The Smiths Go to Washington

Washington, D.C. telephone operators last week had grown so used to chanting, "The line is busy," that they frequently sang it out before callers got a chance to say a word. The capital's swamped switchboards were an indication of what was inundating Washington: a flood of people and business. Last week, with Easter holidays, the Cherry Blossom Festival, and the Daughters of the American Revolution rustling into Washington for their annual counterrevolution, the flood burst all bounds.

Without previous "reservation, not a room was to be had in any of the city's 28 first-class hotels. In all the District of Columbia, there was scarcely an untenanted room or bed. Many a bed was rented to two people, a la Cox & Box.

Estimates were that 200,000 visitors jammed into the city, already stuffed to the scuppers.

New Deal agencies had swelled the capital's population to 663,091 by the spring of 1940--an increase of 36.2% in ten years. In the last year 70,000 more have moved into the District.

To realtors, banks, restaurants, hotels, bars, prostitutes, it was boomtown prosperity. Per capita earning in the city was the world's highest: $23 a week. On the first and 15th of every month, $20,000,000 in Federal wages spout out of the Treasury into workers' pockets. Postage receipts were up $100,000,000 in February 1941 over February 1940. In the past five years, department-store sales jumped from an annual $57,000,000 to $85,000,000. In a year, one drugstore chain sold 40,000 alarm clocks.

Capital Transit Co. hauled 108% more passengers in its busses and trolleys than in 1933, did not begin to carry all the traffic. Private autos jammed parking places, brushed fenders with 4,000 taxis, crawling at horse-& -buggy speed during the rush hours.

Meantime new apartment houses, new hotels, new private houses were raising their skeletons into the soft spring air; the Government hired new workers at the rate of 4,000 a month; sites were being hunted for six new Government buildings.

Bail as it might, Washington was being swamped by a war-swollen tide of business and people.

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