Baltimore Evening Sun (7 June 1913): 6.

Proposed design for a face for a volunteer snouter and sabbatical Peeping Tom of the plupious Lord’s Day Alliance:

illustration

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Experiment to show the “awful effects of cigarette-smoking,” from the current issue of the Baltimore Southern Mehodist:

Take a number of live flies and confine them in a glass case. Burn the substance of a cigarette in a small dish, and with breath or bellows blow the smoke into the case. The flies will die in a few minutes, so deadly poisonous does the atmosphere become.

And how long will they live if the smoke of burning hay is blown in, or of scorched coffee, or of incinerated deacon whiskers?

Cash balances in municipal depositories at the opening of business last Wednesday, as reported in today’s Municipal Journal:

National Marine Bank $316,109.03 National Bank of Commerce 198,492.04 Calvert Bank 88,377.41 Next highest bank 50,368.83

The city’s money is dished out to the banks by Commissioners of Finance. The present Commissioners are the following:

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

A band of pious brothers. One for all and all for one. Egalité! Fraternité! The Hon. Mr. Littig is Athos, the Hon. Mr. Fahnestock is Porthos and the Hon. MM. Preston and Gwinn are Aramis. But who is D’Artagnan? The Hon. Jim Thrift? Not at all. D’Artagnan is the Hon. Eugene Levering, guardian of other folks’ morals--and president of the National Bank of Commerce. The Hon. Mr. Levering is the busiest of all our local moralists. Scarcely a week goes by that he doesn’t give the tail of the devil a virtuous yank. He is hot against Pilsener and “Alma, wo wohnst du?” Sunday concerts and the deadly cigarette, cocktails and “September Morn,” the white slave traffic and the mint julep, Back River and Havre de Grace, the “turkey trot” and Gaby des Lys, the cabaret and draw poker, opium and “coke,” chewing tobacco and the highball, snuff and the betel nut. But no one has ever heard the hon. gent. say a word against caffeine, and no one has ever heard him say a word against the old-fashioned and brotherly doings in the City Hall.

By insisting that the slum babies had better die than be saved by tainted money, the Hon. Young Cochran scores one on Dr. Donald P. Hooker, whose late attack upon the Hon. Eugene O’Dunne thus pales into puerility. Which suggests the plan of offering a silver-gilt halo to that local moralist who achieves the greatest feat of pious derringdo each year. We have in Baltimore a number of very eminent performers, and some of them show a lot of originality. If an annual prize were hung up it would inspire them to further and perhaps unparalleled effort. Such a professor as Young Cochran, for example, is almost a genius, and with a little encouragement he might put over something so astonishing that the attention of the whole world would be attracted to Baltimore. And the chance to pull down an 18-carat halo should also improve the form of Dr. Hooker, Old Doc Davis, the Hon. William H. Anderson, the Hon. Sunday-School Field, the Hon. McCay McCoy and the Hon. Eugene Levering. Who will be the first to subscribe?

From an editorial on the Penitentiary in the learned Evening News:

A year ago not one item of the day’s routine but was punitive in its intention and effect.

A shining example of that exuberant overstatement which is one of the most characteristic symptoms of moral inflammation. Was there anything “punitive” in the system which allowed the prisoners to earn $25,000 a year for themselves? Was there anything “punitive” about the rule allowing convicts to decorate and furnish their cells as they chose, and to array themselves in lingerie designed and embroidered to their liking, and to anoint themselves with musk and frankincense to their taste? These last forms of “punishment” were actually denounced by the O’Dunne Commission as luxurious, Persian and corrupting! (Page 69.) Let the estimable News not forget the testimony of its own witnesses. Even that cheerful and accomplished liar, the Hon. Charles S. Henry, was forced to admit that the Hon. John F. Weyler sometimes treated him well.

It is interesting to note, by the way, how quickly the common sense of the people of Maryland reacted against the ludicrous extravagance of the O’Dunne report. According to the advance notices, it was going to knock out the contract system, blow up the Penitentiary Board, send Warden Leonard down for the count and bring the Terrible Weyler before the bar of the Criminal Court. But nothing of the sort, of course, has actually happened. The contract system is still in full blast, the Penitentiary Board is still on the job, Warden Leonard has been formally re-elected--and all of the “evidence” against the Terrible Weyler has gone to pieces. Sic semper bunk!

Typhoid rate per 1,000 of men in the regular army, as reported by the War Department:

1906.........................5.66 1910.......................2.32 1907.........................3.35 1911....................... .80 1908.........................2.94 1912....................... .18 1909.........................3.03

Note the dramatic drop in 1911 and the still more remarkable drop in 1912. In 1911 the use of anti-typhoid vaccine was introduced in the army, and in 1912 it was made compulsory. The effect of that use has been to reduce typhoid, once the worst plague of the soldier, both in war and in peace, to the triviality of measles. During the last 10 months of 1912 there were but 12 cases of typhoid in the whole army, and but two deaths. Neither of the men who died had been vaccinated. One was a recent recruit and the other was an officer who had been away from quarters when the inoculations were made.