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iEbttorial
WHO IS GETTING HURT?
The citizens of the Eastern Shore univrr al*y protest, naturally, against the ravings of the Baltimore Sunpapers. ably assisted by H L. Mencken, a journalist noted for his ability to criticize everything and everybody, who can destroy every exisitng order of things but can never build up anything constructive to take their place.
Yet, after all it is not the citizens of the Eastern Shore who are getting hurt by these ravings. We do not need either The Sun or its high-paid writers to tell us what to do or what not to do, regardless of their self-appointed roles of judges. We, of the Eastern Shore, believe that, all in all, our conduct wil' compare favorably with that of the Western Section of the state, where even a man in the State Penitentiary is not safe from murderers; which, up to the Salisbury affair, was credited with the last two lynchings that have occurred in this state, and whose contributions to the population of the State Penitentiary, for the looting of the State Roads funds, and other crimes, has made a larger Penitentiary necessary.
The business interests of Baltimore City are the real sufferers from these attacks. They, alone, must stand the brunt of the reaction, for, every time the citizens of the Shore are held up to ridicule bv Th» Sun. or its writers, mst that much more does the distance between the Eastern Shore and Baltimore increase, and the building of sixteen bay bridges will not bring Baltimore any closer to the Shore, if these attacks are to be continued.
It has only been a false sense of home pride that has held what little business of the Shore for Baltimore that it now enjoys Every uncalled-for attack upon the citizens of this section coming from Baltimore makes this tie less binding. Baltimore has nothing to offer us that cannot be found, even better, in other northern cities. Philadelphia, Wilmington, New York and Boston furnish better markets for our produce and Philadelphia and New York, through" better merchandise, better prices, and better delivery facilities are now enjoying the bulk of the Shore trade. Maybe that is the reason for the vitriolic explosions coming with more and more frequency from The Sun and Mencken. Our people,' on account of the frequency of these attacks, can be justified in believing that they are but reflecting the sentiment of Baltimore, and can also be excused for resenting them and carrying their business elsewhere. This is not a boycott but just general resentment, for after all, we of the Shore, certainly cannot be expected to remain friendly to a section of the State that repeatedly goes out of its way to label us "morons". "blind leaders of the bind", "snooping soul savers," "poor white trash," "simian office-seekers," "porcine, knavish politicians," "hacks," "prehensile professional patriots," who inhabit an "unhappy region,*' filled with "swamps," and is a "dismally iso'ated, poverty-stricken" part of the State, which is the home of "whooping soul-savers," with "no apparent intelligence on the bench, and no courage and no decency in its local press."
We cannot get enthused, and rush to hug those who insist that we are "degenerates," slowly slipping "downward," both "mentally and morally," that we are infested with "boozing-dry politicians," "ninth-rate men,7' "barbarians," poltroons," "stupid people," with "clowns in the pulpit," and "clowns in the editorial chairs," from which poverty has caused most of its "best sons to move out.:"
We cannot be expected to continue to do business with a section of the state that has used every conceivable ward to show its contempt for us and to blacken us to the uninformed outside world, so it can b* easily understood why the business interests of Baltimore City are forever lamenting the ever-decreasing business of the Eastern Shore. The delivry facilities of this modern age have made the Eastern Shore independent of Baltimore City in a business line, and we can therefore afford to ignore their self-appointed leadership and dictatorship, and continue to conduct our affairs in a manner to suit ourselves,, and in just so many words tell the Baltimore Sun, and Mencken, and Bernard Ades, and his Defense Communist, Bolshevik organization to "go chase themselves,"
Showing the extent to which Baltimore business is being affected by these attacks, The Salisbury Times of Friday states that in Salisbury alone, within 48 hours, orders from Baltimore retailers and wholesalers, placed by Salisbury businesses have been canceled to the extent of $148,000, one firm canceling an order for $28,000.. while another Salisbury concern, the largest of its kind on the peninsula, severed connection with fifteen Baltimore business houses with which it has been doing business for years. This movement, it is said, is not confined to Salisbury, but is spreading to all parts of the Shore. One Baltimore newspaper has been taken from the dealers' stands at various towns on the Shore and burned. At Delmar bundles of papers have been seized from the station platform and burned.
Salisbury's reply to the interference in Shore affairs of men and women of the ilk of Mencken, Ades, Mays, Labor Defense League, and all other Anarchist and Communist groups, coir posed for the most part, of men and women from the lowest strata of the mongrel breeds of European gutters, may not have been such as to merit the applause of the better-thinking people, but at any rate, it was to say the least, effective and convincing. The Shore's reply to continued attacks by the press of Baltimore City, may be expected to prove equally convincing.
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