Baltimore Evening Sun (6 January 1914): 6.

Astounding remark of an anonymous contributor to the Letter Column:

I think that Dr. Joshua Rosett is as great a man as the Hon. Frank A. Munsey.

Will this nameless gentleman now satisfy a devouring and intolerable curiosity by coming forward with his reasons?

A DAILY THOUGHT. A kick in the pantaloons is language that the deaf can hear and the dumb can understand.--Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Contributions to the Salvarsan Fund by the officers of the Maryland Society for Social Hygiene:

The Hon. Donald R. Hooker, M. D. $2.00 The Hon. John R. Cary, A. B. 0 Brigadier-General the Hon. Robert Garrett, M. N. G. 0 The Hon. A. C. Harrison, M. D. 0 The Hon. Lewellys F. Barker, M. D. 0 The Right Rev. Kenneth G. Murray, D. D. 0 The Hon. C. C. Rohr, LL. B. .40 The Hon. Guy L. Hunner, M. D. 0 The Hon. O. Edward Janney, M. D. 0 The Rev. Abbott William H. Morriss 0 The Hon. Charles O’Donovan, M. D. 0 The Rev. William Rosenau, Ph. D. 0 The Hon. Lilian Welsh, M. D. 0 The Hon. David I. Macht, M. D. 0 The Hon. Lida Lee Tall, A. M. 0 Total $2.40 Average per each .16

Oath administered to county cops, as reported by the estimable Towson New Era:

I do swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and that I will be faithful and bear allegiance to the State of Maryland, support the Constitution and laws thereof; and that I will to the best of my skill and management, diligently and faithfully, without partiality or prejudice, execute the office of county policeman in Baltimore county, and adhere to the Constitution and laws of this State. I also declare my belief in the Christian religion.

The final, exquisite touch! A theological test for the boobs of Back River! Incidentally, the New Era reports that one of the pious fellows who took this oath last week was fined $250 last April for selling liquor on Sunday. The saintly County Commissioners, on hearing of it, recalled his appointment, despite his affecting orthodoxy. But they have not recalled the appointments of two other accomplished theologians, both of whom studied Christian doctrine while tending bar for the Hon. Henry Herman, the eminent Belair road kaifist and wire-puller.

Editor Frederick Evans, of the sagacious Highlandtown Sentinel, throws grave doubts upon the piety of various other county cops in his current issue. He speaks darkly of jobholders who “are known as hard drinkers locally, and of quarrelsome dispositions when under the influence of liquor,” and then, a few lines further on, adds significantly that “especially in the police and fire departments should strict sobriety be the rule.” Can it be that some of the earnest believers lately appointed to the police force are lushers under their skins? If so, the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis will have sport, indeed, at Back River next summer.

Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that the kaifists down the road are all beginning preparations for a busy season, despite the election of “reform: County Commissioners and the setting up of religious tests for gendarmes. My agents report by telephone that thousands of additional drinking benches are being erected in the bacchic groves, and that the total seating capacity when the season opens will be 34,500. In the bars there will be standing room for 9,400 more. The family trade will be taken care of by 4,250 waiters and 300 bouncers. Whenever the rurales attempt a raid green and yellow skyrockets will be set off, and so the bibuli at adjacent places will have time to empty all incriminating bottles per esophagus before the lights are turned out.

The Hon. Charles J. Ogle in today’s Letter Column:

No honest thinker who really investigates the subject with an open mind can reject the Single Tax philosophy. * * *

Examples of dishonest thinkers, according to M. Ogle:

The Hon. Woodrow Wilson, Ph. D., LL. D. The Hon. Jacob Hollander, Ph. D.

January 20 will be the fifth birthday of the celebrated case of the State of Maryland vs. the ex-Sheriffs of Baltimore city, for the return of fees unconstitutionally withheld from the State treasury. It was on that day, in the year 1909, that State Auditor George N. Ash completed his examination of the ex-Sheriffs’ books, and the late Governor Crothers ordered that suit against them be begun. On June 2, 1909, the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus, LL. D., then Attorney- General of Maryland, began proceedings against ex-Sheriffs George Warfield, Bill Green and George Padgett, and on August 18 he added ex-Sheriff Paving Bob Padgett to the other three. Since then the case has been the prodigy and passion of our courts, and connoisseurs of legal grappling have come from as far away as Budapest and Cape Town to observe it. But the ex- Sheriffs still have the money.

Just what its present status may be is rather difficult to determine. On October 11, 1912, after three solid years of artful dodging, a jury in the City Court brought in a verdict for $15,177.20 against Bill Green, but Bill, of course, made no motion to pay in the money. Instead he entered an appeal and went about his business. On February 27, 1913, this appeal seems to have reached the Court of Appeals, but apparently it was not disposed of, for on November 19 the Sunpaper reported that the lawyers were still arguing it. Since then, so far as I can make out, nothing has been heard of it. But one thing, at least, in certain: Bill still has the money.

The Hon. D. Bachrach performs a valiant somersault in today’s Letter Column. Yesterday it was the single tax unaided that was going to wipe out all the sorrows of the world. Today the hon. gentleman frankly flops to increased assessments, the higher taxation of franchises and easements and the taxation of churches--in brief, to remedies that have only the slightest relation to the single tax, and might be well put into effect under our present system. It is a pleasure to welcome him back to terra firma and the society of sinners. The single taxers are quite right when they argue that the existing tax system is open to improvement; where they go wrong is in maintaining that the single tax would be any better. Here they resemble the Socialists, Christian and heathen: their diagnosis is correct, but their medicine is a peruna.

Boil your drinking water! See the deacons in the death-cage! Wait for the annual benefit of the Journalists’ Club!