Baltimore Evening Sun (2 June 1913): 6.

Death rates from typhoid in the American cities of more than 500,000 population, as reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association for May 31:

Deaths from Typhoid per 100,000 Population.

Average, 1906- 1912 1911 1910 Cleveland 5.9 14.7 16.5 Chicago 7.5 10.8 15.5 Boston 8.1 9.3 16.0 New York 9.8 11.1 13.8 St. Louis 10.4 15.4 16.1 Philadelphia 12.5 14.1 42.1 Pittsburgh 12.7 25.8 74.3 Baltimore 23.9 27.2 34.6

“Baltimore,” says the Journal, “stands practically alone in this group, with a typhoid rate nearly twice as high as that of any other city.” What is worse, this relative eminence is of very recent growth, for during the period 1906-1910 there were two cities with higher typhoid rates, and in 1911 one of them maintained a rate almost as high. But both of these cities—Philadelphia and Pittsburgh—have now dropped for below Baltimore.

And why? The Journal, it appears, is disposed to give the credit to the installation of filtration plants. Both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have put in plants of late—with the results strikingly visible in the table. In Pittsburgh about one-fifth of the city is still using unfiltered water, and the high typhoid rate in that part keeps the general rate up to 12.7. In the sections supplied with filtered water the rate in 1912 was but 5.9.

Plans for the installation of a filtration plant in Baltimore have been under way for a long time, but it will be several years, at least, before the plant is ready for operation, and even then it will filter only the Gunpowder supply. Those parts of Baltimore getting water from the Jones’ falls valley will still get water that is unfiltered and filthy—and how filthy it sometimes is the reports of Dr. W. R. Stokes, the city bacteriologist, plainly show. On February 18, 1911, he was quoted in The Evening Sun as saying:

Every glass of water drawn from a spigot in Baltimore contains the colon bacillus, and the presence of the colon bacillus, an inhabitant of the human intestines, indicates the presence of the typhoid bacillus and the germs of other diseases, such, for instance, as infant diarrhea.

Three days before this Dr. William H. Welch had given The Evening Sun an interview in which, among other things, he said:

The city authorities should settle all small details and begin the purification of the water supply at once. If they do not do this, Baltintore will * * * get into the class of typhoid cities— which it is very close now—and people will hesitate to come here. It is a matter which directly concerns the city’s prosperity.

Dr. Welch’s prophecy has since come true. Baltimore has not only got “into the class of typhoid cities,” but it is now very near the head of that class. Even such notoriously unhealthful towns as New Orleans, Washington, Fall River, Mass., and Paterson, N. J., have lower typhoid rates. Among all the American cities of more than 200,000 population—28 in all—only Milwaukee has more of the disease, and here a campaign to remedy conditions is under way.

Stearns and Freeman, the engineers employed three or four years ago to look into the question of Baltimore’s water supply, recommended the construction of a slow sand filter, such as has been installed in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but the Water Board, on June 24, 1912, decided in favor of a mechanical filter. This action was taken at the advice of George W. Fuller, another expert. The mechanical filter, it was estimated, would cost $1,633,000, and the cost of upkeep would be $193,450 a year. It was the understanding of the public that work was to be begun almost immediately, but so far, unless I am misinformed, nothing has been done.

Early in the present year The Evening Sun reported that Mayor Preston and other members of the Board of Estimates were against the filtration plan on the score of its expense, and favored increasing the height of the Loch Raven dam instead. On March 7 the Water Board protested against this change of front, and after considerable discussion, the original plan was once more formally adopted. On April 2 specifications for a plant at Lake Montebello were approved by the Board of Awards and bids were asked for. On April 30 all the bids—there were three—were rejected on the ground that they were too high, and new ones were asked for. There, so far as I can make out, the matter now rests.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week presents an elegant tintype of the Hon. James M. Ambler, J., and another of the Hon. Essad Pasha, late King of Albania. In its literary section it beats up the Hon. William Luke Marbury for interfering in the Cumberland postmastership fight, gently snickers at Colonel Roosevelt for his timidity in the face of the Rum Demon, attacks the Underwood tariff bill, argues that the suffrage cause is going down hill, announces that the Russian police are the most corrupt in the world, and prints a short story by Miss Selina Lillian Higgins. A varied and entertaining number of a weekly paper which always has something interesting to say.—Adv.

When it comes to a question of exegesis, I must defer to the Rev. Dr. Yellott, who takes me to task in today’s Letter Column, for he is a theologian and I am not. But I respectfully insist that he has pointed out no genuine difference between the Pharisees of old and the militant moralists of our own unhappy day. The vice crusaders, true enough, profess to maintain a sort of stockade or sanctuary for penitents, but how do they propose to fill it? By dissuading and converting the erring? Or by driving and punishing the erring? Let Dr. Yellott give the answer himself. Is the vice crusade, as we know it in practice, a missionary enterprise, or is it a military enterprise? Do its chief exponents adopt the methods of Christ, or the methods of Torquemada, Sam Jones, Mohammed and Jonathan Edwards?

I sincerely hope that I am not rogue enough, even supposing me to be fool enough, to oppose any man who labors intelligently to make mankind better. But does vice crusading make mankind better? Does prohibition? Does the intolerant and disingenuous campaign of the Lord’s Day Alliance, with its strong flavor of sectarian hatred? What good have such holy wars ever accomplished, here or anywhere? How many sinners have ever been saved by such efforts to make the “outside of the cup and of the platter” clean, while “extortion and excess” remain within? Who will produce a single woman actually rescued by vice crusaders? Or a single sinner brought to grace by Blue Laws?