Baltimore Evening Sun (19 March 1913): 6.

From a leading article in the current issue of the Suffrage News:

[The Hon.] Mr. Mencken says: “Suffragettes have displayed a degree of ferocity perhaps unmatched to Christendom since the Middle Ages.” We beg to refer [the Hon.] Mr. Mencken to the recent wrecking of their capital city by the Mexicans, in which thousands of lives were lost, as a degree of ferocity in pursuing the ideal of liberty far exceeding any act of the suffragettes.

The word “thousands” is suffragettishly vague: the official report of Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson places the casualty list in the City of Mexico at 674 [Dispatch No. 84A, March 9]. How many would the suffragettes butcher–if they had the chance? It is easy to figure the thing out. Two or three months ago in a famous proclamation, they advocated the torture and mutilation of all men who wandered from the straight and narrow path. A few weeks later they ventured the view that “the great majority” of Baltimore men were so erring, and on another occasion they hinted that this majority was actually nine-tenths. But let us put it at four-fifths and see what it means.

The present population of Baltimore is almost 575,000. According to the ratio usually assumed, this means an adult male population of 150,000. Four-fifths of 150,000 is 120,000. Does the Suffrage News argue that the cold-blooded butchery of 120,000 men would be less ferocious than the killing of 674 men in open battle, with each man free to defend himself and common fair play prevailing? Does it rank the gruesome savagery of a legal execution above the stimulating clash and excitement of open combat? In brief, does it still libel the brave and almost civilized Mexicans by maintaintng that they are as ferocious as the suffragettes?

Despite the sinister hostility of the Hon. William H. Anderson and the indifference of many other moralists, the Anti-Cigarette League is making progress, and I receive pledges of support almost hourly. In a few weeks I hope to organize a posse of spellbinders to work the Sunday-schools on the plan now pursued by the Hon. Mr. Anderson and the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, wiskinski of the Lord’s Day Alliance. The offerings thus dropped into the hat will be divided into two parts. One part will be spent for the hire of barristers, press agents, sleuths and raiders; the other part will be devoted to my own nourishment and support. Many applications for places in the spellbinding posse come in from converted bartenders, ex-Germans and clergymen out of jobs.

More evidence against furfural, the deadly aldehyde of cigarette smoke, reaches me from Dr. D. H. Kress, general secretary of the Anti-Cigarette League of America, my honored master in this holy enterprise. Furfural, he tells me, is “fifty times as poisonous as ordinary alcohol”–a fact for the hesitating Anderson to digest at his leisure. Even in small doses “it causes symptoms of transient irritation, such as ataxia, tremors and twitching.” Taken in schooners, as the musician engulfs Pilsener or the coffee-souse swallows caffeine, it gives rise to “epileptiform convulsions and general muscular paralysis, ending in paralysis of the respiratory muscles.”

Dr. David Paulson, another Anti-Cigarette League expert, reports a significant experiment upon a tomcat. Says he:

I soaked enough tobacco to make an ordinary cigarette in water. Then I injected under the cat’s skin a hypodermic syringe full of this tobacco juice. In a few minutes the cat began to quiver, then to tremble. Then it had cramps, and in less than 20 minutes it died in violent convulsions. The poison destroyed the nine lives a cat is popularly supposed to possess.

Let the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society hold its rage! Dr. Paulson was engaged in a pious work. That one sacrificial tomcat has already saved 2,000,000 lives. Dr. Adolph Bierfisch, of Jena, was more cruel and less scientific. He invented a diabolical machine for pumping cigarette smoke into the face of a rhinoceros at the Jena Tiergarten. The thing was kept going for 40 days and 40 nights, at the end of which time the rhinoceros, excited to frenzy by the acrid fumes, bit off its own head.

Reading list of works by eminent vice crusaders:

“From Figg to Johnson: a Complete History of the Heavyweight Championship,” by the Hon. Barratt O’Hara. “The White Slave Traffic in America,” by Dr. O. Edward Janney. “The Fatal Gift of Beauty,” by Elizabeth Robins. “The Bachelor’s Guide to Matrimony,” by Reginald Wright Kauffman. “Mental Medicine,” by Oliver Huckel, D. D. “Loose Leaves of Song,” by Frank W. Gunsaulus, D. D.

The one sound objection to the suffrage is the suffragette. The one sound objection to genuine Pilsener is the foam.

The Hon. Harry Martyr to the pitying Hibernians:

I don’t get much adulation.

Well, then, why not tell us just how much would be enough? There is still room on the Towel roof for a dozen more blubber guns. Would a dozen satisfy? No? Then what about two dozen? Three dozen? A dozen dozen? What if 200 Long Toms were mounted on the Courthouse, loaded with goose grease, and fired every six seconds? What if Jake used two feathers instead of one? What if Aristides composed 50 columns instead. of three?

Additional list of things denounced by local moralists since January 1, 1909.

Boil your drinking water! Sign the Harry petition! Throw out the life-line!

Anti-suffragist: one who seeks the applause of the mob without admitting any duty to the mob.