Baltimore Evening Sun (11 December 1913): 6.

Free advice to the syndics of the Anti-Saloon League: Nail Anderson to his job. An expensive bird, to be sure, but one of rare song. Take my word for it that the Rum Demon would be delighted to see him go. Wheirs are you going to find another such fellow? Dost think, beloved, that the woods are full of them? Then apply ice to scalp and think again! The day Anderson is translated to New York, the janissaries of the kaif will throw away their artillary and begin fighting with rolls of absorbent cotton. The post-Anderson, whoever he may be, will seem like a rabbit after a rhinoceros. Take a tip from a well-wisher, gents! Have a care!

A DAILY THOUGHT. In spite of the Legislature the snow will fall when the sun is in Capricorn, and the flowers will bloom when he is in Cancer.--Lord Macaulay.The Hon. Frank F. Patterson on “The Maryland Blue Laws” in yesterday’s Evening Sunpaper:

A small minority of the population forces its own ideas of Sunday observance upon the great majority. Why does the majority allow this? * * * One reason is the intolerant abuse heaped upon any man who would suggest that the Sabbath was made for man’s enjoyment and recreation, and not as a day of gloom and irritation and despair. Any such man is no less than an infidel, an anarchist and an enemy of the human race, if the Puritan is to be believed. Men, especially politicians, are very timid of that sort of criticism.

This explains very accurately, not only the survival of our Blue Laws, but also the rise of local option “statesmen” and the invariable character of the current vice commission reports. A man in public life often finds it utterly impossible to face the Puritan storm. He may be a perfectly honest and decent man at bottom, but as Havelock Fills points out in “The Task of Social Hygiene,” he cannot stand up against the sort of accusations that are leveled at him. No wondor the more limber and slippery type of job-seeker--the Parran-Straus sort of fellow--is so willing to get converted.

When it comes to the social evil, the Puritans have the average “statesman,” and even the average citizen, under their thumbs. We all remember what happened when the late grand jury brought in its report denouncing the snouting of the Pentz Society. Did the tin-horn archangels meet the charges made in that report squarely and honorably? Not at all. Their sole answer was to make counter-accusations against the jurymen. These accusations, true enough, were not specific–the Puritans are seldom brave enough to risk legal consequences--but nevertheless their plain intent was to make the public believe that the jury was made up of men personally interested in the traffic in vice. That allegation was untrue and imbecile, but you may be sure that some memory of it will stick in the minds of future grand jurymen, and that the truth will not be told again for a good while to come.

It is by exactly the same process hat the innumerable vice commissions are all forced to bring in the self-same sonorous and useless report. An honest man, serving on such a commission, is under double fire. On the one hand, he is constantly opposed and harassed by the Puritans serving with him, and on the other hand he is threatened and browbeaten by Puritans without. Is it any wonder that he always ends by throwing up his hands and agreeing to the orthodox report? What would you do, dear heart, if you were in his boots? Would you defy the most insidious and poisonous sort of slander for the sake of the truth, or would you take the easy way?

A sinner-bake, sonorously styled the Seventh International Purity Congress, was held at Milwaukee, November 7-12, under the auspices of an organization calling itself the World Purity Federation. This alleged World Purity Federation is run by a man named B. S. Steadwell, resident at La Crosse, Wis., and among its members are most of the persons who make a living out of “sex hygiene” and such-like pornography. So successful was the Minneapolis meeting--that is to say, so stimulating to the assembled old maids, circus preachers, snide politicians and book agents--that it was at once proposed to move the headquarters down from La Crosse. I quote the editorial comment of the Minneapolis Journal, the leading paper of the city:

Good Lord, Deliver Us. They are talking about moving the American headquarters of the World Purity Federation from La Crosse to Minneapolis. Minneapolis is hospitable, but unselfish. La Crosse is a quiet place to accumulate storage for the annual burst of publicity. If they want a bigger place, why not Chicago? We can hold our noses and stand it for a week, after training in cheap magazine reading and uncensored theatregoing. We can even affect to like it, though it is an acquired taste, like olives. But our much enduring courtesy should be compensated with fresh, sweet air to breathe the rest of the year.In brief, Minneapolis doesn’t want any more “purity congresses.” One such saturnalia of smut and buncombe is enough to last a lifetime.The Hon. Charles G. Pease, D. D. S., grand exalted ruler of the Non-Smokers’ Protective League of America:

Coffee drinking certainly does cause cirrhosis of the liver.

Respectfully referred to the Hon., etc., etc., for moral meditation, etc., etc., etc., and report.

The divorce rates in three States, as given by the Hon. Joseph K. Connolly, J., of the Superior Court of Portland, Maine:

Maine 1 to 6.55 marriages Kansas 1 to 12 marriages Maryland 1 to 51 marriages Maine and Kansas are both dry; Maryland is still half wet.Meanwhile, it will do you no harm to read “The Supposed Death Rates of Abstainers and Non-abstainers and Their Lack of Scientific Value,” by the Hon. Edward Bunnell Phelps, A, M., F. S. S., editor of the American Underwriter and an insurance statistician of high repute. The Hon. Mr. Phelps is one of the authorities quoted in the Anti-Saloon League’s famous pamphlet on “The Effects of Alcoholic Drinks Upon the Human Mind and Body,” a piece of bosh lately distributed among public school pupils. In his new work he shows how daringly the archangels misquoted him, and how donkeyishly they argued from their misquotations. And then, to cap his crime, he shows that all the current “statistics” about the murderous effect of moderate drinking are so much poppycock–a fact already bearing the imprimatur of no less an authority than Sir William Osler, Bart. But will the Anti-Saloon League mend its bogus figures? Answer: It will not.