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EASTERN SHORE NEWSPAPE CONDEMN "MENCKEN RAVING
Excerpts of editorials appearing in last issues of newspapers published on the Eastern Shore:
Somerset News, Princess Anne:
Realizing our inability to handle the English language with the capacity of that fluent and gifted, though scurrilous writer, H. L. Mencken, we have no desire to get in a controversy with him. Yet we do most emphatically take exception to his tirade against the Eastern Shore, which appeared in the Monday Sun. ... All of Maryland is proud of Baltimore, but in its confines are to be found Bolshe-vics, Communists and the scum of the earth.
Chestertown Transcript, Chestertown:
We cannot believe that the attitude of the Baltimore City press is the attitude of the people of that city, if it is not, let them show that they are incensed as are the people of this section.
Kent News, Chestertown:
It is also to be regretted that the Baltimore Sun saw proper to publish such bosh and nonsense in reference thereto. Baltimore city is made up of country people, many who came from the Shore, and it is certainly a reflection on the editors themselves as well as upon others when our people ar maligned.
Cambridge Record, Cambridge:
Here on the Eastern Shore of Maryland we know what Baltimore thinks of us. We know what it thinks of Eastern Shoremen who live in Baltimore. The newspaper is the spokesman for the community in which it is published and the newspapers there (Baltimore) have very frankly told us what their opinion of us is, and to be certain that we do not misunderstand them Dr. Mencken's pen was brought into action, to tell us in language so insulting that there might be no doubt about it.
Worcester Democrat, Pocomoke City:
Really, that man Mencken is so stinkin' rotten, I believe the buzzards would light on him, if he came over here; and then they would light off him, for fear of sudden death, if they so much as pecked out an eye. ... So all this crazy stuff that flows from the pen of Mister Mencken, intended to make you shed angry tears, has the opposite effect—it is to laugh.
Crisfield Times, Crisfield:
Filled with venom as poisonous as that used by the aborigines on the tips of their arrows, an article appeared in the Baltimore Sun, written by H. L. Mencken, that should redound to the e- erlasting shame of the paper which published it.
Centreville Observer:
(On the Sun editorial) . . It is such an unbecoming and glaring display of injustice that the Observer, one of the humbler brethren Iof the great metropolitan press, raises its feeble voice in protest.
But it is a protest that echoes in the heart of all the Eastern Shore country, which has been unjustly assailed.
Centreville Record:
All we ask of the Baltimore press is to give us proper publicity and not to exploit unduly the crimes on the Eastern Shore any more than they do the banking or financial news in Baltimore City, and we will see that justice is meted out properly to those accused of crimes and without mob violence.
Easton Journal, Easton:
We are not savages. We are not "poor white" renegades.. The Eastern Shore is not peopled by brutes flaming with primitive blood
lust fanned by race prejudice. On the contrary, the civilization of the Eastern Shore is distinctly superior to that of the isolated regions of Southern Maryland or the inaccessible hills and valleys of Western Maryland. This is not meant to be a reflection upon the citizens of these portions of the State. But it is a fact that education, culture, the finer things of life, are just as apparent on the Peninsula as they are in any other portion of the State—the imperial city of Baltimore included.
Salisbury Advertiser, Salisbury:
Racial prejudice exists only in the minds of outsiders who would gloat over such a vision as a means
of accomplishing their ov
Marylander & Herald, Prin<
Salisbury's reply to th ence in Shore affairs ol women of the ilk of Men Mays, Labor Defense I all other Anarchist ant ist groups, composed f part of men and women lowest strata of the mong of European gutters, ma-been such as to merit tr of the better-thinking at any rate, it was to ss effective and convim Shore's reply to contin by the press of Bal may be expected to p convincing.
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