Baltimore Evening Sun (8 May 1913): 6.

A can of sardines for the name and address of any Baltimorean, not obviously insane, who believes that Paving Bob will not come back.

Let no one take too seriously the current attack upon the private morals of the Hon. Garratt O’Hara, chairman and chief tear-squeezer of the Illinois Vice Commission. The charge that he “took an unmarried Springfield woman to Chicago and registered with her at the Hotel Sherman as ‘L. D. Duncan and wife’ is highly improbable on its face, for the Hon. Mr. O’Hara is a very well-known man in Chicago and the Sherman is a reputable hotel. Moreover, such a charge, even if it were established, would certainly not dispose of the hon. gent’s campaign against prostitution. Such campaigns are to be judged, not by the personal virtue of their leaders, but by their essential reasonableness. It is perfectly proper for a drunkard to bear testimony against alcohol, and the prohibitionits are so well aware of it that drunkards are their darlings.

Gentlemen prominent in the vice crusade are frequently attacked as the Hon. Mr. O’Hara has been attacked, sometimes openly, but more often by secret report and innuendo. To blast them thus, indeed, is the first thought of their more ignorant and vicious opponents. But it is not often that they are caught with the goods, and even when they are, their cause suffers no damage in the sight of reasonable men. That cause is weak, not because an occasional crusader is guilty of loose living, but because the great majority of crusaders are guilty of loose thinking. Supposing all of them to be immoral, their crusade might still be sound. And admitting all of them to be innocent, their crusade is still a compound of false assumptions and silly conclusions, of quackish diagnosis and perunish treatment.

As for the Hon. Mr. O’Hara, my private belief, often expressed in this place, is that he is far more the crafty politician than the honest reformer. An intelligent and clever man, with extensive newspaper experience in Chicago, he must know very well that the policeman’s club will never stamp out prostitution, and that the vice crusade is chiefly managed by fanatics and press agents. But he must also see the political advantage of joining so vociferous a jehad, just as many Maryland politicians have seen the advantage of joining the Anti-Saloon League, and so he seizes a banner and a spear and bellows “Hallelujah!” In point of fact, his participation has already worked to his political advantage. It has made him a national figure. It has paved his way to future honors and emoluments.

Such chicanery deserves to be opposed, and it has been opposed. The Hon. Mr. O’Hara’s sophistries about a minimum wage have been riddled by better men, and his political aims have been well ventilated. But it is to be regretted that he has been attacked in the present unfair and dishonorable fashion. There is no man in public life who does not lie open to such an accusation, and there are very few men who could dispose of it easily. It puts the accused at a hopeless disadvantage, and that disadvantage is no less if he is innocent than if he is guilty. As for the Hon. Mr. O’Hara, there is no evidence whatever that he is guilty, and what is more, no probability.

Carcasses in the custody of the State Anatomy Board:

The super-Mahon’s hand-picked Charter Commission. The League for Medical Freedom, Maryland Branch.

How prohibition works in Portland, Maine, as described by the Lynn (Mass.) News of May 2:

There are any number of tenement houses, shops and hotels in Portland which are fairly honeycombed with so-called liquor “hides.” * * * Practically every “hide” * * * was made by one man, and that man is now dead. * * * He built hundreds and hundreds of these “hides,” and when he passed away * * * he left a comfortable fortune, which he had accumulated by selling his wonderful mechanical abilities to those who were engaged in a warfare upon the prohibition laws. These hides were constructed in cellars and attics, in between ceilings, in blind partitions, in outhouses, even in gardens and under doorsteps. * * * This man had one price for his liquor “hides,” big or little. It was $50 down and $5 a week thereafter from the rumseller until the “hide” was found. * * * Not long ago a building was torn down in the centre of the city which had been used for years for the sale of liquor, and as the partitions were ripped away, one after another of these places of concealment was found.

Don’t miss the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough’s treatise on the paving scandal in this week’s Municipal Journal.--Adv.

The city of Los Angeles, which the vice crusaders “cleaned up” several years ago and have since pointed to with unction as a chemically pure municipality, is now all torn up by the discovery of secret deviltries. Says the San Francisco Town Talk:

From all accounts, the police of Los Angeles, hardened as they are, received a big shock when they uncovered the cesspool of senile lubricity and * * * at “The Jonquil.” But why should they have been shocked? * * * Vice conditions have become intolerable since the tenderloin was lidded and its habitues scattered throughout the city.

To which I add the following personal testimony from a newspaper man of 10 years’ experience in Los Angeles:

The morality of the town is a joke. It is really little more than a cesspool with some perfume sprinkled on top. And these conditions have only growm up since the vice crusaders started their woman hunt. I knew about “The Jonquil” some time ago. * * * There is more to come from Los Angeles.

Forward the vice crusade! Let Baltimore taste these sweet fruits of malignant morality!

Unless my spies lie, the Honorary Pallbearers are fighting for space in the Hot Towel’s proposed Domesday Book of Prominent Baltimoreans. The entrance is $100 for a whole page and $50 for a half page, and the subscriber is assured a humane and even soothing write-up. If he has the gift, he may even write it himself. Failing the gift, the Towel will provide a grammarian for the job. The aim of the book, I hear, is to pay a just tribute to all those Baltimoreans who are genuine live wires--and have $100 handy. The motive of the Towel, as in the case of its ardent greasing of Archangel Harry, is wholly altruistic. It takes the money under protest.

Up to midnight last night Col. Jacobus Hook had given away 27,860 cigars since January 1, not to mention 17,250 stogies and 23 Preston buttons. This leaves Gen. James Young crushed beneath the starting pole.--Adv.

The boomers! The boomers! They’re at it still, b’gosh! Each day they sell a factory site and tap a keg of bosh!