Baltimore Evening Sun (9 October 1913): 6.
From “Congressional Government,” by the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, LL. D., Ph.D., Litt. D. (page 305):
* * * the prurient and fearless, because anonymous, animadversions of the press, now so often premature and inconsiderate. * * * One of our chief constitutional diffic--ulties is that, in opportunities for informing and guiding public opinion, the freedom of the press is greater than the freedom of Congress. * * *
Respectfully offered to the Hon. Dashing Harry, LL. D., as more seemly and potent ammunition than flapdoodle, bellowing and sos. Also the following from a speech in the Senate by the Hon. Joseph W. Bailey, LL. B., on January 2, 1913:
Once having learned that sensational attacks, though utterly destitute of the truth, would be eagerly read by the public, unscrupulous editors and owners found that they could gratify their spite and increase their incomes by assailing public men whom they had cause to dislike, for personal or political reasons; and the carnival of slander was deliberately inaugurated.
Also this from “The American Newspaper,” by the Hon. James Edward Rogers, Ph.D. (Page 204):
The business manager controls the policy of the newspaper. The public gets what it demands only in the way that the business manager dictates. News is published or suppressed according to when it suits the interest of the proprietors. The editor gets his orders from the business manager, who gets his orders from the owner of the paper.
Also the following indictment of the American newspaper from the same work:
- The reader suffers a “waste of much time and energy in reading unimportant news, premature, untrue and imperfect accounts of important matters and prejudiced editorials of uninteresting subjects.”
- Class prejudices “are kindled because of the partisan bias or commercial greed of newspaper managers.”
- The mind is “loaded with cheap literature and prone [sic] to an aversion for good books and sustained thought.”
“By flouting the law and its officers it breeds a certain feeling of lawlessness.”
- Westport.
- The Municipal Journal.
- The typhoid death rate.
- The Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld.
- The Lord’s Day Alliance.
- Druid Hill Park.
- The Orioles.
- The Hon. Sunday-school Field, LL. B.
- Fried chicken a la Maryland.
- Back River.
Also the following remark of the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, quoted by Dr. Rogers (preface, page viii):
Newspapers habitually and continually and as a matter of business practice every form of mendacity known to man, from the suppression of the truth and the suggestion of the false to the lie direct.
Also the following from “The Influence of Newspaper Presentations Upon the Growth of Crime and Other Anti-Social Activity,” by the Hon. Frances Fenton, Ph.D. (Page 95):
The public does not get freedom of discussion in the newspaper, it gets discussion which is strictly censored * * * by special interests and the desire for gain at the cost of the public.
And many more such projectiles, free for the asking. Let us have better stuff than blubbering, boasting and the making of faces.
The Hon. William H. Anderson puts me to the torture in today’s Letter Column for saying that he came “dangerously near losing his temper” at the start of his speech of rebuttal last Monday night. Let him roar his denials: I care not a single darn. I had a spyglass upon him during all that episode. I saw his eyes flash like the sparks of a dynamo. I heard him heave, snort and gnash his teeth. I saw his fingers curl up like autumn leaves and his chest inflate with hot and poisonous gases. By a gigantic effort, he kept control of himself, and for that feat I venerate him. It was no easy accomplishment for a man of such violent temper and rough-house habits.
The hon. gent. exhibits a bonapartean disingenuousness when he seeks to make it appear that the assembled bibuli treated him harshly or that there was any need of police protection. As a matter of fact the meeting was very orderly from end to end. True enough, there was not a little rough and humorous heckling, but the boozehounds did quite as much of it as the bibuli. In his opening speech, the Hon. Mr. Anderson met the attack with stimulating and devastating wit, but in his speech of rebuttal his wheezes failed him and he resorted to glares and defiances. The Hon. Mr. Wilkinson, pressed just as uncomfortably, kept his head and his good humor. It was his unbreakable geniality, indeed, that made his harangue a success. He grinned his way into favor. Even the bloodthirsty friars on the platform were obviously tickled with him.
Wherefore and by reason of which, I reiterate in solemn and awful tones my allegation that the Hon. Mr. Anderson came “dangerously near losing his temper.” The hon. gent. protests against this charge on the ground that thousands of readers of The Evening Sun, not actually present, will believe it to his discredit. But what he forgets is that other thousands, present in person, also believe it. For example, the Hon. William F. Cochran, oberschatzmeister of the Anti-Saloon League. If the Hon. Mr. Cochran will charge publicly that I misrepresented the Hon. Mr. Anderson I shall be glad to withdraw my remarks and offer my apologies. But I don’t think he will do it.
A traveling member of the Anti-Saloon League sends me the following inscription from a tombstone at Winchester, England:
In Memory of
Thomas Thatcher,
A Grenadier in the North Regt.
of Hants Militia, who died of a
violent Fever contracted by drinking
Small Beer when hot the 12th of May,
1762, aged 26 years.
In grateful remembrance of whose universal good will toward his Comrades this Stone is placed here at their expense as a small testimony of their regard and concern.
Here sleeps in peace a Hampshire Grenadier,
Who caught his death by drinking cold small Beer,
Soldiers, be wise from his untimely fall,
And when ye’re hot drink Strong or not at all.
This Memorial being destroyed was restored
by Officers of the Garrison A. D. 1781.
An honest Soldier never is forgot
Whether he die by Musket or by Pot.
Poor Tom! He lived and died before Pilsner was invented! He fell a tragic victim to archaic pre-Raphaelite brews!
Further contributions to the roster of Baltimore wonders:
Send in your lists. The seven prize winners will be recorded upon a marble tablet.
What ails dear old Isaac? The Hon. Dashing Harry is crackling the Sunpaper across the shins every day, but Isaac loafs upon the job. Daily record of my potations, for the information of archangels and boozehounds:
Wednesday.
Two cups of coffee.