The Waterbury Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1917-1946, 1943-07-26

spraWling government buildings
well-kept green's except when thu
crab grass is dead, monuments, me
MORALS, malls, and marble palaces
Not all of Washington that i
beautiful is in this area. There are
good side trips to the airport OF
| the national cathedral or Mount
Vernon or out around embassies
But by and large, once you stray
outside the accepted haunts fol-
strangers and tourists you run into
| the other side of Washington, the
dirty side of Washington, the Wash
ington of vice and crime and insan-
itation and sums.
Under the crowding of wartime
conditions, this other side of Wash
irgton has been gradually growing
worse until today it is nothing short
OF a national scandal. Even the
local papers and the people who are
paid to be burbling over at all times
with professional civic pride now
break out almost daily in admission
that the national capital city, for all
its magnificence, is just another
hotter, sinking hive of inhuman-
ity.
RESTAURANTS BLACKLISTED
Other cities get their dirt from
manufacturing and industry. Wash
ington has practically none, for the
smoke of the Navy Yard and the
Bureau of Standards isn't enough to
cloud the sun or provide one cinder
per thousand eyes. Washington is
clean that way. 1t gets it's physical
dirt, like its political dirt, more
subtly.
Nearly a fourth of Washington
restaurants were recently black
listed by the Health Department of
the District of Columbia for per-
sistent violations Of sanitary regula-
tons. Most of them are the smaller,
cheap joints, both colored and white.
The principal difficulty these res
taurants have is in getting their
dishes washed, for lack of help. The
marvel of it is there has been no
epidemic.
A congressional subcommittee on
the District of Columbia did get
excited enough to make an investi-
cation of sanitary conditions in the
city. 1t took them three months
and they found that everything
which could be wrong, was. Over
crowding, substandard living condi-
tons, danger of epidemicS, increase
in malaria and meningitis, made
quate garbage collection and dis
posal, 900 houses with outdoor priv
les not connected to sewers, IA out
Of 23l families studied shown to be
living in deplorable conditions with
per cent having no running water,
% per cent no inside toilet facilities,
SO per cent cooking on coal or ker-
osene stoves, IS percent without
furnace heart. Rats overrun large
sections of the city and typhus
germs have been found in a few.
Over 5000 premises entered were
found to be rat infested and the
occupants given instructions on how
to kill them.
CRIME WAVE?
Summing it all up, so per cent
of the population of the District of
Columbia was reported to be living
in slum conditions. This portion of
the population lives in an area
slightly larger than three square
miles, which contains approximate
ly 40 per cent of the deficient dwell
lings in the District. 1t goes with
out saying that most of these peo-
pie are the colored help that does
the dirty work for the other half
and therefore has an excellent
chancs to spread infection.
On top of this. the fair city on the
Potomac has discovered it has a
crime wave. A scathing report from
the Washington Criminal Justice
Association reports $500 crimes in
1912, 5000 of which were unsolved.
OF the 1900 adult and 500 juvenile
arrests, there were less than 700 con-
victions. Juvenile delinquency cases
are running at the rate of $50 day.
In the past year there were 1900
burglaries, 1000 robberies, 542 as
saults and so murders.
Prostitution is rampant. Washing
ton being one of the worst cities in
the country from the viewpoint of
street soliciting according to the
report Venereal disease infections
contracted by members of the arm
ed services in Washington are at the
rate of 1000 a year.
This is the Washington which the
visitors don't see.