Las Vegas optic., 1914-08-27

| " AfOAb oAANyt
Four or five scrawny pickaninnies
were playing marbles at the entrance
to Goat alley when the White House
car stopped there with Mrs. Wilson
and several women friends. They
scampered up the cobblestoned can
yon, yelling the tidings as they flew,
and black faces appeared at the win
dows. However, Goat alley was more
or less used to having finely dressed
white ladies'" come picking their
way through the dirt and filth, asking
questions in stilted voices, leaving
quarters and dollars, and then never
coming back again.
But this white lady" did come
back, She came day after day, day
after day. Sometimes with the big
White House Pierce limousine, some
times in friends electric runabout;
sometimes she brought procession
of cars, with senators, representa-
tives, ministers and business men of
the city.
Mrs. Wilson would call up men at
the capitol and simply force them to
go with her through Goat alley and
Tin Cup alley, Bears Gap, Louise al
ley, Pig alley and all the other foul,
hot and filthy alleys of the city. She
took Oscar Underwood and Represent
ative A. Mitchell Palmer together on
one trip, and the leader of the house
democrats pledged himself after the
trip to work for the elimination of
the things he saw He has not for
gotten the pledge.
There are miles of alleys in Wash
ington. There are hundred thou
sand negroes and fully third of them
live in the inhabited alleys They die
of tuberculosis at an alarming rate
The death rate of the alleys is always
taken separate from the death rate ol
those living on the streets of Wash
ington. Mrs. Wilson learned that in
: the houses on the outside of the
blocks of Washington the death rate
would be normal, and right at the
back gates of these very folk would
be negroes living in the squalor OF
barbaric or medieval ignorance who
, would be dying twice as fast-and moi
so feet away,
Mrs. Wilson took the COMMITTEES oi
; the District of Columbia of the sen
ate through about 80 miles of alleys
of the dirtiest slums in the world OF
warm day, and would have received
the committees support at the expir
alton of the first mile, but she made
them finish the tour. She conducted
the house committee of the District
of Columbia through the same alleys
and opened their eyes to a condition
of squalor that would scarcely be be
lieved. They saw, within a quartet
of mile of the very capitol, in which
half naked children and rotting veg
etables and drunken men were 81
thick and indiscriminate that the in
vestigating party had to pick its way
: They saw the decayed boards o
floors that had been the homes o
rats and vermin and germs of dis
? fhA frcf ha4t 10 Nf ntt11
Scarcely an alley hut has runnin.
water, and the worst feature of th'
Washington alley is that occasional.
it will wind in and out of the interio
of a block in an aimless fashion, lik,
maze A policeman on the outsIdl
of the block would never be able tt
: tell what is going on in the inside o
that maze, and the consequent condi
ton of viciousness that has grown VI
in Washington's alleys is the cause
for the crowded police court eacl
morning and the clang of the emerg
ency hospital ambulances every da,
and all night.
'Well, what can we do about it,?
aske done of the congressman VIII,
: had gone with Mrs. Wilson.
People had been asking that TO
25 years. There have been hundreds
: of bills to correct alley evils intro
duced. and the commissioners of th'
District of Columbia had framed al
ordinance whereby when alley homes
reached a certain stage of rottennesl
they. were condemned by law and torn
down. This was slow method, ant
alley real estate owners were fight
ing off the day of reckoning by patch
ling up here and there.
II Mrs, Wilson and her women friend:
held a meeting. BY that time every
woman in Washington wanted to toir
the woman's welfare department. o.
: the National Civic Federation. Mrs
Wilson had procured the aid of Rep
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