Baltimore Evening Sun (12 August 1913): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

The Hon. Dan Loden, as usual, has no apologies to make. He was never in favor of Sulzer.—Adv.

Contributions to a dictionary of the New Thought in government:

A DAILY THOUGHT. No sensible man dare deny the fact that good government is founded upon good morals.— The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough.

The Hon. Sunday-School Field. LL. D., in the Municipal Journal of July 4 last:

The [Evening] Sun [has] publish[ed] in the Free Lance column falsehoods about the impurity of our water supply and exaggerations in regard to the prevalence of typhoid fever in our city.

From the report of the Bureau of Sanitary Engineering of the State Department of Health, page 47, just out:

While the total death rate in Maryland is about the same as in other Eastern States, notably Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, the typhoid fever mortality in Maryland is from two to four times as great. * * * It is a fact that Maryland has had almost, if not quite, the highest mortality from typhoid fever in the whole registration area, ever since 1906, the year that the State became a portion of that area. * * * It is conceded that the greatest factor in the spread of typhoid fever is an impure water supply.

Headline from the official Hot Towel of this morning:

ANOTHER TYPHOID WARNING

Water Engineer Insists That All Water Be Boiled.

From the article under the said headline:

The large number of typhoid cases in Baltimore at the present time is due to a large extent to the present condition of the water supply is the opinion of Water Engineer Whitman. * * * Mr. Whitman said he could not emphasize the warning too strongly sent out to the people of Baltimore by Health Commissioner Gorter that all city water be boiled.

Come, dear Sam, make a clean breast of it! Stand up in open Sunday-school and confess that you were wrong! Purge yourself of sin! Consider the example you set to those innocent little children! Don’t be an Anderson!

Tart note from a correspondent characteristically anonymous:

The gushings of the Free Lance are often amusing to those who are not serious-minded, but at times distressing to intelligent readers. I am afraid he does not always stick strictly to the facts. In The Evening Sun of Friday last he speaks of “how prohibition works in Maine” and assures the Hon. William H. Anderson that “these facts do not come from a liquor dealer,” etc., but from the Hon. William C. Smith, “formerly State’s Attorney for Baltimore City.” Now, as a matter of fact, Baltimore city never had a State’s Attorney by that name.

Literally true; in purport and implication, wholly false. The Hon. William Cannan Smith, LL. B., was Deputy State’s Attorney for Baltimore City from 1896 onward, during the term of the Hon. Henry Duffy, now a judge of the Supreme Court of Baltimore City. He gave good and faithful service throughout Judge Duffy’s memorably efficient administration, and was frequently in charge of the office during his chief’s absence. He is today a lawyer in excellent standing, and a member of Brown Memorial Presbyterian church. His testimony is to be taken as that of a trained observer and a reputable man. It is borne out by the overwhelming testimony of all other reputable men.

From the day book of a militant moralist:

What sane man is genuinely surprised by the exposure and downfall of the Hon. William Sulzer? How many of the great political perunists are beyond suspicion? How many of the bellowing friends of the plain people are undoubtedly honest men? We are beginning to pay the price, in this quack-ridden land, of our political credulity and hysteria. We are beginning to learn at last—let us hope not too late!—that the New Thought in government is just as false, just as fraudulent and just as dangerous as the New Thought in medicine. Its one visible achievement to date has been to fill our public offices with quacks and mountebanks.