanwhile, ex-Sheriff Paving Bob is roaming the boundless West trying his darndest to spend the interest on the money.

When it comes to them stuffers, it seems as though the waits between the rounds are more longer than what the rounds is.--Adv.

The Concord Club has engaged 10 cornettists to play at its annual ball and 10 bartenders to attend the cornettists.--Adv.