The stately dome of our lovely Capitol
For here at our Federal capital we have a strange mixture of real democracy and false aristocracy as well as real—if there be any such thing as real aristocracy. The fact that almost every person in the town works, more or less directly, for Uncle Sam makes for the democracy. And that self-same fact seems to fairly establish the aristocracy—you can frankly call much of it snobbishness—of the place. To understand the whys and wherefores of this paradox one would need, himself, to be an employé of the government, of large or small degree. They are many and they are complicated. But an illustration or two will suffice to show what we mean:
A rule, which no one nowadays seems very desirous of fathering, but nevertheless a rule of long standing, states that when a department chief enters an elevator in any of the department buildings it must carry him without other stops to his floor. The other passengers in the car must wait the time and the will of the chief, no matter how urgent may be their errands or how short the time at their command. A gradual increase of this silly rule has made it include many assistants, sub-chiefs and assistants to sub-chiefs. Only the elevator man knows the rank at which a government employé becomes entitled to this peculiar privilege. But he does know, and woe be to that little stenographer who enters the Department of X—— at just three minutes of nine in the morning, with the expectation of being at her desk with that promptness which the Federal government demands of the folk in its service. The second assistant to a second assistant of a sub-chief of a sub-division may have entered. The little stenographer's desk is upon the third floor; the gentleman whose official title spelled out reaches almost across a sheet of note paper is upon the seventh. There are folk within the crowded elevator-car for the fourth and fifth and sixth floors as well. But they have neither title nor rank and the car shoots to the seventh floor for the benefit of the Mr. Assistant Somebody. If there is another Assistant Somebody there to ride down to the ground floor—and there frequently is—you can imagine the consternation of the clerks. And yet it is part of the system under which they have to work when they work for that most democratic of employers—Uncle Samuel.
The secretary of an important department who entered the cabinet with the present administration stayed very late at his office one evening, but found the elevator man awaiting him when he stepped out into the hallway of the deserted building. It was only a short flight of stairs to the street, and the secretary—it was Mr. Bryan—asked the man why he had not gone home.
"My orders are to stay here, sir, until the secretary has gone home for the night," was the reply.
It is hardly necessary to say that right there was one order in the State department that was immediately revoked, while some twenty thousand clerks and stenographers who form the working staff of official Washington sent up little prayers of thanksgiving. These clerks and stenographers make up the every-day fiber of the town life. They go to work in the morning at nine—for a half-hour before that time you can see human streams of them pouring toward the larger departments—and they quit at half past four. The closing hour used to be five, but the clerks decided that they would have a shorter lunch-time and so they moved their afternoon session thirty minutes ahead. Half an hour is a short lunch-time and so official Washington carries its lunch to its desk, more or less cleverly disguised. The owners of popular priced downtown restaurants have long since given up in utter disgust.
But official Washington does not care. Official Washington ends its day at half-past four and official Washington is such a power that matinées, afternoon lectures and concerts of any popular sort are rarely planned to begin before that hour. And on the hot summer afternoons of the Federal capital the wisdom of such early closing is hardly to be doubted. On such afternoons, matinée or concert, a cup of tea or a walk along the shop windows of F street are all forgotten. For beyond the heat of the city, within easy reach by its really wonderful transportation system, are playgrounds of infinite variety and joy. True it is that the really fine parts of Rock Creek Park are rather rigidly held for those folk who can afford to ride in motor cars, but there is the river, innumerable picnic-grounds in every direction, fine bathing at Chesapeake beach, not far distant—and the canal.
Of all these the old Chesapeake and Ohio canal is by far the most distinctive. And how the Washington folk do love that old waterway! What fun they do have out of it with their motor boats and their canoes. If that old water-highway, almost losing its path in the stretches of thick wood and undergrowth, had been created as a plaything for the capital city, it could hardly have been better devised. The motor boats and the canoes set forth from Georgetown—on holidays and Sundays in great droves. They go all the way up to Great Falls—and even beyond—working their passage through the old locks, exchanging repartee with the lock-tenders, loafing under the shadows of the trees, drinking in the indolence of the summer days.
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But Shafer's Lock or Cabin John's Bridge is not the Chevy Chase Club and official Washington knows that. It reads in the daily papers of that other life, of the folk who wear white flannels and dawdle around great porches all day long; hears rumors brought, Lord knows how, from the gossipy Metropolitan Club; almost touches shoulders with its smart breakfasts and lunches and dinners when it comes in and out of the confectioners' and the big hotels. But it is none the less apart, hopelessly and irrevocably apart. Uncle Sam may take the office folk of his capital and give them the assurance of a livelihood through long years, but that is all. He gives them no chance to step out of the comfortable rut into which they have been placed. The good positions, the positions that mean rank and title and entrance to the hallowed places, rarely come through promotions. They are the gifts of fortune, gifts even to strange folk from Cleveland or Madison or Stockton. They are not the reward of faithful service at an unknown desk.