Baltimore Evening Sun (19 April 1913): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

If Harry can’t help Paving Bob no other way, he don’t hesitate none to do it on the level.–Adv.

My sincere apologies to the Hon. George S. Steuart, who bawled me out in yesterday’s Letter Column for crediting his beautiful poem, “To Miss April,” to the Hon. Jacobus Hook. I was misled by a false friend, the Hon. Daniel Joseph Loden. He sent me the poem with the request that I do what I could to encourage the Hon. Mr. Hook’s autumnal talents. I crave the forgiveness of the Hon. Mr. Steuart, but stick to my praise of his poem. It was a lovely thing, passionate without being licentious. Let us have more from his gifted pen.

Sinister doings of various Sharkeys and Galahads of chemical purity:

The Hon. Samuel Pentz, late rescuer of working girls from the clutches of white slave traders, is now rescuing kaifkeepers from the clutches of the Liquor License Commissioners. The Hon. Samuel Summers Field, LL. D., lay reader to the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton, is protesting against the war on Sunday saloons on the ground that the city shares their profits and needs the money. The Hon. William H. Anderson, wiskinski of the Anti-Saloon League, is going around town knocking the Anti-Cigarette League.


From the Philadelphia Press’ report of the opening day at Havre de Grace:

Even the clergy were represented. * * * One very frank man was the Rev. W. G. Haupt * * * rector St. John’s * * * “Why should I not come here?” he said. “I enjoy the sport. * * * It ought to be encouraged. The betting feature doesn’t bother me. * * * I expect to come here a whole lot.”

Respectfully referred to Dr. Phillips Lee Goldsborough and to the Venerable Wegg, Bishop of Havre de Grace in partibus infidelium.

Despite the sinister hostility of the Hon. William H. Anderson and the inexplicable indifference of the Hon. Young Cochran, the Hon. Summerfield Baldwin and other such Sandows of virtue, the Anti-Cigarette League is steadily gaining in membership, and before long it will launch into an active and even ferocious campaign. The first step will be to wring a statement of his position on the cigarette question from the Hon. William Luke Matbury, candidate for United States Senator. Then the other candidates for the Senate will be put through the third degree, in the order of their descending piety. After that it will be time to shake down the Sunday-schools amd begin business on a large scale. Among other things, it is proposed to print a series of advertisements on the front page of the Sunpaper giving lists of the Baltimoreans who are slaves to the vice. Portraits of many of them will be added, showing how nicotine has wrinkled them and stained them and put the baleful light of paranoia into their eyes.

Meanwhile, advice and help are coming from eminent moralists in all parts of the country–advice as to ways and means of raising money, and help in the department of affecting testimonies and statistics. For example, here is a contribution from the Hon. Ben Lindsey, of Detroit, the distinguished touring judge and press agent of the uplift:

I recently had a little boy in court whose parents and friends were shocked when it was discovered that he had stolen money from the cash drawer of his employer. * * * No one believed that this boy would steal, since he had a good home and had borne a good reputation, but I found on investigation that he had been tempted to steal in order to get money to buy cigarettes. * * * This baleful habit had weakened his chararter so that he was unable to resist evil when it attacked him.

Direct testimony that the cigarette is the cause of drunkenness comes from Dr. Samuel E. Snodgrass, of Dubuque, Iowa, chief pathologist to the Elks’ Hospital there. Says he:

The volatile alkaloids and hemaglobins of cigarette smoke attack the epithelial phagocytes and electrons of the buccal cavity, causing paresis of the diaphragm. The esophagus is loosened by the jumping of the clavicle nerve and the pancreas turns yellow. The result is an irresistible craving for alcoholic stimulant. It is utterly impossible for a man who smokes a single cigarette to resist the liquor evil. All cigarette smokers end as drunkards.

Dr. David Paulson, president of the Anti-Cigarette League of America, bears equally eloquent testimony to the horrible efferts of cigarette smoking. In addition, he shows (in a leaflet entitled “A Warning to Boys”) that the cigarette habit itself is caused by coffee. Thus the fatal circle is completed. The victim begins with coffee, proceedsto cigarettes and ends in a drunkard’s grave.

Some time ago, more in sorrow than in anger, I took the moral Suffrage News to task for excoriating a man named Joshua Lutz, who has been tried before Judge Dobler on a charge of assaulting children—and promptly acquitted. In this week’s issue the News defends itself on the ground that two more indictments still stand against the man. Then it goes on:

We do not feel that we are specially blackening Mr. Lutz’s reputation, nor do we mean to. What we meant to imply was just this–that in this city children are being assaulted daily, and no one is being convicted for it.

In other words, the way to stop it is to send innocent men to jail. In other words, there is no blackening of an acquitted man’s reputation in deploring that he is “at large * * * in the community” and that school children must “pass the alley where such a man may lurk.” In other words, a man who has been acquitted on one out of three indictments is certainly guilty under the other two.

I submit the case without further argument to all connoisseurs of moral whooping and snorting. It is just such a conception of fairness and justice that the moralists who now entertain us want to embody in stringent statutes. Let every good citizen note the way this barbaric and preposterous morality is leading.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Look for the Consumers’ League label!

Every time the clock strikes 12 the ex-Sheriffs draw $7.80 interest on the State’s money. A happy, carefree, gentlemanly life!

Watch Anderson, gents! When he finishes with Dr. Goldsborough he will launch some fresh deviltry!

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Let us alone, messieurs!

Mayor Brand Whitlock’s little book “On the Enforcement of Law in Cities” is not recommended by the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, conzertmeister of the Lord’s Day Alliance. No one has ever heard the Hon. Eugene Levering praise it. Dr. Donald R. Hooker has given it no testimonial. Therefore, don’t miss reading it. It costs but 75 cents in the book stores.–Adv.