Baltimore Evening Sun (12 April 1913): 6.

The silence of the Hon. William H. Anderson is sinister and portentious. If he is in retreat, you may be sure that it is for no good reason. He is up to some new rapine upon the kaifs, some novel and elaborate outrage upon the bibuli, some fresh and ferocious deviltry.--Adv.

Just what program the Police Board and the grand jury have agreed upon for the proposed enforcement of the Sunday law is not yet quite clear, but its failure may be confidently predicted without hearing any more about it. For a few weeks, of course, it may be possible to scare a good many storekeepers into compliance, but the whole police force will be needed to do it, and soon or late the campaign will be reduced to a tedious low comedy, and the stores will open again.

The thing has been tried over and over, and always without success. Twelve or thirteen years ago, when the late Samuel T. Hamilton was Marshal of Police, the Police Board ordered him to enforce the Sunday law to the letter, and he threw all of his military fervor into the enterprise. For 10 weeks running the streets were patroled by posses of cops bent upon breaking all records for arrests. Icemen were jugged for delivering ice to the sick; druggists were raided for selling soda water; newsboys were chased from the streets; before every delicatessen store there was an armed guard.

Thus the comedy went on for more than two months--and then Hamilton gave it up. Far from engendering any respect for the Sunday law, he had merely turned thousands of otherwise decent citizens into ardent violators. The number of arrests increased from Sunday to Sunday. It became obvious, in the end, that if he kept on the whole city would be in a state of turmoil. Fearing that physical resistance was imminent, he threw up his hands.

There is no public demand in Baltimore for a strict enforcement of our archaic and intolerable Blue laws. The great majority of citizens believe that the sale of small articles of necessity and convenience should be permitted on Sunday. They want the reasonable comforts of civilization seven days a week. They do not want to live in a civilized city six days and in a remote country village on the seventh day. They are for quiet on Sunday, but they are not for extinction. They do not believe that it is sinful, nor even unsocial, to drink a glass of soda water on a hot Sunday, or to buy a cigar, a postage stamp, a newspaper or a pint of milk on any Sunday.

All the bellowing against such harmless acts comes from a small group of professional moralists and virtuosi of virtue, most of whom are associated with a pious organization known as the Lord’s Day Alliance. This affecting camorra of the pure is of Canadian birth and has carried its roweling of the police and the people to fantastic and even incredible lengths in the Dominion. In some towns it has actually stopped the street cars on Sunday, so that it is impossible for the poor to get to the parks. In scores of other places it has tried to stop the delivery of Sunday newspapers. Everywhere it has made war upon the Sunday sale of food, even of perishable food.

The Baltimore branch, if I make no mistake, is bossed by half a dozen gentlemen whose whole lives have been devoted to worrying over the private morals of their protesting fellow- men. The president is, or was at last accounts, the Hon. Joshua W. Levering–a familiar name in moral endeavor! The first vice-president is the Hon. Summerfield Baldwin, he of the Warren deal. Among the other vice-presidents are the Rev. Dr. John F. Goucher, the distinguished foe of dancing and the theatre; the Hon. Young Cochran, angel of the Anti-Saloon League, and the Hon. George R. Gaither, the well-known political antiseptic. And on the executive committee are the Hion. MM. Charles W. Dorsey, James E. Ingram, Henry S. Dulaney, Robert Biggs and William M. Morriss, all virtuous and assiduous men, all experts in the conduct of the other fellow.

Far be it from me, a lowly sinner, and, as various horrified archangels have alleged, a partisan and intimate of kaif-keepers and white slaves--far be it from me to question the sincerity of these estimable gentlemen. In truth, I do not question it at all. On the contrary, I am quite sure that they act according to their honest lights--that they feel themselves solemnly charged with regulating the private morals of all of us--that the spectacle of sin in others gives thein acute chills and fever–that they will not rest content until they have recast the whole of erring humanity in their own perfect and laudable pattern. Such is their pious motive, their firm faith and belief. But, nevertheless, I have a sneaking suspicion that it is an erroneous belief, for all its booming virtue--that no such duty is actually laid upon them–that their ideal is brummagem, boshy and bogus--that their ardor constitutes a public nuisance.

In brief, I am inclined to think that Baltimore would be a far more orderly town, and, what is better, a far happier and more prosperous town, it these eager volunteers could be induced to shut up their moral shutters and cease weeping over the sins of others. For their own austere and icy virtue, of course, there can be only the highest respect and veneration. It is a valuable thing, to young and old alike, to have such effulgent examples on public view. It is a constant encouragement to the loftiest and most arduous forms of ascetic endeavor. Merely to think of such a man as the Hon. Summerfield Baldwin, for example, is equal, in its corrective and inspirational effect, to 30 days in jail. The very sight of the Hon. Joshua Levering must reduce the most hardened sinner to sobs.

But let them rest content with showing themselves in their zinc halos and white chemises! Let them cease their effort to make all of us as horribly pure as they are themselves! The thing is impossible, unthinkable, inconceivable. There are not 20 politicians in Baltimore who could ever be as virtuous as the Hon. George R. Gaither, even if the death penalty were provided for failure. There are not 10 men, even among the clergy, who could ever hope to reach the celestial heights of Young Cochran, that pattern for the ages. No, gents; such stupendous feats of moral aviation are above and beyond the general. You will never bring them up to your level, even with the aid of the police. The more you club them and torture them, the more wickedly they will hold back. Have done, I prithee, have done!

Tip for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, the melancholy, the maudlin:

Dr. F. F. Friedmann has just announced that he kills his turtle bacilli with a hammer.