Baltimore Evening Sun (27 March 1913): 8.

One by one the old heroes wither and blow down. Here is the super-Mahon afraid to throw his hat into the ring! And here is the Hon. Willliam H. Anderson fleeing from the Hon. Lloyd Wilkinson!

A LITTLE SERMON FOR MILITANT MORALISTS

Brethren. If a man be overtaken in fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

The Hon. William H. Anderson, master of the boozehounds, charges me with misrepresenting him in certain modest paragraphs printed in this place the other day. This, in substance, is what I wrote:

His one hope, as he himself frankly points out, lies in the defeat of the Democratic Legislative ticket. * * * If [he] fails, then two wet senators will be elected by the Legislature, and what is more lamentable, there will be various “legislative excesses” against the dry movement within the State, including additional outrages in the way of even worse elections laws.” So speaks Zarathustra.

And here is Zarathustra’s somewhat impatient denial:

He says that we said that the one hope of local option lies in a united front against the Democrats by the Republivans and Progressives. But we didn’t, not by a jug full. What we did say was that local option was something on which they might get together, which is a very different thing.

Well, let us go to the original text, and find out just what the hon. gent. did say. Here is the exact letter of his statement, as it appeared on the first page of the American Issue, Maryland Edition, for March 22. I do not merely reprint it: I reproduce it exactly, and by photo-engraving:

A Democratic ring victory and liquor supremacy are likely to mean not only legislative excesses in a frenzied and futile effort to block the temperance movement, but also to result in additional outrages in the way of even worse election laws jammed through over the veto in the attempt to avert the inevitable public wrath.

Only One Way to Prevent This Disaster.

The ONLY way to prevent this kind of a situation is for the Republicans and Progressives to get together for this ewlection on some local issue which has vitality enough to appeal to the people of the whole state. And the only way this can be brought about is for the rank and file of both parties to refuse to be kept apart by non-essentials.

Notice the “only,” in black capitals, in the first line of the second paragraph. Notice its repetition in the fifth line. And notice its reinforcement in the subheading. Certainly the hon. gent. must be spoofing.

From the Rev. Ed. H. Packard, superintendent of the Midnight Mission, at 88 Tremont street, Boston, comes a four-page broadside against coffee and the cigarette, those twins of seduction—four pages of cartoons and invective, each as large as a page in The Evening Sun. The Rev. Mr. Packard his devoted his life to the rescue of the fallen, and so he may be presumed to know why they fall. He blames coffee and the cigarette. Take away those insidious agents of corruption, he says, and there would be no drunkenness, and what is more, no social evil. Thus his loud alarrum:

I warn all mothers and good sisters who hook [cook?] coffee for church supper is that they had best study the chemistry and physiology of nutrition more and the cook book less if they wish to keep their men folks in the straight and narrow way.

And then he proceeds to details which must be toned down a bit for quotation in a family paper:

Tobacco and coffee irritate the nerves, outrage the digestive organs, excite the brain and lead to indiscretions and loose living. False nerve messages are flashed to the brain by the abnormal excitement of the nervous system. The brain is inflamed and influenced in spite of the will * * * contrary to reason and chastity. This, in brief, is the indictment against tobacco and coffee as the chief cause of [violations of the Seventh Commandment] among youth * * * I say to all young men ambitious to be clean and to get sensuality out of their blood, avoid these things!

Obviously, this Mr. Packard is a crusader with something to say, and a terse, eloquent way of saying it. Let him be invited to address the Drip Coffee Chautauqua, say between the Hon. Eugene Levering’s excoriation of the brewers and the Hon. Barratt O’Hara’s illustrated lecture on the Hon. Jack Johnson.

Boil your drinking water! Watch the Anti-Saloon League flirt with Uncle Fred! Watch the Towson Union and News go into convulsions! Cover your garbage can!

The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough devotes a long article in the super-Mahon’s Municipal Journal to arguing that the job-holders in the City Hall are not overpaid, and to denouncing all those mysterious “enemies of Baltimore” who have alleged that they are. Well, why doesn’t the virtuous Aristides name his culprits? Who are the scoundrels who have circulated that foul slander? Has the Sunpaper given space to it? Has the Hon. Frank A. Munsey spread it? Has it sneaked, by any chance, into a paid writeup in the Hot Towel?

I doubt it. On the contrary, I specifically deny that any such allegation has ever appeared in print in Baltimore within the last five years. If Aristides can point to such an appearance, I shall gladly give him a colytic cigar. But he can’t. The only time the pay of job-holders has been discussed of late was about two years ago, when I myself composed an article on the subject and printed it in this place. The argument of that article was that the City Hall job-holders, far from being overpaid, are actually underpaid, and what is more, that some of them are overworked—not all, of course, but some. There are more $20 men in the Hall than $30 men; there are far more $15 and $18 men than $20 men. Such wages disgrace the city.

Even the Hon. Mr. Goldsborough himself, though he gets more than this, is not overpaid. His honorarium, if I am correctly informed, is $50 a week. He thus receives $100 for every issue of the biweekly Journal. Imagine a man writing 10,000 words in praise of the super-Mahon for $100—a cent a word! It is worse than ridiculous; it is cruel. For such necessary but disagreeable tasks, so painful to the higher cerebral centres, the pay should be nine or ten times as much. I myself am a poor man, with eight children to support, and a pathetic eagerness for money, but my fixed rate for praising the super-Mahon, even anonymously, is 6½ cents a word net, and I refuse to proceed to composition until the cash has been paid into the hands of my bankers.