Baltimore Evening Sun (5 January 1914): 6.

For chairman of the committee to pick the deacons and prepare them for the fire: the Hon. Cy Cummings of Montgomery.

For Mayor of Baltimore in 1915: Col. Jacobus Hook, K. T., the greatest tax gatherer since Levi.

A DAILY THOUGHT. An empty helmet, an edgeless sword, a shield without a grip–such is glory!–Henrik Ibsen.

Note of inquiry from a venerated subscriber:

What has become of the National Typhoid League Are the Orioles still in the lead?

The answer must be a confession of ignorance. Until last spring the typhoid returns from the eight principal cities of the United States were published weekly in the estimable Public Health Reports of the United States Public Health Service, but since then they have not appeared, and so I am unable to favor the illuminati with the weekly averages. Twice during the summer I complained to Assistant Surgeon-General John W. Trask, M. D., and the first time he intimated that the returns would be restored shortly. But later on he informed me that a lack of clerical help in his office made it temporarily impossible. This lack, I suppose, still exists.

Thus I cannot make known the present standing of the Orioles. But the tuberculosis returns, which are still published regularly, show that they are holding their own in the National Tuberculosis League. Thus the standing of the clubs for the week ending December 6, the last reported:

Baltimore 376 Philadelphia 258 Chicago 356 St. Louis 205 Pittsburgh 300 Boston 164 Cleveland 268 New York *

No report.

Mrs. Barclay Hazard, head of the New York branch of the National Florence Crittenden Association, on the current rumble-bumble about vice:

Women go around talking of things of which they know absolutely nothing, and do a great deal of harm. They are sentimental about it; they give a wrong point of view. It is perfectly right that a man bringing a woman into this State from another for immoral purposes should be prosecuted, but while occasionally the women may be brought against their will, it is often the case that they come willingly and are glad to come.

A clear statement of the objection to the Mann white slave act, that most hypocritical and imbecile of statutes. Its main effect, so far, has been to elevate blackmail to the dignity of a great national industry. So easy, indeed, are the profits it offers that its competition has practically wiped out the old badger and panel games.

The Hon. D. Bachrach fills today’s Letter Column with a sweet song upon the benefits and usufructs of the single tax, that most potent of politico-economical radiums. Who will deny that it is downright magical after reading this eloquent celebration of its powers? On the one hand, it will increase the revenue of Baltimore by $4,000,000 a year, or 40 per cent., and on the other hand, it will decrease the taxes by from 17 to 25 per cent.!

Do I distort and exaggerate the hon. gentleman’s claims? I think not. He says clearly that the single tax will reduce the net taxes on “the average two-story house of 14-foot frontage” from $34 a year to $28, or 17.6 per cent.; that it will reduce the taxes on the “three-story house from 15 to 18 feet frontage” by “about $20,” or 25 per cent.; that it will work “pretty near the same advantage” to the owner of “dwelling property of the higher class”; and that, even when it comes to store property, those owners will “gain” who have erected “the best class of buildings.”

All of these gains, it appears, not to mention the $4,000,000 of increased revenue, will have to come out of the store property with “poor improvements,” and even here there will be a gain whenever the said “poor improvements” are replaced by “better buildings”–i. e., buildings yielding more rent.

I submit this marvelous reasoning to enchanted connoisseurs of the uplift. Obviously, it is based upon the theory that the rent-paying power of storekeepers is infinite, and, what is more, that the number of storekeepers is also infinite. But what would happen in case a lot owner, putting up a palatial store building to get back his taxes, couldn’t find paying tenants? Isn’t it a fact that a lot of business property of the best sort is tenantless even now?

The Hon. Charles M. Levister, D. D., the new editor of the American Issue, makes his debut in the current number by putting the estimable Deutsche Correspondent to the torture. Its crime, it appears, was to charge that prohibition–

invades personal liberty, destroys property values, stops city growth, drives away buyers, turns big cities into country villages, confiscates property, sets men against men and introduces hysteria and discord and corruption, all to no good end.

Why the Hon. Mr. Levister gets into such a lathering rage over such a succession of platitudes I am unable to explain–that is to say, without lugging in a theory antagonistic to his personal fidelity to prohibition. Does he seriously maintain that prohibition does not do these things? If so, on what grounds?

The Hon. Mr. Levister is an old pupil of mine—I have tutored him privately in Comparative Religions, the Czerny exercises and Old Testament Exegesis–and so I hold him in considerable affection. But if he is going to disgrace himself in the conduct of the American Issue by denying facts so plain that the very fowls of the air admit them, then it will be my solemn duty to wash my hands of him and pronounce a curse upon him. It was my fond hope that he would steer clear of those chicaneries which made the Issue, during the editorship of the lamented Anderson, a hissing and a mocking in moral circles. I grieve to see him embrace them with fatuous passion.

From Cardinal Gibbons’ sermon at the Cathedral yesterday:

Sunday is a day not only of prayer, but also of rest, of innocent recreation and pastime, and of healthful diversions which are profitable to mind and body. Sunday should not be a day of gloom, sadness and melancholy, for we are exhorted “to serve the Lord with gladness.”

Respectfully referred to those predatory Puritans who hold that orchestral concerts on Sunday afternoons would manufacture drunkards, promote the white slave traffic and bring sorrow to the home.

The vice crusade! The vice crusade! ’Twould seem ’twere stolen, lost or strayed!