Baltimore Evening Sun (11 February 1913): 6.

The news that the diabolical Weyler, burglar of bread-crumbs and persecutor of pious niggero rapists, has declared a war of extermination upon the Hon. Eugene O’Dunne is proof of the growing perils of moral endeavor in our fair city. Two or three weeks ago, as connoisseurs will recall, the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton received a death threat from Baltimore Ledge, No. 27, of the White Slave Traders’ Protective and Benevolent Association, and a day or two later his automobile was stolen as an earnest of good faith. And my spies bring me word that other reformers have been attacked in the same way. The Rev. W. W. Davis, so I hear, is threatened with assassination by the gunmen of the Back River Frankfurter Trust, and has already received 20 or 30 infernal machines by mail. A demijohn of poisoned vichey is sent to the Hon. William H. Anderson daily, in the hope that he may drink and die. And the Hon. the Archangel Harry, as everyone knows, was once challenged to the ordeal of combat by a licentious foreman of the grand jury.

Such are the pains and penalties of militant virtue. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is apt to take them in the short ribs while they live. Eftsoon, if the present crying of Perunas goes on, the booming of bombs will make a constant music. Every day another reformer will be blown up, razored, artilleried, hacked to death. The gutters will run with the blood of the pure in heart.

THE VICE CRUSADE

Years of experience as a police officer have convinced me that segregation of the women of the half-world from the so-called respectable people is the only solution of the problem. * * * I am emphatically in favor of segregation.--Felix O’Neill, Chief of Police, Denver.

The Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton’s description of those who think as I do about moral snouters and perunists:

He has his following among the surface thinkers of the streets and the kaifs; the liquor forces to a man indorse him; the wan and hideous ranks of vice in his segregated sections applaud him as their champion and stay; the thoughtless and lustful laugh in glee over his cynical periods; the tatterdemalion, spending for drink the last dime begged upon the streets, hoarsely shouts, as his palsied and trembling hand lifts the glass to his lips, “Rah for the Free Lance!”

Example of a “surface thinker of the streets and kaifs”: the Rev. Dr. Charles A. Rubenstein. Example of a “liquor force”: Marshal Thomas F. Farnan. Example of a “wan and hideous” segregant: Capt. John Logan, of the Volunteers of America. Example of the “thoughtless and lusty”: Mr. John J. Grgurevich. Example of a tatterdemalion “spending for drink the last dime begged upon the streets”: Mr. Eugene E. Grannan.

Another extract from the good doctor’s eloquent composition:

the brilliant talents of a man of genuine genius. * * *

More bosh--genial this time, but still bosh. In brief, my learned friend is just as extravagant when he greases as when he denounces and deplores. This, in brief, is my objection to him. Instead of dealing with the hard facts of life, sensibly and unemotionally, he goes flapping and soaring through the interstellar spaces. It is my immoral theory that such voyaging among the stars is not only useless, but also positively harmful. I estimate the reverend gentleman’s competence to run a large city by his competence to judge genii.

Virtuous recommendation of the Penitentiary Committee:

We recommend * * * the utter and entire elimination of roaches from the kitchen and dining room, as well as from all parts of the building.

But how? Has the committee discovered a sure remedy? If so, beg to observe that it could get $1,000 cash for the prescription from any hotel-keeper in Christendom. I myself offer $2 for the exclusive rights in The Sun Office.

No less than 38 kind friends, including my pastor, the Hon. Daniel J. Loden, six suffragettes and my four brothers-in-law, send in the following editortal from the estimable Union-News of Towson:

The Baltimore Evening Sun must answer for many sins committed in the name of journalism, and not the least of these is its “Free Lance” column, wherein an immature and bumptious strippling is given full license to throw mud to his heart’s content upon all things which seem fair and therefore likely to offer a shinning mark for his filth. In a recent “splater” this booby owl, endeavoring to pose as a sage, speaks as follows:

When I think of the old maids at Towson and Wetheredsville 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 efforts made by professional rabble-rowsers to prove that these workingmen are debauches 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.

We are aware that we unduly dignify the “Free Lance” by replying to such foolish language, but where a fool without responsibility has dangerous weapons placed in his hands he becomes a real menace and should be placarded so he may be avoided. The Evening Sun, by giving this fool the weapon of publicity, has put it in his paws to do harm. The evil can be avoided by ruling the paper which prints such drivel out of decent homes. These “sputterings” of the “Free Lance” show an absolute ignorance of the laws of God and man (and grammar), and utter disregard of morality and decency, and an imbecile but malignant purility which may do serious harm by being given to the public in the pages of a sheet which aspires to be a metropolitan journal.

Hot stuff, by all the gods! A very fair piece of journeyman excoriation! A sound, workmanlike job!

Characterization of the Hon. the super-Mahon by the Hon. Satan Anderson:

The glory that is Grease and the power that is Rum.

Posted upon the lookout board at Police Headquarters:

The super-Mahon’s League of Maryland Municipalities. The super-Mahon’s Reliable Charter Commission. The super-Mahon’s Cabinet of Prominent Baltimoreans.

The boomers! The boomers! Around the town they slosh, uncorking kegs of balderdash and demijohns of bosh!

Pious saying of the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton:

No man really loves his country who does not respect and obey her laws.

For example, George Washington. For example, Robert E. Lee. For example, William Tell. For example, Robert Emmet.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Give your pennies to the moral wiskinskis!