Baltimore Evening Sun (12 May 1913): 6.

City money on deposit in various banks, from a report filed with the Mayor on May 7 and printed in the Municipal Journal of Saturday:

National Marine Bank $369,856.80 National Bank of Commerce 191,306.00 Calvert Bank 124,125.36 Next highest bank 70,000.00

The Commissioners of Finance of Baltimore city:

The Hon. John M. Littig, president of the National Marine Bank. The Hon. James H. Preston, vice-president of the Calvert Bank. The Hon. James V. Thrift. The Hon. Riettard Gwinn, vice-president of the Calvert Bank. The Hon. Harry Fahnestock, director of the National Bank of Commerce.

THE WOMAN HUNT. ---- Philadelphia is attempting to abolish vice by stationing policemen in front of disorderly houses to warn visitors not to enter, under penalty of arrest. When “the panic-stricken inmates packed their belongings and hurried away they were followed by plainclothes man and their stopping places noted.” This would bw the simplest solution of the vice problem if it solved anything. Any city could employ its police force to close every house of ill-repute at an hour’s notice. But what will be accomplished by driving the inmates into the streets? The Philadelphia plan is not new. It has been tried in New York with results which long ago convinced sincere reformers of the folly of diffusing local into general vice and calling it a “cure.”--The New York World.

From the blast against woman suffrage issued yesterday by Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, president of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage:

It is a pathological fact that women, as a sex, must respect and revere the dlvine mission of their sex, which is motherhood.

What is the precise meaning of this cryptic sentence? Does Mrs. Dodge mean to say that the “divine mission” of woman is “pathological”? If not, what does she mean? In a word, does this sentence convey an intelligible idea, or is it merely a sonorous combination of vague terms? If any local anti can furnish a gloss of it, I shall be very glad to print that gloss.

According to the current gossip in the kaifs, the biography of the Hon. Dashing Harry in the Hot Towel’s Domesday Book will be a masterpiece of anointing. The main body of it, I hear, is being written by the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, whose voluptuous English is the delight of all cognoscenti. He will have the aid of the Hon. Bob Lee, the Hon. Sunday-School Field and the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld. The Hon. Mr. Harry will be a dead-head passenger. That is to say, the Towel will not stick him up for the usual $100. But the taxpayers will foot the bill: the Towel will take it out in city advertising.

The joys of life under prohibition, as described by the Waterville (Maine) Sentinel of May 6:

Deputy Sheriff Charles H. Farrington has come across a new one. It might be called the latest concoction in the form of a drink, only it came into the city in powder form, and the consignee prepares the drink. * * * The label said it would make Medford rum. Just what effect it has on a person remains to be seen. No doubt it will be popular on account of its convenience.

Suggestions to the English militant suffragettes:

Sneak into Buckingham Palace with the beer man, anoint the grand staircase with Castile soap--and then watch H. B. M. loop the loop. Kidnap Mr. Asquith, squeeze him into a Salvation Army bass drum, cutting off his legs, if necessary, and then roll him down Primrose Hill.

From the estimable Baltimore Southern Methodist of May 1:

Law can never be the pioneer in the matter of public morals. It can only make effective the expressed will of the people.

This is precisely the objection to the lamentable crusade of the Lord’s Day Alliance against the harmlees recreations of poor folk. On fair Sundays there are 20,000 Baltimoreans at Back and Middle Rivers, and fully 99 per cent. of them are in favor of a reasonable relaxation of the Blue Laws. Why should these persons be reviled and browbeaten by professional snorters 10 miles away? Why should the law try to make them do something that they don’t want to do? Why should they be deprived of the common right to regulate their own private conduct?

Pearls of sagacity from an article by the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, psychic masseur to the super-Mahon, in the current issue of the Municipal Journal:

Public opinioin is an easy thing to discuss theoretically. There must be such a thing as true public opinion. What the false prophet wants is to fool the people. There is a big measure of chicanery mixed up with the fake types of public opinion. Real public opinion is essentially lofty. The crest of a storm-tossed wave is not the point by which to measure the level of the ocean.

The Rev. Dr. S. Rainsford, of New York, on vice crusades:

Such organizations have their birth in hours excitement and popular passion. * * * Their direction passes into the hands of unbalanced reformers, good in their intentions, no doubt, but above all things bent on forcing forward their own specially desired reforms, by any means that seem to them allowable. Unbalanced men they were and are and must be. They know little of the history of sociology. They have seldom given serious study to the immensely difficult problem, for the solving of which they are sure they carry a cure-all in their pockets.

This recalls my experience with two very eminent vice crusaders. I asked both of them what they thought of certain ideas of Havelock Ellis, undoubtedly the greatest living authority upon prostitution. One of them dismissed him lightly as a “visionary” and the other said: “Some day I’ll have to read him.”

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week prints an excellent daguerreotype of the Hon. William Michael Dunn. J., of the Orphans’ Court. In addition, it accuses Dr. Goldsborough of trying to get control of the Penitentiary in order to put in new job-holders, prophesies that John Walter will consent to the confirmation of the Hon. Sherlock Swann, cracks the brewers over the knuckles for washing their dirty linen in public, discusses at great length the treaty-making power of Congress, and describes the exact manner of death by electric shock. An informing issue of an always intelligent gazette.--Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Weep with the slandered Sunday-school superintendents! Watch Padgett come back!