Baltimore Evening Sun (15 February 1913): 6.

Vice crusade of the Woman’s Civic League: Assault upon the Venusberg with brooms and dishpans.

Stupendous thoughts of the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, ballyho man and logician to the Archangel Harry, in the current Municipal Journal:

Every man has a right to know whether he gets his money’s worth. All tax-bills are unwelcome visitors. It is useless to be hysterical. It is not fair to be suspicious. Baltimore is no longer a petty side-station.

??????!!!!!! ---- You have wide immorality in Philadelphia, and you are going to have more. I’ll tell you why. We have successfully closed up our houses of ill-fame in Baltimore, and those inmates who evade our attempts to benefit them are coming here. Then you will have to get busy.--Dr. Howard A. Kelly to a Philadelphia audience.

Remark of Dr. Guy L. Hunner, the super-Havelock Ellis:

The Free Lance’s usual attitude that a college president must, by virtue of his office, be narrow-minded and provincial.

I swallow the split inflattive, but gag at the charge. If Dr. Hunner will come forward with proofs that this is my “usual attitude,” or even the slightest evidence that it is my “usual attitude,” I hereby offer and promise to rent the Fifth Regiment Armory, fill it with a motley throng, put in a band of music--and then publicly kiss him in the exact centre of his bald head. I assume that so learned and pious a man is bald. If not, then strike out “bald bead” and insert “hand.” Or, failing that, I will box him three rounds for a silver medal, or play the violoncello while he sings, or let him cut off my ears.

My “usual attitude,” in truth, is the exact opposite of that he states. I have the utmost respect for college presidents, as such, or, at any rate, for university presidents, as I have for all other men of genuine position. I include Dr. Charles W. Eliot among them, and even put him at the head of them. But it is still possible for me to hold that Mayor Gaynor probably knows more about the problems of city government than Dr. Eliot, just as it is possible for me to hold that Dr. George P. Baker knows more about the Elizabethan drama. And so far as I can recall, Dr. Eliot is the only university president whose merits I have ever even presumed to discuss. I may have chased a professor or two, but never a president.

Incidentally, what does Dr. Hunner mean by “an effort to get underueath fundamental conditions”--an enterprise he credits to “impractical sociologists”? I am well aware that these wind-jammers are intellectual giants--that they not only know everything worth knowing, but also many things not worth knowing--but are they also downright magicians? How do they manage to crawl under things that are fundamental? Let the good doctor tell us the secret. It suggests an almost supernatural agility. Perhaps they also know how to move the immovable, and how to shin over the insuperable, and how to believe the incredible.

The strike of the children at the Greif clothing factory, if it has accomplished nothing else, has at least served to show how little genuine passion for reform is at the bottom at most of the moral tub-thumping which now afflicts us. The ostensible issues in this strike are of such a character that one would naturally expect all professional moralists to be interested in it at once. What the strikers allege, if Miss Hanaw is to be believed, is, in brief, that some of the working conditions they are asked to accept are incompatible with good health and well-being. But how many moralists have gone to their aid? How many have even examined their claims? A few advocates of the ten-hour law. A few suffragettes seeking personal publicity. No one else.

I do not say that the claims of these strikers are fair and true. As a matter of fact, I don’t know whether they are or not. But at all events they have been before the public for a full month, and if they are true, then an almost unparalleled opportunity for public service presents itself. But not a single moralist has turned from the mountebankeries of the Vice Crusade to find out. Not a single specialist in hounding the helpless has looked into this apparent chance to help and protect the helpless.

My spies bring me news that the following bill has been prepared by barristers hired by the Maryland Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage and that it will be introduced during the first week of the next session of the Legislature:

An act for the protection of children against cruelty and neglect. Be it enacted, That it shall be unlawful for any woman with a child or children less than ten (10) years old, or for any woman under contract to care for such children, the same not being her own, to neglect or abandon her personal care and protection of them between the hours of 7 A. M. and 12 o’clock midnight for the purpose of making speeches to the open air, marching in parades, circulating petitions, distributing newspapers or pamphlets, affixing tags upon citizens, performing upon musical instruments, singing songs or carols, visiting newspaper or public offices, or engaging in any other such set of advertisement and buffoonery, either within the limits of the State of Maryland or elsewhere; And be it further enacted, That ant woman engaging in any such enterprise in violation of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and shall be fined not less than ten dollars ($10) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1000), or imprisoned in the Maryland House of Correction for not less than ten (10) days not more than one (1) year, or both, in the discretion of the court; and it shall be the duty of the Court before which she is tried and convicted, during her period of imprisonment, and after her release, if it shall seem wise, to make a suitable disposition of the children in her care, that they may receive proper attention and protection; And be it further enacted, That nothing in this act shall apply to women who are compelled to leave their children in the care of others for the purpose of earning a livelihood for themselves and the said children; And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from the date of its passage.

THE WOMAN HUNT ---- I believe modified segregation is the solution of the social evil. From my experience as a police magistrate I -am of the opinion that reformation of the inmates of disorderly houses is practically impossible.–Police Justice M. Albert Levinson.

And after the vice crusaders have dispersed the scarlet ladies, let us, by all means, disperse the vice crusaders.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage cans! Sing me a low, sweet song of vice!