The Washington herald., 1918-02-16

Washington, the new boom town,
with its crowded streets and homes,
filed with more than 5000 "dollar-a-
year, dollar-an-hour and dollar-a-sec-
ond" new residents. smiling despite at
tendant discomforts, has been de-
scribed by William James Black, in
an article reprinted from LIE Journal
1t follows, in part:
Washington, the new Mecca Of de-
mocracy, where signs and wonders
are being wrought for humanity, has
become the boom town to which the
venturesome find passage and the pas
sionate pilgrims take their way.
The Washington boom Is not like a
johannesburg golconda stampede. an
Oklahoma City land rush. or a Detroit
cycle whirl. It is not Seattle boom
that hunks three shifts to a bed, a
wage crowd with callouses on its
hands and mud on its boots. 1t is q
laundered boom and wears spats.
Eddies I'm New Vortex.
Scarcely less feverish and multi
tudinous, however, are its eager,
jostling, dollar-a-year, dollar-an-
hour and dollar-a-second throngs.
trekking back overland from the
prairies, the cotton fields and the
lumberwoods, eddying in this new
vortex of industrial, financial, poll
tical and military activity.
Washington. the dynamic, Is not
without the accompaniments to sud-
den expansion. landlord profiteer-
ing, real estate speculation, restau-
rant shortage. housing crises and
the discomforts of mushroom insti-
tions.
The Capital grows and groans.
spilling over it's old horizon and
congesting at its center. until, like
New York, it begins to seem much
too small for what Is demanded Of
it.
Fifty thousand people having ar
rived within the war year. 1t is now
city of over 100000, hard put to
live in the houses of 1915. Its
street car system is overwhelmed,
its telephone system is a conun-
drum, it's office buildings are jamm-
ed, its restaurants are turned into
vertitable breadlines and its crowd
ed streets look like the road to
the trenches.
War Spirit at It's Best.
The patriotic war spirit Is at its
very best here, as indeed is the
spirit of community friendliness.
Washington is not anything If it is
not fraternal. And this "hail-fel-
camaraderie is en-
hanced by the discomforts and in
adequacies of Washington's adap-
tation to its new housing RESPONSE
bilities.
Instinct with the spirit of dis
covery and adventure, the new
Washington shows a disregard for
antecedent things and strives good
humoredly to sort out its comforts
from the jumbled heaps. enjoying
those pleasures of camp fraterniz-
ing usually monopolized by the very
poor.
Practically, Washington has ad-
justed itself badly. The growth is
forced to become intensive, rather
than expansive. Unlike in Oklaho-
ma or Chicago, where new claims
are staked on the raw prairie, the
Washington boom merely revalues
the foot-frontage of its bed and
table spaces. Vacant lots have no
present value whatever, unless
open-air sleeping becomes fashion
able in the spring.
Capital Is Lacking.
The capital lacks capital. 1t lacks
local initiative. The government has
produced miracles in departmental ex-
pansion on No Mans Land, in requi-
sitioned office and apartment build
ings for administrative purposes.
Shrewd Western industrial magnates
take pains to house man and horse
that are asked to labor on the NOR
row. And there is q government
movement here, too, to appropriate
capital for housing building.
Washington is a renting, or, rather,
a re-renting proposition, with its
temporary population. Landlordism is
made a live issue by the cessation of
building. The monopoly becomes a
perfect thing. The johnson bill, to
regulate rents in Washington is, of
course, the most radical measure ever
proposed outside of the Russian Soviet.
Regulating prices or wages toys with
economic relations. but regulating
rent, interest or profit gets to grips
with fundamentals.
The zeal estate men in Washington,
in the midst of, the Iiveliest land
boom that the capital has known in
this generation, thrust vigorously at
the proposed rent regulation. They
rightly attribute much of the rent