Baltimore Evening Sun (5 September 1913): 6.

An article describing my sure cure for hay fever is in type, and I offer my apologies for not printing it. My inclination, of course, is to do so; I have the keenest sympathy for the multitudes who still sneeze and swear. But at the moment of going to press my attorney calls my attention to Article 43, Section 101, of the Code of Public General Laws of Maryland; forbidding the practice of medicine by persons not duty licensed, and advises me to withhold my remedy until he can examine the decisions bearing thereon. An exception, he tells me, is made in favor of “chiropodists, midwives, masseurs, and manual manipulators who use no other means,” but it is doubtful that I qualify under any of these headings. I can only apologize, and promise to prod my lawyer. Let the curses of the suffering bestir him to diligence!

A DAILY THOUGHT. Error of opinion may be tolerated, when reason is left free to combat it.–Thomas Jefferson.

The Hon. Frank J. Callahan may have the popularity, but the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld has the Hon. Dashing Harry! Get a bunch of lilies ready for Callahan!--Political Adv.

Agreeable reading for persons of licentious and backward-looking habits is to be found in the files of the estimable Sunpaper for March and April, 1911. Those were the days of the Mahool-Preston primary campaign, and the Sunpaper was engaged in the philanthropic act of establishing an archangelic character for the Hon. Mr. Mahool. He was depicted, quite seriously, as the incarnation of all that was pious and progressive in the Democratic faith, and he himself constantly contrasted his own sturdy honesty and independence with the lamentable chicaneries and sinister obligations of the Hon. James Harry Preston. * * * * * * * * * * Today this same Hon. Mr. Mahool is presiding at machine meetings in which the chief discourse is of the good old Sunpaper’s scoundrelism, and in which the principal whooper and ear-bumper is the Hon. Mr. Preston!

Well, well, don’t think too harshly of the Hon. Mr. Mahool! If his bogus progressivism fooled the Sunpaper two years ago, then it was the fault of the Sunpaper. It knew very well that he would have accepted renomination at the hands of the machine if the machine had deigned to renominate him. Did he stray the highroads preaching “independence”? Then it was only because the constituted cowherds had exppelled him from the pasture. The moment he was invited back he went back. And having got back, he gallantly volunteered for the horning of the mavericks still outside. He had felt the bleak winds of “independence”; he had tasted virtuous martyrdom; he was glad to return to the fold.

Is the hon. gent., then, an ingrate, a traitor to old friends, a forgetter of oaths? Let us not dignify him with such high, astounding accusations. He is simply a second-rate politician, a fourth-rate man. And most of the other alleged progressives, now so eloquent for reform, are of the same lowly type. They would all take organization nominations if they could get them; some of them, in fact, have tried their darndest to do so. If they rage and roar for all the new perunas today, it is only because the elder, sweeter jug has been snatched from theri lips. Let the bosses restore it tomorrow, and they will gurgle like starving infants. In brief, they are not “independents” at all, but merely baffled job-seekers. Like the organizatton candidates they denounce so piously, their one and only permanent yearning is for public office.

All reform movements in the United States, whether social, moral or political, are weighed down and impeded by multitudes of just such rice-converts. A few honest men are in the van; behind them troops a motley comoany of panhandlers and mountebanks, fanatics and merry andrews. The result, at the start, is great public excitement: the plain people are aroused to frenzies by the whooping. But soon or late a reaction follows, and disgust takes the place of enthusiasm. Thus the cause of reform is blocked by its false friends, and there is an incessant slipping back. Every cleaning up of an American city is followed by a triumphant return of ring rule. Bogus “progressives” are the best friends of the machine. And nine “progressives” out of ten are bogus.

Advice to young men: Become professional moralists. The trade is beginning to pay. In five years the average moralist will make more than the average bartender.

The Hon. Tom Parran’s affecting conversion to local option puts the delicate question into the forefront of the Senatorial fray and lifts the Hon. William H. Anderson to the dignity of Republican campaign manager. No sound of repining comes from connoisseurs of refined political brutality. Win or lose, the Hon. Mr. Anderson will give a bang-up show. He is full of resource and daring; he knows how to make the teeth to chatter and the eyeballs to bulge; best of all, he has a sense of humor. Give him two or three weeks to get upsteam, and he will have all the political mountebanks in Maryland revolving like pinwheels. He is the king of all our busters of ennui. Let the vulgar give him the Chautauqua salute as he steps into the rosin-box and spits upon his hands.

The Danish Cabinet, after a long debate over prohibition legislation, has finilly decided against it. A number of members of the Cabinet, including the Prime Minister, Mr. Zahle, are in favor of total abstinence, but after a very careful investigation they have come to the conclusion that it would be impossible to enforce a prohibition law. One of the leading men on the temperance side in Danish politics, Professor Warming, thus states the case in the Copenhagen Nationaltidende:

In order to enforce prohibition there must be an overwhelming popular demand behind it. Far more than a mere majority of the people must be in favor of it. Such a demand does not exist today. I believe that any effort to make prohibition effective at present, or within a few years, would fall to the ground.

To which Mr. Goos, President of the Upper House, adds the following:

Because the use of alcohol is being abused by some people is no reason why it should be prohibited to all. I set aside the fact that such prohibition would not be effective. In order to enforce national prohibition we would have to abandon our present principle of individual liberty and substitute the principle of government by force. As things stand, it is the right of every citizen to deternine his personal habits for himself.

Order your barber to take the Maryland Suffrage News. A new defense of Judge Ben B. Lindsey in every number.--Adv.