Baltimore Evening Sun (16 April 1913): 6.

Who is the champion moralist of Baltimore? Who is entitled to the Richard K. Fox diamond belt? Who is the ultra-Cochran, the super-Levering? Watch this space for his name.—Adv.

If the Hon. the super-Mahon is the fair and humane man that he constantly pretends to be, he will quickly have done with his current plan to take the city advertising away from the estimable Hot Towel. That plan, true enough, must hold out great charms to so astute a rabble- rouser. It has a specious sort of virtue in it; it will please the more idiotic taxpayers; it is full of pious possibilities. The Towel gets $30,000 a year for printing the advertisements; the Municipal Journal, owned by the city, would get nothing; a book saving of nearly a cent on the tax rate would be effected at one sublime stroke. And that book saving, it must be obvious, would make admirable campaign material. It would be a perfect answer to those scoundrels who accuse the super-Mahon of inserting the paws of his friends and pediculidæ into the municipal till. It would ravish and enchant the vulgar.

But all the same, his duty in the premises is clear: he must leave the advertisements in the Towel. He must sacrifice all things, including even this unexampled change to wring the wet, wet tear, to the supreme virtue of gratitude. He must stand by the Towel as it has stood by him, even at the cost of his life, his fortune and his sacred honor. It has been his comfort in times of bereavement and distress. It has succored him when the curs of journalism leaped at his pantaloons. It has carried water to him during his wildest fits and convulsions of grastyphobia. It has greased him when he was sore, and when he was but half sore, and when he was scarcely sore at all. It has poured down upon him, from its lofty mountain height, its gushing cataracts of cocoa butter, its Iriwaddies of oleomargarine, its Orinocos or tallow, its beautiful blue Danubes of goose grease.

The Towel, in a word, has earned its pay. It has carried out its contract. It has worked the crews of its blubber-guns in eight-hour shifts, like coal miners. At all hours of the day and night, it has stood ready to smother scoundrelism with praise, to heal the raw wounds of combat with the soothing unguents of flattery. It has done an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay—and it deserves that pay in full. It has played the game according to the rules. It has fought a good fight. It has run a good race. It has kept the faith. To rob it now, to take away its honorarium, to shoo it from the trough, to turn it out to die—to do all this would be to perform an act so ruffianly, so felonious and so indecent that the human mind must needs shrink from it in horror. Not even a suffragette could imagine more foul an outrage. Not even the licentious Sunpaper could commit one.

No; the super-Mahon is in honor bound to keep faith with the Towel, as it has kept faith with him. Such greasing as it has done has not been child’s play. It has had to pay a price for its fidelity. It has had to brave the mocking of its baffled rivals; it has had to dance grotesquely as the super-Mahon has whistled; it has had to take his harsh (and sometimes, perhaps, even profane) orders; it has had to get down on all fours and make faces. Such feats are worth money. Specifically, they are worth at least $30,000 a year. Not many newspapers, indeed, would perform them for twice as much. So let us hear no more about trimming the good old Towel. It has earned every cent that it has collected so far—and every cent that it will get during the rest of the super-Mahon’s reign. It has done its very darndest—and angels could do no more.

Don’t say I didn’t tip you in time! Four or five days ago I began issuing solemn warnings that the Hon. William H. Anderson was up to some fresh deviltry. On the last page of today’s Sunpaper the nature of that deviltry appears. Its instrument and proposed victim is Dr. Goldsborough, the Orison Swett Marden of Maryland. The hon. gent’s scheme is to play upon the doctor’s well-known moral fervor in such manner that he will turn the extra session of the Legislature into a local option saturnalia. Such is the plot he hatched while I ran up the black flag and blew furious blasts upon the fire bells. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

But why should Dr. Goldsborough monkey with local option, that political dynamite? The Hon. Mr. Anderson explains very frankly. If a local option bill is forced through, the doctor will “get much of the credit” and if he gets “much of the credit” he will have a chance to “rehabilitate his party by appealing to the moral element,” and if he rehabilitates his party by “appealing to the moral element” (or in any other way, for that matter), its members will regard him with affection and veneration. and if they regard him with affection and veneration they will not forget him the next time there is something doing. Perhaps, indeed, one of the Senatorships may be—but I put aside all such idle speculations and prognostications.

Such is the plot of the Hon. William H. Anderson, one of the cleverest fellows that ever filled an innocent politician with inflammable gases. Meanwhile, he hauls me up in today’s Letter Column for saying that California, Colorado and Washington, all woman suffrage States, still lack State-wide local option laws. It is a pleasure to acknowledge that a man so often wrong is substantially right in this case. Washington, in truth, has had Statewide local option since 1909, and according to the Anti-Saloon League Year Book for 1913 (page 190), four of the 36 counties are now wholly dry. In Colorado, where local option is older, nine out of the 57 counties are dry. But in California there is still no State-wide local option law. As the Year Book says (page 166):

In 1911 after a most effective campaign on the part of the moral forces a law was enacted providing for local option in towns, cities and supervisoral districts, outside of municipalities.

Imagine San Francisco under local option! It is to larf.

Bishop Wegg announces his reincarnation in today’s Letter Column. A lamentable transmogrification! The rod becomes a hot towel; the lord high executioner becomes a layer-on- of-hands. Alas, I liked him better as he was. I pine for his old assaults, his happy butcheries. We have greasers enough as it is.—Adv.

Don’t forget to read Mayor Brand Whitlock’s little book “On the Enforcement of Law in Cities.” It is worth 10 times the 75 cents it will cost you. If your bookseller hasn’t got it, send the money to the Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, and you’ll receive the book by return mail.—Adv.