[WOMAN’S INFLUENCE FOR GOOD.]
Shaping Legislation for the District of Columbia.
Washington, April 29, 1873.
Before the present form of government was inaugurated, Washington, in every respect, resembled a gambling or watering spa. A session of Congress might be termed “the season.” It was called a city through courtesy, because in reality it was only a straggling, awkward village. The brute creation traversed its streets, whilst forlorn pedestrians picked their way over disjointed sidewalks. The greater proportion of its people were made up of “birds of passage.” The citizen proper, if caught, was found to belong to one or the other of the two extremes of the social scale. He might be of the line of Lord Baltimore, with the blue blood of a foreign aristocracy coursing through his attenuated frame; but the chances are that he was some poor artisan or shopkeeper, who picked up a precarious living existing on the double-distilled crumbs which fell from Uncle Sam’s table.
Washington had no such electric life as Philadelphia enjoys, imparted to her by her commerce and manufactures. When Congress expired, the city, like a lazy bear, snuggled down to its long, snoozey sleep, and when waking-time came, like poor Bruin, it found nothing left but its claws. In its famished condition it took a great many strangers and Congressmen to fill the aching void. But gone are the lawmakers and Credit Mobiliers! Vanished the bare shoulders and Paris frippery! But Washington, newly baptized and regenerated, takes her place in the long line of sister cities whose foundations are securely laid by the strong hands of her permanent citizens.
Yesterday our new legislature met for the third time. The hall consecrated to the delegates and members of the council was filled with well-dressed, fine-looking men, adorned with shining beavers and immaculate boots. They occupied all available space on the floor; they poured over long flights of stairs, and spread out in a broad expanse of human life on the pavement below. “These,” said a bystander, “are taxpayers of the District,” and the response came quick, “This is the real Washington, wide-awake!”
In an upper room of the same building at the same hour the council meet. This nice little body is called together by the governor, a president is then elected who presides during the session, and altogether considerable honor is evoked from a small outlay, and in the meantime the siestas and summer comforts of the principal heads of the government need not be disturbed.
Below, in the house of delegates, the excitement deepens. The opposing candidates seem to have equal strength. The fight is all within the limits of one party. The three Democrats look around as innocently as if they were not inwardly praying for the fate of the Kilkenny cats to overtake their opponents. Two women are seen, each with a delegate fastened securely by the buttonhole. They are both genuine ladies—one being the wife of a leading United States Senator, the other known in Washington and elsewhere for her disinterested labors in behalf of the poor and unfortunate of her own sex. What does it all mean? One of the gentle lobbyists is interrogated:
“We have two men up as candidates for speaker; one is a good husband and father. He is with us in all our works of reform. He believes in doing as much for women as for men. The other is bad—just as bad as he can be. He loves women because they are women.”
“Isn’t that every man’s fault?”