As these pages unfold you will get a picture of how more than 1,500,000 people live. Few would stand for some of Washington’s nauseating conditions in their own towns. Yet they take them here complacently. Congressmen, the lords of the city, shrug at what would throw them out of office if the good burghers in Beloit or Boonetown suspected—and cared.
Washington has a heritage of “everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” But the stimulation which sparks its evils is different, though the result is the same.
Of old, Congress didn’t worry about local crime because all the people could do about it was write letters to the papers. But now, since crime is nationally syndicated, some legislators actively protect Washington crime, because it means more funds back in their bailiwicks from the branches of the swelling Syndicate of silk-lined racketeers who are allied with Washington’s criminals.
So this is the nation’s capital: with its panderers and prostitutes; gamblers and gunmen; conmen and Congressmen; lawmakers and law-breakers; fairies and Fair Dealers.
It is a city of moods, even drearier when Congress is away campaigning or vacationing; yet it turns electric when something big is about to happen.
It is a city of the wistful little people with adding-machine minds.
Over all, a feeling of fear pervades it. People become conditioned to talking in whispers. Senators will walk you to the middle of the room, then mumble, even when what they have to say is inconsequential. The main indoor sport is conspiracy.
We give you Washington: not the city of statesmen, but the stateless city.