Evening star., 1938-04-10
Fifty Years Ago
In The Star

Washington was greatly shocked fifty
years ago by the death of Edward A.
no.,. Paul, principal of the high
WINS school, as the result of an
Driving. accident concerning which
The Star of April q 1888,
says:
THE death of Prof. Paul, the widely
known and highly respected principal of
the high school. from injuries received by
being run down while riding his bicycle,
by man on horseback, will stir public
interest again in the subject of careless
orlVlng on the cltyS thoroughfareS
There is altogether too much of it here
II the number of hairbreadth escapes
were added to the number of serious
accidents which are recorded from time
to time the showing would startle every
one. 1t is common thing, for instance,
to see the drivers of market wagons. bug
gies and other vehicles of the lighter sort
turn sharp corners into narrow streets
at the same speed they would maintain
on the broadest and straiahtest course.
with their eyes raised to the sky or fixed
on the vanishing horizon instead of
watching the horses and the road. Such
driver is as much of a public nuisance
as tipsv brawler and the thoroughfares
OF washington ought to be as speedily
renewed OF his presence by the police
The resolution submitting constitu-
tional amendment to give the District a
Senator and repre-
1oi 1o'1o'ei sentatlon proportion
Representation. ate to its population
in the House and in
the electoral college" says The Star of
April s. 1888 follows the course advocat-
ed in a series of articles recently pub
lished in The Star. District residents
desiring the rights of American citizens
should ask nothing different from or
less than this. BY members of Congress
who wish to place upon the same foot
ing with other American citizens the
people of Washington who are held to
this spot by family, property or business
ties, or by lack of means to furnish sup
port while struggling for a foothold in
a new location and are unwilling or un-
able to abandon their homes, it may be-
of their childhood, nothing less than this
can consistently be proposed and
granted.
THE Nation planned great city upon
this territory. 1t acquired title to only
part of the city and District. Clearly it
did not intend that this magnificently
planned city and this broad space of ter
ritory should remain without inha bitants,
or with such residents only as were di-
rectly dependent upon the Government
The declarations of the national legisla-
tors showed that it was intended. when
the population should become sufficient,
to grant the inhabitants representation
by constitutional amendment in the Ma
tional Legislature. A great city has at
last grown up here, as was originally ex-
pected, and the permanent population,
tied to the soil, increases largely every
year. A constitutional amendment is not
to be obtained in twenty minutes and it
will not be expedient to press the political
question to hasty decision to the detri-
ment of practical requests for the salts
faction of pressing material needs of the
present. But before many years the ir-
resistible course of events will compel
Congress to decide between two policies.
Either the American right of representa-
tion in the National Government must
be granted the thousands upon thou
sands OF permanent Washingtonians or
the reservation theory must be carried to
its logical end, the private ownership in
the District must be destroyed with COM
pensation by the exercise of the right of
eminent domain and the superf1uous in
habitants not in Government employ
must leave or be evicted. Which shall
it be?"