Baltimore Evening Sun (21 November 1913): 6.

The Hon. James McEvoy, the new president of the Police Board:

I am willing to hear suggestions.

Suggestion No. 1: Take that squad of snouting cops away from the Pentz Society. Cops should be commanded by their captains, and not by private sinner-scorchers. If you don’t trust your captatins, appoint new ones. But don’t try to make them better by harassing them and humiliating them. And, in the absence of plain proofs, don’t believe what professional moralists tell you about them. Use their common sense: don’t penalize it.

Advice to the Hon. William H. Anderson Beware of chicanary! That offer from New York shows the fine Italian hand of the Rum Demon! Look sharp!

The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus an anti-vivisectionst! And after what he has done to the poor Sunpaper!

Why boil your drinking water? Boiling will not remove that appetizing, charnel-house smell!

A DAILY THOUGHT. To mind your own business and do the square thing by your neighbors is the highest order of patriotism.—The Hon. Ed. Hirsch.

The Hon. John L. Cornell, acting counsel for the Pentz Society, calls my attention to an error appearing in this place on November 13, and as in duty bound I hasten to make amends. The subject of discourse on that day was the Hon. Jim Gleason, the new chief of police of Chicago, and with the utmost assurance and imbecility I announced that he was definitely committed to segregation of vice, in open contempt of all the Chicago sex hygienists and archangels, and that the Hon. Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of the town, was with him. Going further, I even ventured to moralize upon the subject, saying, among other things, “so passes another affecting moral crusade.”

I was wrong, gents, and now admit it freely. It wsa true that the Hon. Mr. Gleason, on taking office, had expressed himself strongly against the dispersion of prostitutes, but it was not true that he ahd decided upon a definite policy of segregation, or that Mayor Harrison had decided on any such policy. The Chicago correspondent of The Evening Sun sets me right. He says that the Hon. Mr. Gleason believes it useless to close the present “vice district” until means are devised for preventing the settlement of prostitutes elsewhere, but that his orders are to close the district and he is going to try to do it.

In brief, there would appear to be a considerable discrepancy between the hon. gent.’s convictions and his actual acts. But that fact is not to be urged against him, for the same discrepancy is visible elsewhere. The higher police officials of nine-tenths of the cities of the United States believe in segregation, but dispersal is the moral fad of the hour. Therefore the spectacle is presented on all sides of policemen engaged desperately, and to the tune of much ecstatic urging, upon work for which they have no taste and in the utility of which they have no faith. Such is the vice crusade in Chicago, and such is the vice crusade in Baltimore.

But all this, of course, does not conceal the fact that I made an inaccurate statement of fact, the result of an inaccurate deduction from the Hon. Mr. Gleason’s published statements. I accordingly offer the Hion. Mr. Cornell my best thanks for setting me right. What is more, I assure him of my distinguished consideration and extend to him the compliments of the season. May Santa Claus be kind to him!

Once more the dear old Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society has invaded the Letter Column to prove that Cardinal Gibbons is actually one of its honorary vice-presidents. Granted. I have never disputed the fact. But does the Cardinal know what sort of campaign is being carried on in his name? Has he heard of the Hon. Bath House Jean’s sitz-bath cure for hydrophobia? Has he read the pamphlet of the Rev. Dr. J. Todd Ferrier proving that dogs and cats have human souls? Is he familiar with all the mendacious and idiotic attacks upon the Rockefeller Institute and the Hohns Hopkins Medical School? Is he aware that he is being used as a witness to the doctrine that Dr. William H. Welch is a superstitious ignoramus, and that Dr. William Osler is little short of a murderer?

These are the questions I lately asked, and these are the quetsions that the Maryland Anti-Vivisection society fails to answer. So far as it merely pleads for the regulation of vivisection, very few persons, I take it, are opposed to it. I myself accept the principle without question. But when it seeks to bolster up its case by trying to show that the whole of scientific medicine is a delusion and a fraud, and that such men as Pasteur, Ehrlich, Flexner and Welch are rogues and mountebanks, then it is high time to call the attention of all innocent adherents to the fact, and to warn the public against assuming that they really adhere.

The old maids of this society try to evade responsibility for the Rev. Dr. Ferrier’s imbecile pamphlet by maintaining that they accept only his conclusions, and not his arguments in support of them. But is this fact, if it be a fact, indicated upon the pamphlet? Not at all. That pamphlet is sent out with no “ifs” or “buts” attached. It bears the stamp of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, just as Bath House Jean’s leaflet on hydrophobia bears that stamp, and with it goes the suggestive hint that Cardinal Gibbons is a vice-president of the society. Of the two pamphlets, one is balderdash and the other is downright vicious and dangerous. I cannot bring myself to believe that Cardinal Gibbons favors the circulation of either, or that he knows they are being circulated under his imprimatur.

Nine-tenths of the literature of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society is not directed at saving the guinea pigs, but at blowing up the doctors. It is silly, mendacious and unintelligent. It makes libelous and inexcusable attacks upon honest men. It appeals to the ignorance and superstition of the people. It urges them to turn from scientific medicine and surgery, and to put their faith in quacks and scoundrels. And the letters sent to the newspapers by the members of this society are of the same character. I cannot believe that Cardinal Gibbons is in favor of such a campaign of misrepresentation and rumble-bumble. It is a sport for theosophists, Christian Scientists and New Thoughters; it is intolerably obnoxious to all intelligent men.

Meanwhile, the only thing for the Hon. Young Cochran to do is to buy another check book and a new fountain pen.