Baltimore Evening Sun (24 October 1913): 8.

From an article by the Hon. William H. Anderson, entitled “The Free Lance Throws Up the Sponge,” in the current American Issue:

That gentleman has at las recognized that it is useless to kick against the pricks, and that the passage of the local option bill is a foregone conclusion.

Advice to the Hon. Mr. Anderson: Don’t be deceived by false converts and treacherous yielders! How do you know that the Free Lance has not been bribed by the Liquor-Vice Ring to fill you with a deceptive sense of security? How do you know that he is not party to some new and shameless chicanery--as bad, let us say, as the Hon. Blair Lee’s? Keep a sharp lookout in all directions! Be suspicious of Legislative candidates who sign the pledge. There is deviltry brewing. [Signed.] A Friend.

From the daily booze-sheet of a contra-Levering:

Thursday. Three cups of coffee.

Pious hope of the Rev. Dr. Frederick Cook Morehouse, delegate from Milwaukee to the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church:

I should like to see John Wesley canonized, and George Washington.

If George, why not Abe Lincoln? If John, why not the Rev. Sam Jones? And if all of these great men, why not some of our own magnificoes, our villages Hampdens and Savonarolas, our heroes of baltimorality? The heavenly exequatur arrives too late for the Hon. Eugene Levering: he has been a saint for lo, these many years! But who will move the nomination of the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, that holy and unerring man? And who will speak up for the incomparable Pentz, for long the glory of the Society for the Suppression of Vice?

Other candidates press for recognition: Murray, Cochran, Hooker, Janney, Anderson, Niles, Cornell. Davis, Morriss, Goldsborough. Baltimore has produced almost as many authentic saints, indeed, as Carthnge. And not only mere saints, but also martyrs: D’Harry, Sunday-school Field, Bob Carr, Isaac Lobe Straus. But perhaps I grow too eloquent in support of these local aspirants. No doubt the Rev. Dr. Morehouse has his own favorites, as becomes a patriotic Milwaukeean. For example, St. Schlit,. who made Milwaukee famous.

Say what you will against Dr. Goldsborough and his wild, sad appeals to the Sunday-schools, anyhow he never passes the plate.--Adv.

Various projects for a massmeeting of bachelors to thank Congress for the new income tax are heard in the kaifs, but so far the prevailing rejoicing has got no further than the stage of libation and gemüthlichkeit. There can he no doubt, however, that the vast majority of Baltimore bachelors give their hearty approval to the new law, and particularly to the provision which allows married men an extra exemption of $1,000 a year. The Hon. Robert J. McCuen, the Hon. William Shepherd Bryan and various other eminent celibates have been advocating just such a distinction between married and single taxpayers for many years, and now at last they see their ideas adopted and their labors rewarded.

It is a common delusion that bachelors constitute a selfish and avaricious class of men, and that they have no gratitude for the immunities they enjoy and no desire to make compensation therefor. Nothing could be further from the truth. The average intelligent bachelor is fully aware that he is the favorite as well as the masterpiece of the gods. He knows that his lot is infinitely more secure and agreeable than that of the average married man. What is more, he is willing and even eager to pay cash for his freedom. Hence the present almost unanimous ratification of the $1,000 exemption clause in the income tax. And hence the wide demand among bachelors for a straight bachelor tax of $1 a day.

This last tax, I believe, is bound to come. The new income tax paves the way for it, accustoms the public to the idea of it, piles up evidence of its justice. I have yet to meet a bachelor who is openly against it. One and all, they realize that they should pay a direct and substantial tax, not only upon their property but also upon their liberty, and most of them seem to be agreed that $1 a day would be a fair impost. So far as I know, there is not a bachelor in Baltimore who cannot afford to pay it. In the whole United States, indeed, it would probably be difficult to find more than a few hundred. On July 1, 1900, the day of the last census return, not a single bachelor was to be found in the almshouses of the Eastern States. Thousands were in jail, and 28 were waiting to be hanged, but not one was receiving public charity.

Such worthy and self-respecting men pay their own way in the world, and they want to help pay the Government’s way also. Beside, they have a sneaking suspicion that the $1-a-day tax would be an excellent investment. At present, they are eternally beset by married men seeking loans, and it is difficult to refuse. Such loans, true enough, are usually small in amount–say from 10 cents up to $5--but the number of them is very large, and they probably cost the average bachelor at least $500 a year. If he were paying $1 a day to the national revenues, he would have a sound excuse for refusing such applications and importunities. His brother-In-law, of course, would still stick him up, but his other married friends would find him armed against them, and so he would probably save every cent of his $365 tax bill.

CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS.

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