Baltimore Evening Sun (8 January 1914): 6.

Of the eight city bills that the Hon. Dashing Harry and the Hon. Sunday-school Field, LL. D., are taking to Annapolis, the one most deserving of immediate passage is that which takes away the appointment of the Police Board from the Governor and the State Senate and vests it in the Mayor and the Second Branch of the City Council. Here is a measure with justice in it, and what is more, with common sense. The Police Department now costs the taxpayers of Baltimore more than $1,250,000 a year, or 30 7-12 cents on the city tax rate. They are compelled by statute to fork up this money anuually, and yet they haven’t the slightest control over the way it is spent. The Police Commissioners are wholly independent, not only of the Mayor of Baltimore, but even of the people of Baltimore. The taxpayers of no other large American city are compelled to submit to this archaic imposition, and it is certainly high time for the Legislature to put an end to it here.

The objections brought forward against the Preston-Field bill by the estimable Sunpaper and by other such glomay Iokanaans are all grounded upon the theory that the contrul of the police by the Mayor and City Council would inevitably put the department into the hands of the politicians. This theory, it must be admitted, is given a considerable plausibility by the known habits of the present Mayor of Baltimore. No sane man doubts that the Hon. Mr. Harry, if he had the courage and the chance, would convert the Police Department into a private political machine, just as he has converted the City Englineer’s Department into it a private political machine, with one of his hacks at every lever. But the Hon. Mr. Harry, it is to be recalled, will go out of office in little more than 16 months. If, in point of fact, he has the courage to perform this pollution, then his offense will constitute the best of reasons for retiring him to private life in May, 1914, and for defeating any Mayoralty candidate who happens to be endorsed by him, and who gives approval to his policies.

Hereare several “ifs,” and the more they are inspected the plainer it becomes that the dangers pointed out by the Sunpaper are largely imaginary. On the one hand, it is highly improbable that the Hon. Mr. Harry would have the courage, even assuming him to have the desire, to debauch the police to his political uses. A glance at the Fire Department will show that a considerable prudence mitigates his political passion: he has played politics there, true enough, but certainly it would be absurd to say that he has converted the department into a mere political machine, and thus destroyed its usefulness. And in the second place, it is reasonably to be argued that, even in the event he tackled the Police Department boldly, he would probably not do it much more damage than it has suffered already, after two years of alliacce with the Pentz Society and of Puritanical snouting and spying.

But the weakest of all points in the Sunpaper’s case is the assumption that the Governor of Maryland is always less a practical politician than the Mayor of Baltimore, and that, in consequence, he is a safer boss for the Police Department. A glance at the history of the city and State during the last 15 years shows that this assumption is without foundation, and that, as a matter of fact, the exact contrary is more likely to be true. Since the year 1899 there have been five Mayors of Bahlmore and four Governors of Maryland. Of the former, two have been earnest advocates of good government, two have been politicians too weak to defy an aroused public opinion, and one has been a frank spoilsman. Of the latter, one has been a chronic job-holder, turned eleventh-hour reformer, one has been an undisguised spoilsman, and two have been practical politicians with leanings toward good government.

Turn now to the actual results of State control of the city police. Down to 1900 the Police Board was elected by the General Assembly; it was in that year that its appointment was vested in the Governor, “with the advice and consent of the Senate.” The Mayor of Baltimore in 190o was Thomas G. Hayes; the Governor of Maryland was John Walter Smith. Did the Hon. Mr. Smith save the Police Department from the politicians? Did he appoint better Commissioners than the Hon. Mr. Hayes would have appointed? Answer the question for yourself. The Hon. Mr. Smith’s board was the Upshur-Morris-Fowler board. It played politics without the slightest disguise. It made the city police force a mere appendage of the State machine.

Came now, in 1904, the Hon. Edwin Warfield as Governor, the Mayor or Baltimore being the Hon. Robert McLane, and after his death, the Hon. E. Clay Timanus. The Hon. Mr: Warfield appointed at least one first-rate man to the board, to wit, the Hon. George R. Willis. But he also appointed the Hon. James H. Preston, now the Hon. Dashing Harry--and we all know what happened after that. The Hon. Mr. Preston, to put it briefly, played politics with such assiduity and skill that the Hon. Mr. Willis was entirely unable to make headway against him, and in the end the Hon. Mr. Willis frankly threw up his hands. Does the Sunpaper argue that the Hon. Mr. McLane would have appointed such a fellow as the Hon. Mr. Preston, or that the Hon. Mr. Timanus, with the white light beating upon him, would have ventured to do so?

The Hon. Austin L. Crothers next. He came into office on January 1, 1908, seven months after ex-Hon. J. Barry Mahool became Mayor of Baltimore. The Hon. Mr. Crothers made an earnest effort to rescue the Police Department from the political morass into which it had fallen under the Hon. Mr. Warfield. He appointed the Swann-Wheltle-Tome board and then the Wheltle-Tome-Clotworthy board. At first he seemed to succeed, but we all know what happened later on--how he discovered political and other abuses in the department, and tried to root them out, and failed abjectly. Here was a Governor of absolutely good intentions, and what is more, a very intelligent man, and yet he made a mess of his management of the city police. Is it imaginable that even Mahool would have done any worse?

I pass over the present, or Goldsborough, board. The Sunpaper seems to think that its conduct of the Police Department has been wholly praiseworthy, and that in particular, it has held itself above all selfish external influence. On this point, however, there are facts to be considered of which the Sunpaper appears to be unaware. Perhaps they will loom up more distinctly when the State Senate comes to consider the renomination of two of the present Commissioners.

Cheer up! Ninety short days--