Baltimore Evening Sun (1 December 1913): 6.

Once the Heller bichloride ordinance is upon the suffering books, will there be further ordinances regulating the sale of caustic soda, methyl alcohol, copperas, muriatic acid and quicklime? All of these substances are violent poisons, and yet all of them may be purchased today by any adult, and in unlimited quantities. Why not make every tinner get a physician’s prescription before he may have acid for his work? Why not wrap the mantle of a low-comedy law around vitriol, sal ammonica, Bordeaux mixture, cynanide of potassium, dog soap? Why not abolish suicide altogether by prohibiting the manufacture of rope, cutlery and fire-arms, and filling Druid Lake?

Footnote on prohibition in Georgia from the estimable Pineville Herald:

Another Georgia town has voted in favor of saloons, and here is the reason given by a citizen: If we are going to stand for our women folks wearing shadow skirts and slit skirts and transparent skirts, and our younger women learning to dance the boll weevil wiggle, the Texas Tommy tango, the bunny hug, the bear dance, the half centre, the buzzard flop and the puppy huddle, and so on down the line, then the men filk might just as well have their saloons, and the whole push go to hell together.

A DAILY THOUGHT.
Liberty is the first and greatest necessity.—Henrik Ibsen.

Solemn warning to the Hon. William H. Anderson, the celestial gladiator:

He practiced playing on the harp,
For Heaven was his goal,
But old Saint Peter was too sharp,
And now he’s shoveling coal!

The uplift seems to be striking snags in the South. The city of Atlanta, after having been cleaned up by a posse of pious young sports, is now enjoying what the yellow journals call a carnival of crime, and the estimable Atlanta Constitution fills its first page with bellows for relief. The Hon. Mr. Beavers, chief of police of Atlanta, enjoys the distinction of being the only police chief in the United States who believes in the armed dispersion of prostitutes. He was converted during the cleaning up aforesaid and now serves as Exhibit A for the vice crusaders. A somewhat embarrassing Exhibit A!

In Savannah and Charleston, S. C., both dry by statute, the speakeasy problem is now racking the populace. One party wants to let the speakeasies alone, and another wants to put them under police control, and make them close on Sundays and after midnight. There is also, by the way, a third party: one which proposes to close them altogether. But a diligent study of the local newspapers fails to show that this party musters more than a corporal’s guard. In Savannah especially public sentiment seems to be almost unanimously against obeying the prohibition laws. When the Governor of Georgia threatened to send the militia to the city to enforce them, the Savannahese bade him go hang, and even talked of seceding from the State. Such is prohibition in actual operation.

In Tennessee the same situation is to be found. The yokels of the backwoods are in favor of enforcing the laws, and the Governor has called two special sessions of the Legislature to that end, but the city of Memphis rebels. In the absence of regulation the saloon flourishes as the speakeasy, and the result is wholesale drunkenness and lawlessness. In 1912 the homicide rate in Memphis was 64.3 per 100,000 of population--the highest recorded in Christendom. In wet Philadelphia, with very strict regulation of the saloons, it was but 1.4. In wet Reading, Pa., it was 0. Forward the uplift! Let the tin-horn archangels save us!

Extracts from the program of the coming sinner-roast of the Lord’s Day Alliance:

Wednesday, December 3.
4 P. M.—Lord’s Day Clinic. Dr. T. T. Mutchler, leader.
Thursday, December 4.
2.30-3.15 P. M.—Lord’s Day Clinic. Dr. Mutchler.
Friday, December 5.
3.00-3.45 P. M.—Lord’s Day Clinic. Dr. Mutchler.

Note the word “clinic”: the sanguinary touch! Let us hope that there will be no dearth of cases, of screaming patients. I nominate the Hon. Joe Goeller for a laparotomy with tack-pullers, the Hon. Spot Mitchell for a cracking of the shinbones, the Hon. Jack Flood for decapitation without anesthetics.

The Hon. James McEvoy, president-designate of the moral Police Board:

I am willing to hear suggestions.

Suggestion No. 6: Get a copy of the minute of the Supreme Bench read in the Criminal Court on November 18, 1911, by the Hon. Henry Duffy, J. Compare its straightforwardness and good sense to the obscurantist flapdoodle of the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., that self- appointed mentor of judges and grand juries.

The moment the Legislature abolishes the Eastern Shore speakeasies Collector the Hon. William F. Stone will open branch customs houses at Crisfield, Love Point and Cambridge, and the big ships from Munich, Pilsen, Kulmbach and Würzburg will land their cargoes at the Shoreman’s very doors. More then 25 bar-fixture drummers are now canvassing the Shore, and after March 1 next the whole Peninsula will glitter with plate glass, polished mahogany and brass spittoons. No more the insanitary back room, the “stomach bitters” drug store, the undignified dodging up alleys! Be patient, gents! We, are coming!

With Archdeacon Wegg’s denial of the Sunpaper’s virtue, in today’s Letter Column, I heartily agree. That ancient gazette, as he says, is one of the worst Pharisees of profane history. But certainly the rev. gent. does not extend his accusations to The Evening Sun! If so, he throws truth to the winds. The Evening Sun plays no Sunpaperian tricks: its Letter Column is open to all the bugs, regardless of color, nationality or previous condition of servitude. Wegg himself is never edited, saving only when he is unbearably vulgar. And in determining when he is vulgar clerical courtesy is always stretched to the limit.

Advice to the syndics of the Anti-Saloon League: Don’t let Anderson go! True enough, he has antagonized certain ornaments of the “moral element” and a few rich churches have shut down on him, but that is no more than the fortune of war. When a battle is lost, every skulker wants to hang the general. Do you seriously believe that any other man could have done better in the late unpleasantness? If so, on what ground?

Boil your drinking water! Boiling won’t take away its smell of morgues and abbatoirs-- but boil it anyhow!