Baltimore Evening Sun (1 May 1913): 6.

From the report of the assiduous and over-taxed Hot Towel:

It was learned from friends of Mr. Padgett [the super-Mahon? S. S. Field?] that should the Board of Awards approve the recommendation of the Paving Commission, he will instruct his attorneys to enter suit against the city and fight [for?] his rights in the courts.

Bob knows the courts. He has been in them, as ex-sheriff, since 1909--and he is still hanging on to the taxpayers’ money. The courts have been very kind to him. He trusts and reveres them. He has reason to.

A CONFESSION OF FAITH.

The political contractor (i. e., Padgett) is a much-maligned man. He does more for the public than all the college professors (i. e., Finneys) and reformers (i. e., decent newspapers) taken together.--The super-Mahon, in Philadelphia, April 17.

Ingenuous passage from the Hot Towel’s report of yesterday’s hearing of the charges against Padgett, (i. e., against the super-Mahon):

Mr. Padgett was telling of the efforts he had made to obtain the appointment of Mr. Houston, and said that he had gone to see John J. Mahon, loader of the Democratic city organization, about the matter. “I didn’t go to the Mayor,” said Mr. Padgett, “but went to see Mr. Mahon.” “You did come to see me,” broke in the Mayor, his voice manifesting some anger. Mr. Padgett remained silent.

In other words, the man chiefly responsible for seeing that Padgett kept to his contract was appointed by the super-Mahon on Padgett’s nomination. The super-Mahon not only admits it; he even insists upon it. It inflames him to “some anger” to hear it denied. He wants all the credit for it. He is afraid that the Hon. Mr. Mahon will try to hog it, and that Padgett will aid in the crime.

This same super-Mahon is now sitting as trial judge over Padgett, and shedding large, salty tears over the sins of Padgett. After wooing and deferring to Padgett for four years, after acting as Padgett’s attorney in the open and undercover, after heaping malignant and obscene objurgations upon Padgett’s critics, after defending Padgettism upon a thousand stumps, after filling the City Engineer’s department with Padgett’s nominees and sycophants–after all this, the super-Mahon now has the effrontery to sit as a judge in Padgett’s case!

Certainly, here is a fit theme for the suave, soapy pen of the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, that master of style. Let him fill a page in the Municipal Journal with a clear explanation of the whole odorous business. Let me devote another page to the part played by the Hon. McCay McCoy, that faithful public official, that virtuoso of self-respect, that lovely Sunday-school superintendent. And let him devote another page to the role of the Hon. S. S. Field, that barrister on both sides, that double-barreled reformer. Good Aristides’ chance has come at last. Let him seize it and he will make the Municipal Journal immortal.

From a letter by the Hon. N. C. Williams, anti-vivisectionist, in today’s Letter Column:

The British Royal Commission on Vivisection * * * was distinctly pro-vivisectional; a report from a committee of vivisectors and physicians was foreordained to absolve the practice; it was like selecting a committee of thieves to investigate burglary.

A typical specimen of anti-vivisectionist misrepresentation. The commission, as appointed on September 17, 1906, was actually composed of the following gentlemen:

Viscount Selby. Lieut.-Col. A. R. M. Lockwood. Sir William S. Church, M. D. Sir William J. Collins, M. D. Sir John McFadyean. The Hon. M. D. Chalmers. The Hon. A. J. Ram. Dr. W. H. Gaskell. The Hon. James Tomkinson. Dr. George Wilson.

In other words, but four of its ten members were physicians. Two of the lay members, Viscount Selby and the Hon. Mr. Tomkinson, died before the sittings ended, leaving four lay members and four medical members. Three of these lay members signed the majority report without reserve. Of the four medical members, but two signed without reserve. Was this a packed verdict by “a committee of vivisectors and physicians”? Of course it was not.

As matter offact, the most violent of the two minority reports was that signed by Dr. George Wilson, who was appointed to the commission because of his well-known opposition to vivisection. The very aim of the commission, indeed, was to give all sides a hearing--and Wilson took good care that the anti-vivisectionist side got its ample chance. In the very first paragraph of his minority report he confesses “frankly” that the questions he put to all the medical witnesses were “prompted by a skeptical attitude of mind.” (Page 74.) And as a further revelation of his predisposition he argues donkeyishly that the hydrophobia vaccine, the diphtheria antitoxin and the antitetanus serum are all bogus, valueless and dangerous. (Pages 115, 119 and 126.)

In a word, Wilson was, and is, a wholly typical anti-vivisectionist. Confronted by the plain fact that experiment upon animals has produced a number of remedial agents of great value to man, he disposes of it by denying that value. Exactly the same course is pursued by the anti-vivisectionists of the United States. Two-thirds of their literature is given up, not to pleading for animals, but to maintaining that such men as Dr. Flexner, Dr. Welch and Dr. Osler are ignoramuses and scoundrels. Their campaign is one of abuse and misrepresentiation. As I have shown time and again, they are constantly “editing” the facts to fit their preposterous and imbecile accusations. No decent regard for the truth is in them.

So far as my personal participation in this discussion is concerned, I challenge any anti-vivisectionist to show that I have ever defended wanton cruelty to animals or opposed the legal regulation of vivisection. On the contrary, I have specifically advocated such regulation. But to argue that wanton cruelty is evil is one thing, and to argue that medical research is useless is quite another thing. This last is what the anti-vivisectionists are always doing. And the reason thereof lies in the plain fact that the anti-vivisection cause, at least in this country, is largely in the hands of Christian Scientists, Emmanual Movers, osteopaths, New Thoughters and other such quacks--i.e., in the hands of persons who have something definite to gain by attacking and hobbling scientific medicine. This explains their holy ardor for the poor guinea pig, and their hoy terror of the diphtheria antitoxins. And this explains, too, why there are far more silly old women among their followers than intelligent and healthy men.