Lamoille newsdealer. [volume] (Hyde Park, Vt.) 1860-1877, 1863-03-05
SOCIAL CONDITION OF wAsHIGNTON.

has taken place there The concourse of
people on the streets, in the public bull
dings, and houses devoted to public enter
tainment, is incredible. Whence do they
come? Why are they here? No visible
employment occupies them. No hand seems
to feed them. But the great tbrong re-
mains-the thousands that leave in the
departing trains are more than compensa-
ted for by the increased thousands that the
arriving trains bring in. Complaints are
made that the railroads are inadequate to
the accumulation of the travel seeking
Washington. Heaven knows what would
become of the hapless myriads that fail to
reach Washington on this account, if an e.
vii day should bring them donble-track
railways to the Tiber Creek and the Po-
tomac.
But why this rush to Washington ? The
presence of the army in Virginia does not
explainit. The crowd is greater now with
HOOKER on the Rappahannock, than it was
when MCCLELLAN, with greater army lay
around Washington year ago. Money
rather than Mars, we judge, carries the
multitude to Washington. The pecunia-
ry interests involved in the legislation of
Congress are so vast that they draw to
Washington tens of thousands of people
more than were in the habit, in former
years, of visiting the Federal Capital.
Washington, in its social life, is now one
of the marvels of the country. The place
is crowded to replction. But for its mag
nificent distances, it might be said to be
crowded to suffocation. Every hotel is al
ways full, and it is an affair of nightly &C.
cuwencc for strangers arriving on the late
trains to wander about for hours from door
to door of clearinghouse and private
residences, seeking shelter for the night
Permission to sleep on the floor of a car
peted parlor, is boon that scores, if not
hundreds of strangers in Washington, are
every week glad to obtain. Every nook
and corner of house-room that thrift can
render available, is appropriated to public
entertainment. And vast apartments that
few years ago were made more desolate
by an occasional solitary occupant, are now
subdividcd by thin partitions and fitted up
with banks, wherein dozen sleepers run
the risk of making night hideous dy their
disturbances of each other. From 10000
inhabitants when the war began, it is es-
timated that the population of Washington
has now gone upto 100000; and the cry
is, still they come"
But while this great increase of popu-
lation, transient and resident, has taken
place, there has been no increase in the
number of tenements fitted for human &C.
cupancy. The hospitals that Government
built during the past year for the sick and
wounded soldiers, constitute the sum total
of the addition in house. building that
Washington can boast of. Nor is there
any sign of improvement in this direction.
Real estate is dormant in the Federal City
Every ingenuity is employed to make the
most money out of the generally old, dir
ty and ill-contrived structures in the place
but none of the profits so eagerly gathered
are expended in building better houses
for the accommodation of the people.
We have not overdrawn the social dis
comforts of Washington. Every person Of
refined sensibility, or of decent habits c
ven, who has had occasion to visit Wash
ington lately, knows that it is severe af
Fiction to do SO. And little reflection
will satisfy any one that what is now al
inconvenience mainly to transient persons
must soon become grave difficulty in tn
way of Government. Our congressman
cannot hire respectable houses and liv
decently in Washington on their salary 0
$4,000 year. Much less can the thou
sands Of clerks of departments and othe
humble employees of the government liv
honestly and fifty on their pay of $500 t.
1900 per annum. The transient multi
tude pay better, and permanent renter
: and boarders must give way before them
: or pay the advance prices that landlord
"