Youngsters ape their elders when they see the callousness of parents to the processes of law. Laxity, favoritism, New Deal “liberalism,” a general spirit of contempt for law enforcement are reflected in the growing generation. The solid virtues are “old hat.” Youth is on a rampage.
Washington has no monopoly on young criminals, but it has more of them per capita than any other city in the nation.
Lame-brains like to point out that only colored people are confined to “slums” in Washington; that no whites live in ghettos in the capital. If so, how come that juvenile delinquency among the whites is as startling as among the blacks, more so, in fact? As reported elsewhere in this book, Washington’s crime rate leads the nation. It is all the more startling to discover how many of these crimes are committed by children.
19. BOOZE AND BOTTLES
Washingtonians imbibe three times as much as you do, friend voter. Except for a few silly restrictions, no place in the country offers as many inducements to the potential alcoholic. The answer is, 14,151 drunks last year created a jail “housing crisis.” The number more than doubled in the last five years. Liquor consumption of the District is three times the U. S. average. Every resident, including new-born infants, soaked up almost four gallons of hooch last year.
Even allowing for thirsty tourists, conventioners, and Virginia and Maryland commuters, Washington drinks more than any other U. S. city, including dissolute New York and debauched Chicago.
This is the place where price control was invented, yet the District has no peacetime minimum price law on bottled goods. You can buy standard brands for a dollar less than anywhere else. Many unnamed whiskeys and gins are cheap; it doesn’t pay to cook your own. Whiskey costs less than $2.50 a fifth, and gin can be bought for $1.75. Yet the bootleg business is a major industry. Millions of gallons sold in the District, on which no tax was paid, swell the known figures.
The liquor control situation is an anomaly. Like the District of Columbia, itself, the liquor laws were born of compromise, this between Congressmen from the wet and bone-dry states.