Baltimore Evening Sun (13 December 1913): 6.

The gentlemanly ushers will now pass among the audience selling tickets to the next grand performance upon the elevated stage: the “conversion” of the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus, LL. B., to prohibition.

A DAILY THOUGHT. The verdict of a jury is the opinion of that juryman who smokes the worst cigars and most painfully needs a bath.–The Hon. Claude Malony, J.

Some earnest gentleman, discoursing in the Letter Column, calls upon me with great solemnity to apologize for “villifying” the Hon. Ben B. Lindsey, J., the eminent Denver Chautanquan and upyanker. I shall do nothing of the sort. I have not “villified” Ben, nor any other man. All I have done has been to tell a few modest truths about him--for example, the truth that he spends almost as much time in the bucolic Chautauquas, blowing his own horn, as he devotes to the work he is paid to do in Denver. That he was formally acquitted by an “investigating” committee of Denver forward-lookers, and that Collier’s Weekly declared him a persecuted innocent–in these facts I see no significance. If the Hon. Dashing Harry were tried and acquitted by a court consisting of the Hon. McCay McCoy, the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough and the Hon. Sunday-school Field, and the acquittal indorsed by the Hot Towel, certainly no sane man would let that verdict convice him. Didn’t the Hon. Eugene Levering and Abbott Morris perform a public whitewashing of the Hon. Samuel P. Pentz, and didn’t the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., that great juriconsult, indorse it?

The trouble with Ben is simple enough. He is a well-meaning young man, decidedly limited in abilities, who has been spoiled by lavish and senseless praise. He has read so much about his own singular virtue in the uplift magazines, and has heard so much about it from the lips of Chautauqua introducers, that he has come to believe in it himself. The result is that he feels himself bound to exhibit his angelic person and expound his austere ethics from end to end of these States. The second result is that he has become a public bore and nuisance, and that his proper work in Denver suffers thereby.

Even allowing him all the juridic talent and passion that he claims, it must be obvious that he cannot be saving working girls in Denver while he is chasing the Hon. William J. Bryan and the Swiss Bell-Ringers around the Chautauquas of Pennsylvania. During the last summer he spent two whole months at that lucrative sport, and during the last year he has given it nearly 150 days, leaving substitutes on the bench in Denver. When he came up for trial, he maintained that the offenses charged against him were actually committed by those substitutes. Admitting this to be true, doesn’t the fact remain that he deliberately neglected his duties? Suppose the judge of our own Juvenile Court, the Hon. T. J. C. Williams, were to spend the half of every year posing for the moving pictures in Colorado. What would the people of Baltimore think of it?

Ben, alas, is not the only uppuller who permits himself to engage in enterprises that make the judicious grieve. The taste for turning right-thinking into cash seems to be spreading among the illuminati. No sooner is a new archangel discovered by the magazines than he begins to peddle books on sex hygiene, or to run for office, or to manufacture a call to the secretaryship of some antiseptic organization, or to go whooping and roaring around the Chautauqua, or to write a play. And once he has chosen his avenue to usufructs, the other members of the lodge join in helping him along. Moral endeavor, indeed, is fast becoming one of the most profitable trades open to a young American.

Do you remember, perchance, a lady named Virginia Brooks, who was vastly advertised by the magazines a few years ago for her titanic uplifting at Hammond, Ind.? Well, this same Miss Brooks has now turned playwright, and what is more, press agent, and the same laudable energies which but lately made the bibuli of Hammond tremble are now concentrated upon the lofty task of boosting her play. It is entitled “Little Lost Sister,” and has been current this week at one of the local theatres. Last Monday hundreds of Baltimoreans received copies of mimeographed “personal” letters from Miss Brooks, boldly asking them to help the play along. I quote:

We women of the United States * * * can wipe out the White Slave traffic. My story on the subject, “Little Lost Sister,” soon to appear in book-form, which has been dramatized into a most palatable [sic] play by Edward E. Rose, writer and investigator, will, I believe, do a world of good to humanity. The Hon. Edward Beall, chairman of the Illinois Vice Commission, says of the play–“that every mother and every girl should see it.” * * * I personally want the play to reach every corner possible, for it has a punch to it–right along the line of the uplift movement. If not asking too muich, would appreciate a few lines from you, stating your sentiments on this all important [sic] matter.

In brief, cognoscienti are desired to help in the press-agenting. Who gets the profits? Do they go into the funds of the uplift? Are they devoted to the great work at Hammond, Ind.? The fair Miss Brooks does not say. Maybe she will tell us about it when she comes to Baltimore to “inaugurate the campaign and organize a local branch of the ‘Little Lost Sister’ movement.” Another campaign! Another movement! Let me close with a quotation from the current issue of the American Educational Journal:

This country of ours has lately developed a mania for creating societies that are ostensibly designed to correct some one of the many ills, real or imaginary, by which man and the social institutiuons surrounding mankind are thought to be affected. As a result of this craze, scores upon scores of so-called “national” betterment organizations, frequently created for some vague if not utterly useless purpose, have come into existence. * * * It is a difficult thing for many people to distinguish between an organization that has a perfectly legitimate reason for existing, and one that was brought into being simply to satisfy the craving for notoriety or for financial assistance on the part of those who gave it birth. * * *

It is difficult, true enough, but not always impossible. The public indeed is beginning to see through the uplift, and its palmy days belong to the past. May the time come quickly when it has ceased to squeeze the golden tear!

The estimable Deutsche Correspondent on the pious sportsmen of the Anti-Saloon League:

Bettelbrüder! Zugelassenen Heiligen! Gelehringen Mönche! Moral–Bankiers und Makiern! Erzengel! Faulenzer und Finanzmänner! Sportsleute!

Watch Bob come back? Bosh! Bob has never been away!