Jack Lait

“ THE TUESDAY-TO-THURSDAY SET The most itching urge in Washington is to get away from it. Few have the conventional home ties there which bind the average American to the hearth, or the radiator. Weekends are dismally dull and shop shuts up from Friday night until Monday morning, with few exceptions. Civil servants rate thirty-day vacations. The winters are sleazy and frosty. The summers are insufferable in that swampy, flat region which enjoys no ocean breezes. ”

“ We have sketched for you the process whereby the pennies, dimes and dollars of the numbers-players, horse-bettors, hookers and junkies are harvested in Washington and funneled to the satraps who live in penthouses and mansions in New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills and Rome. They are big industry, our biggest. And while the principals hide in their drawing-rooms even if they pass through Washington, to or from Florida, they must maintain here high-powered lawyers, tax experts who study and report every decision of the Treasury, lobbyists, press agents and spies. ”

“ With such ancestry, it is no wonder today that “numbers” make one of the biggest businesses in Washington. The policy racket far exceeds bookmaking, the Number 1 source of gambling revenue in all others parts of the country.
Before the plane which brings the arriving traveler to Washington lands at the National Airport, on the Virginia side, it swoops gracefully over the city in a salute. The tall, needle-like Washington Monument and the familiar dome of the Capitol arise through a sea of green, to dominate the landscape. ”

“ That she became invested with certain homely and all-wooly virtues by the worship of millions is precisely why she choked the last breath out of social tradition with her Negro friends, her boondoggling, sweaty indigents, her professional Socialists, her dedicated slum-house guardians of gutter garbage, and her antics as the militant apostle of democracy and equality. The bedrock of Society is inequality, the existence and recognition of an aristocracy. ”

“ But, more than any other, NW is the Tenderloin, in some ways more blatantly open than ever was New York’s infamous Satan’s Circus or Chicago’s 22nd Street.
Of all places, you would think Washington would be the last location a practical, professional prostitute would pick to pitch her camp. With so many more women than men, so many dames lonesome and far from home, on the eager upbeat for a meal, a drink or even a kind word, you’d figure mathematically, psychologically and pathologically that this would be a ghost town for the trollops. ”

“ One of the sights of Washington is the outpouring of the janes at five o’clock. Many of them dash for cocktail bars, where they compete with the harlots, who violently resent them and call them “scabs.”
A favorite after-work guzzle-and-grab spot is the Cafe of All Nations, in the Mayfair House, at 13th and F. Wise men in the mood are there awaiting the stampede—not only for pleasure, but for the gigolo’s mite. Men and women are paid the same for equal work. Therefore the income is high for females and low for males as such things are usually adjusted. ”

“ But the residents of the Washington area are, on the whole, remarkably well-dressed—not only the natives in Washington but the government employes drawn from every corner of the map. It is surprising how quickly they shed their corn-fed looks and begin to look like Easterners and try to act like them.
One wonders where the hoards of ill-dressed, low-mannered visitors eat and sleep.
Tourists may wander coatless through the White House and in the legislative office buildings, but all of the better restaurants and hotels require men to wear coats and ties at all times. ”

“ It is the only capital of any world power where there is no variety of humanity. London, Paris, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, these are great commercial centers where national government is incidental. Washington is inhabited by residents of every state in the union and representatives of every country on the globe, yet it is as backwater and provincial as any small inland one-plant town.
This most uncosmopolitan capital is overshadowed by that giant of metropolises, New York, only minutes away by air, and by Baltimore, with its wide open and blatant vice much nearer. ”

“ The kings are no longer king. The courts of Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, Rome, and of the giddy little Balkan states are now the headquarters of Labor Parties and worse. The crowned heads of England, The Netherlands and the Scandinavian kingdoms are kept figureheads. Diplomatic display is a sin against poverty and the world rash for unilateral social and economic status.
There is not an embassy in Washington which does not cost far more than it did 20 years ago. That is because they have become workhouses where the press of international business is sordid and tremendous. ”

“ The Mafia’s huge cache of currency, hidden in private safe deposit vaults and in banks throughout the world. Its earnings from illicit sources are so great, and come in so fast, the boys cannot invest it fast enough. They must hide most of the money because they failed to pay income tax on the major portion of it. It is no exaggeration to say they have billions of dollars in U.S. bills. With this bankroll they can bribe at will, elect many officials, and swing public opinion to incredible degrees. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Under Negro occupancy, some of the best dwellings in Washington, once residences of ambassadors, cabinet officers and the hated capitalists, now look like the slums the Fair Dealers decry.
In Washington, a Southern town with a Southern mentality, Negroes are not popular, are not accepted as brothers except by a nagging and noisy minority. The Negro is not Jim Crowed in street cars. There is no law against a Negro’s attending a theatre with whites, eating in the same restaurant or sleeping in the same hotel. ”

“ There is no doubt that Washington is a cesspool of iniquity and a Utopia for criminals. The setup of the local government and the calibre of the men who enforce its laws and sit on its benches are partly responsible. Archaic and often ridiculous laws and regulations are a contributing factor.
For instance, guns are easy to buy in second-hand stores. There is no law requiring a license to keep a gun in a home. That forbidding the carrying of one in a car is a dead letter. ”

“ After a hundred years, Washington still talks about Peggy Eaton and President Jackson’s Kitchen Cabinet. But, today’s mundane morsels will make no interesting reading, leave no spice for the raconteur.
Society is on the wane everywhere. Taxes, Communist and New Deal propaganda, the high cost of living, make it virtually impossible to keep up huge menages. Now only rich labor leaders, black marketeers, gangsters and grafters can afford the expense. ”

“ We don’t think gambling will ever be eliminated. We don’t think the public wants it to be. It is a human appetite, like sex and liquor, and no sumptuary legislation can wipe it out. But gambling corrupts law enforcement officers. While wagering is illegal and undercover, this is inevitable. When cops take bribes from bookmakers they feel they do no essential harm. ”

“ The only way to get authoritative data on fairies is from other fairies. They recognize each other by a fifth sense immediately, and they are intensely gregarious. One cannot snoop at every desk and count people who appear queer. Some are deceptive to the uninitiated. But they all know one another and they have a grapevine of intercommunication as swift and sure as that in a girls’ boarding school. Since they have no use for women in the main, and are uneasy with masculine men, they have a fierce urge, even beyond the call of the physical, for each other’s society. ”

“ Society is always the shadow of one luminous, scintillant, predominant woman, such as Mrs. Potter Palmer was in Chicago and the dowager Vanderbilt remained until senility denatured her in New York. In Washington that woman, even though she seldom entertains or permits herself to be entertained, must be the wife of the President. ”

“ We group together for purposes of posing a picture, every Washington lobbyist, fixer, five-percenter, hot-shot lawyer, industrial press agent, and man from Missouri. They are a multitude, especially men from Missouri.
When a really big fix is made, it usually is not handled in Washington at all. The deal is consummated back home, as a quid pro quo for a large campaign donation, after which the county or state chairman sends word through channels to his men in Washington that the matter should be okayed.
Lobbying can be a delightful and well-paid occupation. ”

“ Many of the girls roll their customers, mugg them or use knockout drops and then go through their pockets. But Washington’s prostitutes are not so hard-hearted as the street sirens in New York, where it is commonplace for one to be taken to a hotel-room and wake up doped and robbed, but never loved. ”

“ To this major seaport huge numbers of Italian and Sicilian immigrants have always been drawn. They formed the base for its underworld colony, made it a star on the Mafia map. It is a concentration point for illegally-entered Sicilians, stowed away on the freight steamers that ply between the Mediterranean and Chesapeake Bay, by a smuggling-ring. As these aliens become Americanized, grow rich and powerful in the rackets, they import new waves of Sicilians for the underworld’s menial tasks. ”

“ Washington is a made-to-order architectural paradise with the political status of an Indian reservation, inhabited by 800,000 economic parasites; no industries but one, government, and the tradesmen and servants and loafers and scum that feed on the highest average per capita income in the world, where exist the soundest security, the mightiest power, and the most superlative rates of crime, vice and juvenile delinquency anyxwhere. ”

“ Baltimore is exceeded in population only by New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Detroit. It has passed Boston, St. Louis and Cleveland, and is growing. It is a combination of an anachronism and a boom town. Labor is flocking in to work its mushrooming airplane factories, huge wholesale trading houses, needle-trade shops and ship works. These are mostly people without roots.
But Baltimore is getting the gravy that overflows from crowded Washington, the hot money out for the kind of fun not tolerated in the District. ”

“ All mankind has a common weakness for spreading gossip. Most people can retail only minutiae. But in Washington, matters that may rock the world are entrusted, or pass through the hands of, those who otherwise would have little to tell beyond back-fence piddle. Furthermore, for one to say his wires are tapped is a mark of self importance.
The capital is overrun by snoops and spies, not only using every cloak-and-dagger device for foreign transmission, but assigned and trained to catch and report inter-bureau information, rumors included. ”

“ At this writing, 27,000 people are employed in the Pentagon. It is a city within a city. Like all cities, it has its peccadillos. Many elevator operators are runners for bookies. Many colored messengers, male and female, sell policy slips. Reefers can be had. The cops—all kinds—don’t know what to do about it. The military police don’t like to arrest civilians, even those employed by the Army. The Virginia police say they have no authority because it’s federal property.
The same apathy that marks everything in Washington pervades the Pentagon and other federal buildings. ”

“ You can hardly expect a Congressman to insult a supporter.
Many ex-Congressmen, who can’t bear the thought of returning home after their defeat, remain in Washington as lobbyists. They enjoy an advantage, because, forever after, all ex-Senators and ex-Representatives have the privileges of the floor and the cloak-rooms. They can collar the ones they need while the legislators are in action. Thus, members, who are always aware of the possibility of being lame ducks themselves, keep these pleasant prospects of earning a generous living after retirement open and in good working order. ”

“ A captain of the Metropolitan Police told us that even honest Washington coppers seldom make arrests any more, because they know what will happen when they get in court. The judge will harass, bullyrag and humiliate them. It is not unusual for a District jurist to castigate the policemen, call them liars and framers, then discharge the prisoners without hearing defense evidence. When the defendant is a Negro, the cops know they are going to get a going-over from the bench. ”

“ Neighborhood stores adjacent to schools also purvey bootleg liquor and take bets from the juveniles, not only for their own school games, but on the horses and numbers.
Juvenile delinquency is almost as bad in the suburbs. There kids have cars, and “hot rod” races are common.
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. ”

“ Faded and forgotten are the days and nights when Washington was ablaze with social brilliance and the gossip behind the fans reflected the sturdy foibles and feuds and infidelities of a class in superior strata of lineage, wealth and those graces which cannot be acquired with sudden fortune. ”

“ Not all girls who come to Washington come to work for the government. Not all are high school graduates. Washington draws more street-walkers, who are strictly out for business, than any other town. They set out from the nearby hills of West Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, and they are purposeful as to their objectives. Many aren’t bad-looking. So the question again arises, why didn’t they go to New York or Hollywood and try for bigger stakes where flexible morals pay off better and the field for a killing is bigger? ”

“ In the early years of the Republic, grifters and grafters, highwaymen and conmen, pimps and prostitutes flocked into the city. Instead of being a community where women greatly outnumbered men, as they do today, early Washington contained almost entirely males. The first Congressmen and early office-holders were easy pickings for the fancy girls and their fancy men, who arrived a jump ahead of the lobbyists. Lonesome men whiled their time at cards and dice, and ever since then Washington has been a gamblers’ garden. ”