Baltimore Evening Sun (20 January 1914): 6.

After all, why should the Hon. Dashing Harry take any interest in so unproductive an establishment as Sydenham Hospital? Ah, that trained nurses had votes–or that the Royal Family had the measles!

The estimable Maryland Suffrage News, after venturing for one week into the troubled seas of psychotheology, now returns again to the safe harbor of vice. The leading editorial in its current issue is devoted to our old friend the Kenyon bill, “to enjoin and abate houses of lewdness, assignation and prostitution” in the District of Columbia, and there is an interesting letter from a Salisbury correspondent announcing that “the town is now passing through a very exciting vice crusude, which is absorbing everyone’s attention to the exclusion of all other matters.”

The Suffrage News, in discussing the Kenyon bill, says that “there is now and has been for a long time a law in the District which prohibits the existence of such houses,” but that “the authorities allow them to flourish under the very shadow of the Capitol.” Obviously, the way to get rid of them is to pass another law. The same “authorities” who view the existing statute so lightly will undoubtedly strain themselves to the utmost to enforce the new one. So much, indeed, is made certain by the favorite logical device of the suffragettes, the great contra-bass syllogism in E flat.

From the dear old Towel’s advance notice of the Eastern Shore Society’s chicken-eat:

True to the fact that the Eastern Shore counties are local option, the board of governors decided that no liquor should be served in connection with the dinner.

A misstatement of fact and a false implication. In the first place, the Eastern Shore counties do not sweat under local option, but under probibition by legislativc act–a very different and far more galling thing. And in the second place, they are anything but dry. In Salisbury alone the following beverages are constantly on tap: Squirrel whisky, forty-rod, peppermint extract, ambrosia, near-beer, paregoric, rikk, weis beer, peruna, Duffy’s malt whisky, Stokes liniment, wood alcohol, trade gin, cider, dandelion wine, Hood’s sarsaparilla, Bordeaux mixture, blackberry cordial, mint julep, Angostura bitters, mince pie, rock and rye, applejack and sweet spirits of nitre. One looks in vain, true enough, for Pilsner, and likewise for Scotch, for Canary and for old Falernian, but though intelectual bibbing is thus impossible, the kick is still there. Don’t libel the Eastern Shore, dear Towel! It is bad enough to be “dry,” without being called actually dry.

A DAILY THOUGHT. The more women resemble men, the lees power they have over men.–Jean Jacques Rousseau.

News of the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday’s Chautauqua in Pittsburgh, as described in a Pittsburgh dispatch to the New York Times:

Mr. Sunday expected to make at least 50,000 converts by a seven-week revival, which began December 28. He is considerably behind in the total. * * *

In which unfortunate situation the rev. doctor finds himself cheek by jowl with the vice crusaders, the anti-vivisectionists, the Anti-Saloon League and the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis.

Now comes Crisfield, another of those “dry” and moral towns of the Eastern Shore. According to the alert Sunpaper the freemen of the city have been holding a public meeting to protest against the present deluge of bad whisky. One of the leading citizens, the Hon. J. F. Somers, M. D., proposes that “the quantity which can be legally received by any one person” be reduced “to one quart in each 24 hours.” This proposal, says the Sunpaper’s war correspondent, was opposed on the ground that it “savored of Prohibition” (!), but nevertheless it was passed, and so the Crisfieldians will have to cut down their daily bibbing by from 25 to 1,000 per cent., according to their talents.

The Sunpaper also reports that Crisfield, the moral Salisbury, is alive with speakeasies. “The delegation which caused the raid” on the Palm Hotel the other day “placed the police in the possession of more than 30 names of persons they alleged were running gambling places and selling whisky.” Notice that it is “and selling whisky,” not “or selling whisky.” Crisfield, in 1910, had a population of 3,468. Supposing it to have increased 25 per cent. during the 3½ years intervening, its present population is 4,335. Thus it has at least one dram shop for every 144½ of population. If the same ratio were maintained in Baltimore, we would have nearly 3,300.

Such are the joys of being “dry.” Such are the great boons and usufructs of the uplift. Let us abandon the license system and adopt the Crisfield plan. And let us hold fast to the present benign scheme of having our own police force bossed by Eastern Shoremen. We are far too sinful to run it ourselves. We need the moral advice and consent of the sturdy burghers of Crisfield and Salisbury and of their pure and sagacious representatives.

The Hon. John E. Raine, editor of the estimable Towson New Era, continues to make his paper an interesting guide book to Highlandtown and its vicinage--the Salisbury of Baltimore county. In his current issue, for example, he gives the location of no less than six kaifs in which the milk of the wild cow is sold after hours, and in every one of them, he says, the new “reform” gendarmes of the county are in attendance to protect the bibuli against raids and rough-house. He even mentions the names of the cops who are on the job. No news could be better news to the drinking classes. It is not sufficient that a kaif be wide open: there must also be some guarantee of personal security, else the booze arts lose their charm. This the rurales provide, and this the Hon. Mr. Raine reports.

Incidentally, the Hon. Mr. Raine is producing the liveliest paper that Baltimore county has seen since the big wind. He is digging up a lot of hot stuff that the Baltimore dailies have been overlooking, and he is serving it with an air. Whether or not the county is civilized enough to stand such a gazette remains to be seen. How long will it be before the boomers and honorary pallbearers of his bailiwick get together and suppress him as an enemy to “progress”?

All that remains is to take out a charter for the Jacobus Hook Campaign Committee, with a capital of 100,000 Reina Victorias, fully paid in.

Ah, that the Hon. William H. Anderson were still in our midst to explain away, in his suave and convincing manner, the current exposures of wetness on the “dry” Eastern Shore!