The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1922-08-07
Congress is Urged to Sweep
Sums From Nations Capital
through Washington, Like Hidden Sores, Run Tortuous
Alleys With Rows of Shacks Crowded With Humanity
Mostly Coored- Disease Always Menace

WASHINGTON, d. c., Aug. q
Goat Alley. Pig Alley and Casey's
Court are not inventions of moving
picture producers. They are the al
dresses of number of people n the
national capital Congress is being
urged TO sweep such places from the
map of Washington nc leave them en-
tirely to tenement fiction
Washington is generally known as a
city without slums. Certainly no tour.
list to the capital ever saw any condi-
tons such as New York's East Side
openly displays. Even oldest residents
say that the city had no Stun dis
trict They said it in all good faith.
They had never visited the alleys or
they never thought of them as slums
Washington has no Stun district,
it is true. But through the city, like
hidden sores, run tortucus alleyways
with rows of shacks crowded with hu-
manity, mostly colored.
Typical Instance
An investigator who spent six
months living in one Of the alleys gave
the following as a typical instance OF
bad conditions: A four room alley
home sheltered Is persons. The moth
er of the home had had 16 children.
Her five grown daughters all had ille-
Ultimate children. One son was in
the insane asylum. One of the daugh
tiers was dying of tuberculosis. An
other was in Jail for cutting a man
and a woman.
According TO the story, when this
last daughter was a little girl, she
/ begged from door TO door saying that
! her dead mother lay awaiting burial
| in their desolate home, or that the
/ family lived in the country where all
| their possessions had just been de-
| stroyed by fire"
The alley situation in Washington
/ is unusual There are 224 inhabited
alleys, the homes of $500 people. In
another American city this condition
would have been made a political is
sue long ago. The necessary funds
would have been raised and the alley
| homes torn down.
| Date Back to Civil War
/ But Washington must wait on con-
! gress, and congress is constantly busy
with national affairs and always anx-
| ious to economic. It takes money
and careful planning to revise a city
and to move $500 of the poorest
people in it without panic or great
disorder Furthermore, the alley sys-
| tenn works 10 the benefit of the more
affluent classes. So there has been
apathy. The alleys have continued
since before the Civil war, a hidden
| but insidious blot on the beauty of
| the capital.
| The system started in a queer way.
| Washington was laid out in deep lots
with plenty of back yard space. Lanes
| between lots became alIeyways vein
ing the center of a square. Outhouses
were built in some of the back yards
and servants sometimes were quar-.
tered there.
i When the Civil war ended large
numbers of soldiers were in Wash
! ington and wooden barracks were
built for them in some of this back.
yard space. The soldiers left, but
thirty Or forty thousand negroes came
swarming into the government head
quarters at that time and the barracks
u were eagerly taken over for homes. A
few of these Civil war barracks are
still standing and inhabited. Other
negroes found shacks in alleyways
me people VINO employed them were
glad to have them living conveniently
at hand.
Bought by Land Sharks
! Domestic servants were in demand
in Washington and houses were bull
for them on the back lots In time
these lots often became entirely sepa
rated from the property facing the
street. Rows of alley houses wer,
bought up by land sharks because the,
brought in good profits.
William Deane Ham, member of the