Baltimore Evening Sun (22 August 1913): 6.

The more the Hon. William H. Anderson thinks it over, the more he regrets that he ever announced the murder of the Hon. Blair Lee. It was easy enough to stick up the bill, but how about giving the show?

A DAILY THOUGHT. Truth ever should be our object, and the detection of wilful error or fraud is, to me, superior to fox-hunting.–Lord Dundonald.

No matter how you stand on the suffrage question, you will enjoy the Maryland Suffrage News. If you are a suffragist, it will make you hear harps in the air; if you are an anti-suffragist, it will make you laugh your head off. Dr. Donald R. Hooker contributes to every number.–Adv.

Preliminary report from the private detective I lately sent to Maine to investigate the working of prohibition there:

Portland, Aug. 20. A campaign of enforcement is now in progress in Portland, led by a sheriff specially elected for the purpose., His predecessor was impeached last April on charges of permitting liquor-selling. The present incumbent, Scully by name, is thus pledged to enforce the law, and he has apparently tried to do so. He makes raids and seizures every day, and at the courthouse there is a so-called “rum room,” piled high with bottles of all descriptions. But despite all this, large quantities of liquor pour into the town from across the State line and from parts of the State where the officers are less alert. I arrived in the city on a Sunday, but I had no difficulty whatever in getting beer. Every native I met seemed eager to show me the way, and one man took me to a drug store where whiskey was almost openly sold. This on Sunday. On week days fully two-thirds of the drug stores sell whisky. It is to be had in unlimited quantity, and the antives appear to like it, but I have found it to be of very poor quality. The men who bring it into the State run a certain risk, and so they insure against that risk by adulterating the stuff they sell. That this sale is going on is known to everyone in town, and the performers in the summer parks sing comic songs about it. An example heard last night at a park called Riverton:

I wish I had sung this song at first, For now I have an awful thirst, And when I’m finished I’ll have to go Down to a drug store, you know.

The crowd laughed over it, and seemed to think it very funny. The general attitude toward the enforcement campaign, in fact, is a humorous one. The people like the excitement of the raids, and suffer no serious inconvenience thereby. Every day the papers are full of accounts of melodramatic seizures. And outside of Portland and a few other towns, there is no pretense of enforcement whatever. Today, for example, I went down to Old Orchard, the famous Maine bathing place, and found things wide open. A few feet from the end of the car line is a large white sign on which is painted in black letters: “Beer on Draught.” As I walked past the place a man at the door said: “Walk right in; it’s real beer.” A fewminutes later I went in and ordered a bottle. It was real beer. I asked the proprietor how he managed to escape punishment. He told me that Old Orchard was in a different county than Portland and that the law was less rigorously enforced. “I am indicted once a year,” he said, “and am fined $100. That is a sort of license. Am I satisfied with it? Of course I am. It’s cheaper than the license in Massachusetts. True enough, I may be raided at any moment by an official with a grudge against me, but I keep on the good side of them, and they don’t bother me often.” This man carried no whisky in stock, but offered to get some for me. In Portland, beside the drug stores and larger speak-easies, there are many so-called kitchen bars. These are kitchens in private houses, each stocked with a few jugs of liquor. Most of this liquor, of course, is of pretty low grade. So is some of that sold in the drug-stores. A number of the druggists, in fact, make it themselves. Commercial alcohol is its basis, and they flavor it with caramel. This liquor causes a very bad drunk. People who drink it are often picked up helpless, and on Saturday nights, judging by the newspaper accounts, the police do a rushing business. On Monday night (August 18) they picked up 17 down-and-outs. Many places advertise a drink called Uno beer, which contains less than 3 per cent. of alcohol, and so comes within the law. But in a good many of them you ask for Uno and get ordinary beer. This near-beer trick is an old one, and, as you know, is also worked on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. A good deal of ale is sold in the same way. Ale is a favorite drink in Portland, and every time the police raid a blind tiger they get some of it.

Enough for today! I cut off the endless saga of my diligent agent. More of it will be printed later on.

Let me commend to all honest men the editorial on “The White Slave Law in the Diggs Case,” in this morning’s Sunpaper. That law was devised by moral mountebanks and passed by political cowards. It is disingenuous and idiotic, a piece of scandalous hypocrisy, a direct invitation to blackmail and persecution. It puts a terrible weapon into the hands of predatory prostitutes, fanatical vice crusaders, and other such lawless persons. It violates every notion of fairness, justice, and common decency. The Sunpaper’s editorial tells the plain truth about it. Let every good citizen ponder that truth.

Texts in praise and defense of the Hon. William H. Anderson from the Koran, respectfully referred to the Hon. Charles M. Levister, muezzin to the Anti-Saloon League:

Verily, I will constitute you a model unto mankind.—Chap. II: The Cow. You shall find others who are desirous to enter into confidence with you, and at the same time to preserve the confidence of their own people.—Chap. IV: Women. Nay, his hands are both stretched forth.—Chap. V: The Table. I will seduce such of them as shall be thy chosen servants.—Chap. XV: Al Hejr. A revelation is come unto them which came not unto their forefathers.—Chap. XXIII: The True Believers. Did ye seduce these my servants; or did they wander of themselves from the right way? They shall answer, God forbid.—Chap. XXV: Al Forkan. And the unbelievers shall be driven unto hell by troops, until, when they shall arrive at the same, the gates thereof shall be opened; and the keepers thereof shall say unto them, Did not apostles come unto you and warn you of the meeting of this your day?--Chap. XXIX: The Troops. These are they who believed not, and hindered you from visiting the holy temple, and hindered also the offering.—Chap XLVIII: The Victory. On that day they shall be driven and thrust into the fire of hell; and it shall be said unto them, This is the fire which ye denied as a fiction. Is this a magic illusion? Or do ye not see?—Chap. LII: The Mountain. And the holy men shall receive gold, and eat fowl, and go on a journey to Medina.—Chap XXII: The Pilgrimage.

The Hon. Dashing Harry has got the First Warders cornered for the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld. They can’t get away from him without jumping into the harbor.—Adv.

The Maryland Mint Julep Association will send a wreath of Mentho viridis to the Hon. Blair Lee, slain by the Hon. William H. Anderson’s gifted larynx.

Warning to the Hon. William H. Anderson: Beware of the Hon. Ed. Hirsch! Warning to the Hon. Frank J. Callahan: Beware of the Hon. Glycerine Altfeld!

Read the Maryland Suffrage News! All the latest vice reports! Entertaining, spicy, moral!–Adv.