Evening star., 1941-04-16
Member of the Associated Press.
AT Jones Point

AS the years go marching on, it is
well to keep alive the spirit of the
original cornerstone laying at Jones
Point, which took place on April IS,
$50 years ago. Such ceremonies as
those held yesterday at the site keep
alive the memories and rededicate
the living to the hopes and aspira-
tions of those now gone.
Said the orator, $50 years ago,
when the stone was laid: Under
this stone may jealousy and selfish
ness be forever buried. From
this stone, may superStructure
arise, whose glory, whose magnifl-
cence, whose stability, unequaled
hitherto, shall astonish the world"
1t required of the orator faith and
courage to voice such proud hope.
When the stone was laid inscribed
"The beginning of the Territory of
Columbia" residents of the Ter
ritory" were largely collected in
Georgetown on one side of the river
and in Alexandria on the other side.
The site of Washington was series
of pastures, marshes, patches of
cultivated ground where wheat, to-
bacco and Indian corn were raised,
and green hills, tree covered or over
grown with scrub oak. Capitol Hill
itself was dense forest. What was
later to become Pennsylvania avenue
was a deep morasS, covered with
alder bushes. The future site of
Massachusetts avenue was a bog,
undrained as late as 1862, when
Anthony Trollope, the English novel,
ist, waded along it knee deep through
snipe grounds.
The pastures, the woodland and
the marshes have been transformed
into the teeming Capital City we
know today; the weak, disorganized
and discordant series of communities
which made up the nominal union
of 1871 has become great Nation,
homogeneous, prosperous, powerful,
dominating hemisphere and influ-
encing the course of troubled world
that finds here, and only here, the
greatest hope for the future.
The City of the Union, marked out
first at Jones Point, created, con-
trolled and largely owned by the
Nation, has been closely identified
in progress and lack of progress with
the Union itself. 1t has reflected,
with sharp clearness, the fortunes
and the miSfortunes of the Union. In
its beauty and in its grandeur, it
has symbolized the spiritual aspira-
tions of Nation. In it's squalor
and poverty, the petty jealousies of
its rulers and the wrongs suffered as
result of n1isgovernment, 1t has mir
rered Nations shortcomings.
And the site of the stone itself is
symbolic of a curious contradiction.
For the site, marking the cornerstone
of the District, is now outside of the
District. Nine years after retroces-
sion of the Virginia portion of the
District, the stone itself became part
of retaining wall, was buried and
found again, but in Virginia-not
the District. And with the loss and
rediscovery, outside of the District,
of this cornerstone, there also was
lost to the District-found now only
beyond its borders-the cornerstone
principle of great Republic. The
unrepresented District of Columbia
is politically outside of the Union
of States. The National Capital,
embodiment of the soul of the Nation,
is politically outside of the Nation.
The foundation stone of democracy,
the right of the governed to be repre-
sented in the councils of Government,
is beyond the confining borders of
the Capital of democracy.
This week, marking the 150th
anniversary of the original corner
stone laying of the District, marks
also the beginning of hearings before
Senate subcommittee on proposals
to extend to the loyal Americans who
live within the District the basic
voting rights Of citizens of the United
States. Until those rights are
granted, the misplaced cornerstone
at Jones Point, emblem of promise
and hope, remains also the emblem
Of a slur on that superstructure
which the orator Of century and a
half ago envisioned as one whose
glory, whose magnif1cence. whose
stability, unequaled hitherto, shall
astonish the world!"