Baltimore Evening Sun (8 April 1914): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

More things that are unheard of in Marvelous Munich:

Peruna. Maryland cooking. The Hon. D. Harry. Pulpit press-agents. Honorary pallbearers. The Hon. Sunday-School Field, LL. B. Anti-Vaccinationists. Lydia Pinkham. Osteopathy. Roller towels. Mosquitoes. Baltimorality. Family entrances. Suffragettes. The recall of judges.


A DAILY THOUGHT. Hell will be so full of church members who favor licensing saloons that their feet will be sticking out of the windows.--The Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday.


The sound trouncing administered to the Hon. Richmond Pearson Hobson in Alabama yesterday must give the greatest gratification to every advocate of orderly and civilized government. It was not only an overwhelming defeat for an empty windjammer, a busy merchant of puerility and piffle, it was also a blow at the whole system of politics behind him. That system is based upon the theory that the American voter is a puling ignoramus, a sentimental jackass, an old maid in breeches. Its fruits on the one hand are prohibition, the vice crusade, the Mann, Kenyon and Webb acts, and all the other sublime inventions of the uplift; and on the other hand they are such sweet, sweet ornaments of the yap chautauquas as the Hon. William Squire Kenyon, the Hon. John Downey Works and the Hon. Mr. Hobson himself.


The Hon. Mr. Hobson made his campaign upon the usual “moral” issues. It was his effort to limn himself as an ambulent depository of the good, the true and the beautiful, and the Hon. Oscar W. Underwood, his able and intelligent opponent, as the agent of all unrighteousuess. This effort failed. The voters of Alabama, weighing Hobson and the uplift against Underwood and sense, decided in favor of the latter. The decision was the second one to their creidit. In 1911, after a three years’ trial of prohibition, they tired of its dishonesty and hoggishness and got rid of it. The Hon. Mr. Hobson, as the pope of Alabama prohibitionists, has thus been rejected twice. It is sincerely to be hoped that the people of Alabama will quickly make it three strikes and out.


The estimable Sunpaper on the Legislature just hauled from the scene:

The General Assembly of 1914 * * * enacted more progressive legislation of importance than any [other] in the history of the State. * * * This has also been one of the fairest and most non-partisan Legislatures that Maryland has known.

Be it observed that this was a Democratic “ring” Legistature, nominated and elected by the syndics of the “liquor-vice ring.” Such a Legislature, all things considered, is probably the best possible under a democracy. Its acts represent a sort of compromise between the aspirations of the bosses and the loud commands and alarrums of the so-called independent newspapers. The result is a fair imitation of sense, and even of decency. On the one hand the bosses are balked of all their juiciest prizes, and on the other hand the more wild-eyed reformers are baulked of their perunas.

His occupation with statecraft ended, the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld, LL.B., is now free to resume his old job of anointing the Hon. D. Harry, and among connoisseurs there is a unanimous demand that he begin at once. The Hon. Mr. Harry has suffered greatly, for three or four months past, from a lack of workmanlike greasing. With the Hon. Mr. Altfeld withdrawn from the art, its less talented practitioners--for example, the Hon. Calvin W. Hendrick, C.E.; the Hon. Barneveld Bibbins, Ph.D., and the Hon. A. Sophocles Goldsborough, LL.B.--have fallen into habits of sloth, and as a result the public has missed the old frenzy, the old fury, the old fire. Nothing is more entertaining than a good bout with the slush-bucket, and no one handles the paddle more dexterously than the Hon. Mr. Altfeld. But will he now grab it and wield it as of yore? Alas, there is grave doubt of it. He learned habits of contumacy at Annapolis; he flouted the Hon. Sunday-school Field, LL.B.; he even dared to plunge psychic poniards into the Hon. D. Harry Himself. Do we behold the passing of the Perfect Greaser? Must we be content henceforth with bush leaguers and dilletanti?

Following in the footsteps of his distinguished predecessor, the Hon. S. M. Wood has already made so much money out of the Democratic Telegram that he has just bought a $100,000 printing plant. Heretofore the printing of the Telegram has been farmed out to a syndicate of printers, but its circulation has grown so large that they can no longer handle it. The new plant will occupy the entire building at 663 West Baltimore street, running through to German. Three new Hoe sextuple presses have been ordered, and the work of installing __ linotype typesetting machines will be begun at 7.30 A. M. tomorrow. The Hon. Mr. Wood has also ordered a $1,000 player piano to ease his lilterary labors, and a $6,000 French touring car to take him from place to place. The Hon. Mr. Frick, not to be outdone, has just bought the Hon. Ed. Hirsch’s famous 100 karat diamond, Imperator, and will wear it hereafter on state occasions.--Adv.

The betting odds in the kaifs, as reported by my todsaufer:

Even money that Dr. Hare puts over prohibition in 1916. 3 to 1 that he puts it over in 1918.


Do not despair, gents! Once we have prohibition on the books we’ll be better off than we are today. The threat of it hurts a city. Baltimore is being hurt by it now. In every smoking car in the country you will find a drummer telling the sad tale of the uplift--how Baltimore is being eaten up by “moral” quacks of all the known varieties--how the town is gradually becoming uninhabitable to strangers. But the moment prohibition is actually adopted the drummers will begin to tell a different tale. That is to say, every one of them will be full of news about holes in the law--how to get a drink in “dry” Baltimore--how it is done by the illuminati--how he and his friends had a high old time doing it. Such gossip advertises and helps a town. It makes the traveling public eager to try the game. It lures the “out-of-town buyer,” that merry fellow. If you don’t believe it, look at “dry” Atlanta. In Atlanta business is booming, and the liquor business most of all.


A box of Lancaster county perfectos for the naime and address of a single uplifter who hasn’t something to sell.--Adv.


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