Baltimore Evening Sun (21 May 1913): 6.

Suggestive item from a current French book catalogue:

Husson, C. Le café, la piere et la tables. Paris 1879. Avec figs.

Note the order of the drugs. Respectfully referred, etc., to the Hon. etc., etc.

GOVERNMENT BY OLD MAIDS.

The fundamental objection to the various legislative proposals to regulate animal experimentation by a system of licenses * * * is that the enactment of such statutes would take the control of a matter of the highest importance to human welfare, and one requiring special knowledge and training and skill, out of the hands of the experts, who possess these qualifications, and would place it in charge of those who have not the requisite technical knowledge and experience. Not those who know, but those who do not know, would be given a discretion which might prove disastrous to the future of scientific medicine. This is a monstrous wrong principle to embody in legislation. Science has waged a long warfare through the centuries for freedom of investigation. The last of its battles is being waged today for freedom of experimental research.--Dr. William H. Welch.

The Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton in The Evening Sun yesterday:

The moral sewage of the entire world is turned daily through the columns of the newspapers to bw read by the youth of both sexes.

A common charge, but is it quite true? How much “moral sewage” appears in the newspapers of Baltimore during the average week? Certainly, not more than two or three barrels. Perhaps not more than a small keg. A few weeks ago, expecting to have to meet this charge in the course of a discussion of newspapers, I examined The Sun with great care. That day it printed 80 columns of news, and yet but one and one-half columns referred to crime, even indirectly. To be precise, there were just seven news items on the subject--and five of them described the punishment of criminals.

The other newspapers of Baltimore, I believe, are just as clean. And so are the papers of most other cities. Washington, for example, hasn’t a single yellow journal, and never has had. All of the Philadelphia papers are decent. So are all the papers of Richmond. Boston’s single yellow journal is not much read. In Chicago all save the Hearst papers are of the very highest standard. Even in New York the decent papers outnumber the yellows by three to one.

No; this familiar charge is not- well supported by the facts. The rule in The Sun office, and in every other newspaper office in Baltimore, is to keep down news of crime as much as possible. It is impossible to bar it entirely, for crime often makes news of the first importance, and if it were not printed it would certainly be gossiped. But the effort is always to avoid any violation of decency, and that effort, speaking generally, is successful.

The Maryland Suffrage News, returning to the topic of vice, announces with great satisfaction that the women voters of California were all for the red-light bill signed by Gov. Hiram W. Johnson on April 7. According to the News this benign law is “not essentially different from the law now in effect in Iowa.” Here is how the Iowa act works in practice, as reported by the United States Army surgeon at Fort Des Moines:

Street walkers are quite numerous. * * * There are small, cheap hotels that * * * derive their chief revenue as assignation houses. * * * I believe that this system results in many girls practicing clandestine prostitution unknown to their parents or friends. They are believed by other girls to be respectable until the latter find themselves gradually persuaded and enticed into the same practices. * * * My own opinion is that the law has not made Des Moines a whit more moral than any other city, but it has increased clandestine prostitution, spread the leaven broadcast, increased the incidence of disease, and is a promoter of seduction.

This Iowa law is the darling of all the vice crusaders, and they are constantly pointing to its rigors with pride. It provides all sorts of extravagant penalties for violations. Let us have it in Maryland, by all means.

Standing of the clubs in the National Tuberculosis League for the week ended April 26:

New York...........................505 Baltimore........................322 Philadelphia.......................400 Cleveland.........................285 Chicago..............................374 Boston..............................283 St. Louis.............................349 Pittsburgh.........................262

How prohibition works in moral Maine, as reported by the Bath Times:

The lid is on this city hard and fast. Yesterday there was more or less drunkenness. During a tour along the waterfront late yesterday afternoon it was seen that some of the drunkenness was caused by the use of Jamaica ginger, so there was quite an assortment of empty bottles found. It is reported that “split,” a combination of alcohol, is coming into favor again.

Save for an interval of two years, Maine has had prohibition since 1851, and for 29 years it has been embodied in the State Constitution. Many stringent enforcement laws have been passed, and there have been frequent campaigns of repression, led by professional ear-bruisers and hysterical women. And yet, according to the Anti-Saloon League Year Book for 1913 (page 111):

Like the laws prohibiting gambling, the social evil and other like vices and crimes, the prohibitory liquor laws of Maine from the first have been more or less nullified, especially in the larger centres.

Here is a frank confession from the highest possible authority. And yet the Anti-Saloon League talks of enforcing prohibition in Baltimore, which is just ten times as large as Maine’s largest city!

From a circular “to the girls of Baltimore,” issued by the United Women of Maryland, Second Division, and signed by Miss Eliza Ridgley, president.

This summer there will be worse conditions than usual in the outlying parts of the city and chinfly in the amusement resorts. Many wicked men and women, driven out of the houses they have lodged in, are gathering outside the city limits. and are planning to pick up young girls on the cars to and from the resorts and at the resorts themselves, for the sake of forcing them by tricks and schemes into an evil life.

More evidence of the benign fruits and usufructs of the Vice Crusade!

A can of caviare to the estimable Lord’s Day Alliance for any evidence tending to show that Sunday concerts at the Lyric would promote immorality in Baltimore.–Adv.