Baltimore Evening Sun (14 February 1914): 6.

The Hon. Jack Cornell, successor to the lamented Pentz, to the Judiciary committee of the State Senate:

Commercialized vice can be suppressed. I have seen it done in cities as large as any city in Maryland. Such cities as * * * Detroit * * * have performed this supposed impossibility. I was in Detroit the middle of last November, about one month after the segregated district was closed by order of the Police Commissioner. The former bawdy houses were occupied by respectable citizens, and all efforts to locate a house of prostitution were futile.

From the Detroit Free Press, the leading paper there, of Thursday, February 12:

That the social evil was not eliminated by the recent activity of the Police Department, that it was merely transferred from one section to a more or less scattered condition throughout the city, * * * is now practically admitted by the police. * * * The officer in charge of the night squads read at assembly a list of rooming houses on Columbia street, east and west, giving the numbers, which, he said, were known to be resorts. * * * Two detectives * * * made a tour of these places, entering them at will. * * * On First street, for a space of two blocks, near Michigan avenue, are houses in which the “roomers” are much bolder. In a few minutes’ walk by these houses a newspaper man was invited in by signs by women in the windows of three houses. Young men loiter along the street for the purpose of flirting with the women. * * * Two women who arrived less than a week ago from Cincinnati told a reporter that they had been “tipped off” that Detroit afforded a splendid opportunity for their trade, minus the restrictions of being confined to a house. A woman from Cleveland told the same thing. Three girls who said they had come from Toledo in a café that they had come from houses there because in Detroit they would be free from house restrictions.

The Free Press then proceeds to give a long list of streets on which houses of prostitution are in full blast. Some of those mentioned are Macomb street, Montcalm street, East Lafayette boulevard, East Adams street, Howard street, West Congress street, State street, Madison avenue, East Warren avenue, Grand River avenue and Michigan avenue. Even in the old Tenderloin, closed with such virtuous ardor. at least one house “has not ceased the nature of its business.” And in all directions are “flats where rooms may be rented without question, men and women, young men and girls visiting them nightly.” And yet the veracious Cornell found that “all efforts to locate a house of prostitution were futile”!

A beautiful testimonial to the value of the Hon. Mr. Cornell’s evidence, and that of the fatuous old snouters who hire him! An impressive certificate of his perspicacity, his sound knowledge, his good faith and his good sense! Let the State Senators give due weight to the “facts” and arguments of so careful and sapient a witness!

Concluding strophes of the “act to regulate persons and societies engaged in efforts to enforce or amend the criminal laws of Maryland or of the United States in Maryland, and to prevent blackmail by such persons”:

Section 8. Any person convicted of violating any provision of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not less than $100 nor more than $500, or by imprisonment in jail for not less than 30 days nor more than one year, or by both, in the discretion of the Court. Section 9. And be it enacted, That this act shall take effect from the date of its passage.

The sagacious Hot Towel on a recent suicide:

Alexander Lowicki, 38 years old * * * a middle-aged Polish lover.

Can it be that men of 38 are middle-aged in Poland? Certainly not in Baltimore! The Hon. Robert J. McCuen, at 43, is still a sophomore in society, blushing whenever he meets a girl. The Hon. Tom Hare, D. D., at 39, is just beginning his life-work. And Dr. Basil L. Gildersleeve, now nearing 50, is yet the youngest man in the Hopkins faculty. “Middle-aged” your grandmother! A man of 38 is scarcely fit to vote.

My humble apologies to the Rev. Dr. John I. Yellott, of Belair, if he will state upon his honor that he neither wrote nor inspired a letter printed in the Evening News of Wednesday, signed “Clergyman,” dated “Baltimore” and bearing the plain inference that its author was a member of the Ministerial Union of Baltimore and spokesman for the rest of its members.--Adv.

Contribution toward a proposed list of new and original names for vaudeville teams:

Caveat and Emptor. Isis and Osiris. The Phagocyte Sisters. The Schoenberg Quartet. Torquemada and Borgia. Glottis and Epiglottis. Beer and Meyerbeer. Tourniquet, the Human Snake. Smallpox and Streptococcus.

Boil your drinking water! Watch the Federated Charities kick back! Wait for the new vice crusade!

At the risk of seeming to press a courteous critic unduly, I hereby repeat my challenge to the Hon. Lawrence Turnbull to name a single Baltimore reformer, not obviously a quack, whom I have ever mentioned this place without respect. The Hon. Mr. Turnbull, with the best intentions in the world, has accused me of a serious offense against earnest and intelligent men. I call upon him again to produce his specifications.

The Yiddish players at the Orpheum Theatre (the old Monumental) are apparently determined to go “Damaged Goods” one better. For next Friday and Saturday evenings they announce a play called “Damaged Children”!

The estimable New York Sun on the American Society for Fire Prevention:

The society believes that * * * fire prevention is now the vital subject before the American people.

What! Still another “most vital” subject? Still another club of Iokanaans crying in the wilderness? What becomes of all the other “most vitals”--the social evil, the Rum Demon, the tango, the direct primary, sex hygiene, woman suffrage, international peace, infant mortality, the indeterminate sentence, the recall of judges, currency reform, psychical research, the boiling of drinking water, the income tax, raffia work, Socialism, snoutery?

Still waiting for space in the Baltimore Southern Methodist to defend myself against Dr. C. D. Harris’ attack. Dr. Harris has had his space in The Evening Sun. He got it without the slightest restriction. I ask less. I will let him edit anything I write, and agree to make no complaint, in public or in private, against any change he makes in it.

What has become of the Hon. William H. Anderson? No exile from Maryland could be more sadly missed. Ah, that he would occasionally favor The Evening Sun with an encyclical in his inimitable manner! Ah, that he were heard from on the subject of the American Issue’s leg-show!--Adv.