Baltimore Evening Sun (18 July 1913): 6.

Astounding remark of the romantic Sunpaper:

We do not sympathize with the old bachelor. As a rule, he is a shabby, selfish fellow.

Shabby? Selfish? Go to, dear Sunpaper! The man who gave Baltimore the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital was a bachelor. The man who gave Baltimore the Peabody Conservatory and Library was another. The man who gave Baltimore the new Walters Art Gallery is a third. All that we have of art and science in this good old town we owe to bachelors. And all that we have of justice, public security and civilization.

The man who delivered Baltimore from the Plug Uglies and highbinders was Severn Teackle Wallis, a bachelor. The author of the present charter of Baltimore city and the best Mayor Baltimore ever had was Thomas Gordon Hayes, another bachelor—still among us and younger than ever. The creator of our present incomparable park system was Richard M. Venable, a third bachelor. Go bak far enough and you will doubtless find that the man who dug Druid Lake was a bachelor, and the man who designed Mount Vernon Place, and the man who invented chicken a la Maryland. Baltimore, from time immemorial, has been the pet and beneficiary of eminent bachelors.

At the present moment, bachelors hold the highest positions among us in all the professions. In medicine, for example, there are such men as Dr. William Welch, Dr. George Walker and Dr. John Ruhräh—a sample trio out of at least three dozen first-class bachelors. In the law there are the judges, Dawkins, J., and Bond, J., and the barristers, Bryan, Baetjer, Maloy, Straus and so on. In the public service there is McCuen, a host in himself, the father of improved lighting in Baltimore, a man worth $100,000 a year to the city treasury. Our best Governor since the war, Austin L. Crothers, was a bachelor. All of our leading clergymen, of all denominations, are bachelors or wish they were.

And on the negative side the bachlors of Baltimore are as useful and praiseworthy as on the side of positive achievement. No bachelor has ever had anything to do with the vice crusade or with any other such scandalous and inhuman sport. There is not a single bachelor in the AntiSaloon League, or in the Lord’s Day Alliance, or in the Society for the Suppression of Vice, or in any other of our noisy grand lodges of predatory archangels. No bachelor has ever argued that “September Morn” is lewd. No bachelor has ever tried to put poor folks in jail for dancing the “tango.” No bachelor in Baltimore has ever shown any sign of hating his fellow-men. No bachelor is superintendent of a Sunday-school.

Let the Sunpaper ponder these things and cease its libels. Bachelors are a sensitive, easily wounded lot, like all fine and lofty spirits. A harsh word is apt to discourage them. A mocking laugh may reduce them to despair. But on the other hand, they do not crave the gross greasing. No bachelor in office ever surrounded himself with hired __lers or had blubber-guns trained upon him. All the bachelors ask is simple justice, and darn little of that.

The Hon. Charles J. Ogle, secretary of the Direct Legislation League of Maryland, in the Evening Sunpaper:

What objection has he [the Hon. H. L. M.] to offer against [to?] the initiative and referendum?

The objection that it would put all honest and peaceable men at the mercy of an ignorant, credulous, emotional, impudent and vengeful mob. The objection that it would make for the swift and reckless trial of each new political cancer cure, of each new invention for intimidating courageous and competent public officials, of each new prescription for turning men into archangels overnight. The objection that it would put a premium upon demagoguery, roguery and extortion. The objection that it would increase the cost of bribery, the last bulwark, under universal manhood suffrage, between civilization and predatory savagery. The objection that it is approved and advocated by single taxers, suffragettes, prohibitionists, Chautauqua stars, vice crusaders, uplifters, judge-baiters, muck-rakers and all other such political Munyons and Old Mother Hubbards. The objection that it is unsound, disingenuous, dangerous and preposterous.

The estimable Sunpaper lets the cat out of the bag this morning by hinting that the present low-comedy “reform” wave in Baltimore county has been engineered by the sportive Uncle Fred Talbott and his braves in the hope of discrediting and blowing up the Biddison faction, to which the Hon. Charles L. Mattfeldt, M. D., belongs. The story has probability on its face: such affecting combinations of sly politicians and sly moralists are very common. The pious Dr. Goldsborough, for example, has been a party to more than one of them of late, both as moralist and as politician. And in the present case one can scarcely blame Uncle Fred. Time and again in the past he has seen the Lord’s Day Alliance joining hands against him with his political enemies, as represented by the moral Towson Union-News, that exquisite ornament to journalism. No wonder he now tries to turn the trick himself.

The proposal that Baltimore policemen be sent into the county to help pull these political chestnuts out of the fire is one that must needs appeal powerfully to every Baltimore taxpayer. Our police force is already very shorthanded, and Marshal Farnan has several times pointed out the difficulty of policing the town properly under the circumstances. To send men into the county would weaken the force still further. And what good would it do? None whatever. So long as the cops were actually on the job, violations of the blue laws would tend to decline, but the moment they turned tail there would be a grand revival, an uproarious renaissance.

CORRECTIONS

Readers are requested to call attention to any errors appearing in the Free Lance.

Mr. H. L. Mencken: Sir—We notice in today’s Free" Lance Column that you charge Prospect Park with allowing Sunday baseball, your charge being that “Baseball is shamelessly played at Prospect Park.” I write to inform you that not only is baseball not played there, but that no one is admitted to the park on Sundays under any pretense or for any purpose whatever. I desire you to make this correction in the Free Lance Column. W. W. Elliott, Secretary. Baltimore, July 17.