Baltimore Evening Sun (28 May 1913): 6.

Police court item in the Sunpaper of this morning:

On the charge of performing a criminal operation * * * Mrs. Bess Fowler, of 1207 East Monument street, was arrested yesterday afternoon. * * *

Advertisement in the “Personal” column of the Hot Towel this morning:

DR. AND MRS. FOWLER ARE LOCATED AT 1207 MONUMENT ST. my22-dimp

THE BLUE LAWS. The Sunday laws which some are trying to have enforced in this city of Baltimore seem to me to be unnecessary and destructive of our personal freedom. The proper observance of the Lord’s Day appeals to me very forcibly. All avoidable distractions which seriously interfere with heavenly thoughts on that day must be eliminated. * * * But it is not an essentially evil thing or act to make purchases or amuse oneself on Sunday that a law should exist to prevent me. It is not of absolute necessity that the city should be like a graveyard on Sunday.–The Rev. C. F. Thomas.

The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough in the course of a long article against the improvement associations in the Municipal Journal:

There are some associations in Baltimore that will fly into print with an apparent indorsement of every impossible idea that anybody will suggest.

Nevertheless, there is no record of an association “flying into print” with an indorsement of the idea that the Hon. McCay McCoy’s splitting of contracts to help his friends is an argument for his coutinuance at the public trough.

List of eminent moralists who protested to the City Council againt an ordinance allowinig “bands of music to parade with charitable or religious bodies on Sundays”:

The Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, shamash of the Lord’s Day Alliance. The Rev. Kenneth G. Murray, chief statistician of the vice crusade. The Rev. M. C. Cockrell. The Hon. Joshua Levering. The Hon. Daniel Hopper. The Hon. Francis A. White, president of the Y. M. C. A.

Pious, worthy men. More pious and worthy, indeed, than David, son of Jesse. For did not David, in the One Hundred and Fiftieth Psalm, write these disorderly, these licentious, these wholly unbaltimoral words:

Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet: praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him with the timbrel and dance: praise Him with stringe instruments and organs. Praise Him upon the loud cymbals: praise Him upom the high sounding cymbals. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

The trouble with David, of course, was that he thought of the worship of God as a joyous business. His devotions made him happy, ecstatic, even gay. When he went to the tabernacle he made “a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation” and took a band of music with him. He was not privy to the great discovery of modern puritanism: that the way to approach the Most High is silently, sourly and with the soft sneak of a pussy-cat; that the Lord esteems an honorary pallbearer more than He esteems a wedding guest.

List of slain in the great Battle of Sunday-School Superintendents, revised to date:

The Hon. Paving Bob Padgett. The Rev. Dr. John Roacg Straton.

List of gay and unwounded survivors of the carnage:

The Hon. Sunday-School Field, LL. D. The Hon. McCay McCoy. The Hon. Dashing Harry, D. D.

LAUGH, SUCKERS, LAUGH! A farce in one act. Dramatis Personæ--The Hon. the super-Mahon; a reporter. Scene--The House of Mirth.

The Reporter–Mr. Mayor, it is rumored throughout the City Hall that Mr. McCay has resigned. Is the report correct? The super-Mahon--No, sir. The Reporter--Has Mr. McCay been asked to resign? The super-Mahon--No, sir. The Reporter--Will he be asked to resign? The super-Mahon--No, sir.

But what will the Hon. William H. Anderson say when the Hon. Frank Kelly comes out for Isaac?

If you have not read Brand Whitlock’s little book, “On the Enforcement of Law in Cities,” now is the time to get it and read it. Half a dozen different posses of moralists are trying to turn Baltimore into the New Jerusalem with the policeman’s club. Our legislators are besieged by quacks with sure cures. One crowd proposes to knock out the Rum Demon with one blow; another has a turtle serum for the social evil; yet another demands a ukase forbidding free citizens to amuse themselves as they please on Sunday. And so on and so on. The very heavens rain Peruna. And every man who objects is in ignoramus and a scoundrel, a friend to the dive and a protector of prostitutes, a heretic and an atheist.

It is the aim of Mayor Whitlock in his little book to answer that bosh. What he tries to show is why such beautiful schemes are all moonshine. And he shows it in a way that will stick in your memory, and help you to a sound judgment of militant puritanism hereafter. His book is not large. It has but 95 pages and they are small ones. You can read it comfortably in half an hour. It sells for 75 cents in the book stores. You won’t regret the money. Order half a dozen copies and give them to your friends. In particular, give them to those friends who are disposed to believe that prohibition really prohibits, that vice crusades stamp out vice, that the so-called Lord’s Day Alliance is engaged in a worthy and holy work. Give it to the wabblers.

This Mayor Whitlock, of course, does not qualify as a moral “expert.” He is never heard at rural Chautauquas, between Judge Ben Lindsey and the Swiss bell-ringers. He is not a star witness before vice commissions. He offers no salacious testimony about the things that go on in brothels. He is not a peddler of books on “sex hygiene” and such-like pious naughtiness. He has nothing to sell and he has made no vow to get anybody into jail. But he has years of practical experience as a public official in an American city behind him; he is a man who has given the best that is in him to the cause of good government–and he knows how to write. Read him and ponder him. Ask yourself whether he is a better or a worse witness than the prima-donna preachers and self-anointed archangels.