Baltimore Evening Sun (2 September 1913): 6.

The Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, vice-president of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, on the gentlemen, lay and clerical, who are opposed to his pious scheme for chasing prostitutes from pillar to post:

“Segregators” * * * seek two ends. Their aims are, first, to promote the prosperity of keepers of houses of prostitution, * * * and, secondly, to assure the men who frequent those houses uninterrupted opportunities for vicious indulgence.

A shining example of that amazing impudence which characterizes all of the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte’s moral pronunciamentos. If these words mean anything at all, they mean that every man who opposes the woman hunt is either a friend and attorney of brothel-keepers or an open procurer for their customers. He makes no exception; he allows no room for a third “aim.” All men who stand opposed to him, regardless of their pretensions, are rogues and scoundrels.

Well, let us see what this means. On November 18, 1911 the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City adopted a minute describing and defending the system of segregation then in vogue in Baltimore, and containing the following remark:

Out of much reflection, study and comparison of views, this court has come to [the] conclusion * * * that to impose in all cases a sentence of imprisonment or heavy fine upon keepers of bawdy houses, with the intent to entirely suppress such houses, * * * is not, at this time, wise.

So far as is known, every member of the Supreme Bench agreed to this minute. It was read from the bench in the Criminal Court by Judge Duffy, a former State’s Attorney. Does the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte now maintain that these judges were animated by the two “aims” he describes--that they were either trying to make prostitutes prosperous or seeking to afford “uninterrupted opportunities for vicious indulgence”? To ask the question is to answer it. And to answer it is to reveal the utter vacuity, impertinence and imbecility of the Hon. Mr. Bonapate’s chief argument.

He must know very well, if he knows anything about the matter at all, that a great many men whose motives are wholly beyond suspicion are unalterably opposed to the woman hunt. He must know, for example, that at least three-fourths of the members of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty are opposed to it. He must know that it is opposed by all of the police captains, by all of the Federal white slave agents, and by scores of clergymen, including many of his own faith. He must know that it has been publicly attacked by such men as Havelock Ellis, Mayor Brand Whitlock, Mayor Gaynor, Dr. Frederic C. Howe, Dr. J. R. Kean, of the Army Medical Corps; the Rev. Dr. William T. Russell and the Rev Dr. W. S. Rainsford, and, to come nearer home, by Justice Eugene E. Grannan, Mr. Grgurevich and Capt. John Logan. To say that these men are either boosters of disorderly houses or advocates of debauchery is to say something so stupid, so ridiculous and so false that not even the Bonaparte “Progressives,” I daresay, will ever swallow it without gagging.

When the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte raises this question of the relative dignity and responsibility of the vice crusaders and their opponents, he does a bad day’s work for the crusaders. Here in Baltimore we all know the men at the back of the vice crusade. We know that they are few in number and that they are all professional agitators and extremists. The roll is eastiy called: the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte, Dr. Howard A. Kelly, the Hon. Eugene Levering, the Rev. Dr. K. G. Murray, Dr. O. Edward Janney and Dr. Donald R. Hooker. (The Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, formerly grand master of the lodge, has lately retired.) I have no grievance against these men: with some of them I am on very friendly personal terms. But I ask every sane man to answer for himself whether their opinion on any matter involving prudence and common sense is to be put above the opinion of the Judges of the Supreme Bench, or that of the police captains, or that of the great majority of physicians, or that of such experienced and honest men as those I have called by name.

No one questions the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte’s right to oppose segregation. It is an admittedly defective system, and I, for one, am disposed to admit most of the evils urged against it. But to argue against it is one thing, and to try to dispose of it by bluff and bullying is quite another thing. The people of Baltimore, unless I err greatly, are getting very weary of the uproar raised of vice crusaders. They are willing to hear any reasonable argument against the system in vogue here for so long, but they are not going to be influenced by idle charges and threats against the men who are honestly in favor of that system, as something measurably better than dispersion. They are not going to submit to the browbeating of a crowd of busybodies who meet in a private room, and there issue orders to the police, the grand jury and the courts.

At the risk of tedious repetition I call attention again to the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte’s personal unfitness to discharge any such despotic function. As vice-president of the Society for the Suppression of Vice he was one of the officers in command of a squad of police placed at the society’s disposal (entirely without warrant in law) by a complaisant Police Board. I charge that the said squad of police was employed by the chief agent of the society for the purpose of harassing and disgracing an innocent public official, the motive being private revenge. I charge that the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte and his chief associates have so mismanaged the society that it has become a public joke and a public nuisance. I charge that their participation in hypocritical crusades and their stupid partnership with bogus crusaders have brought humiliation upon all the subscribers to the society, robbed it of the public’s confidence and destroyed the real usefulness that it once had.

Let the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte remember clearly that the office he holds involves responsibilities as well as privileges. The presumptions are always in his favor: he is a man who has “done the State some service, and they know it.” But when he seeks to argue his case in the terms of a campmeeting exhorter belaboring the devil, it is high time to haul him in. And when he is shown to be a responsible officer of an organization so suspicious in its practices that it has attracted the attention of the grand jury, then it is time to examine into his competence as a specialist in law and virtue.

Horrible thought for the Hon. Eugene Levering: every morning in September is September Morn!