Moving Day

Part of the U.S. Government last week fled from the national capital: in the biggest moving job on record Home Owners' Loan Corp. moved to Manhattan to find room to work.

Washington nowadays is like a mining town in a gold rush. Last June the Government had 184,000 workers on the payroll in Washington--almost 70,000 more than it had at the peak of World War I. New workers flow in at a rate of around 1,000 a week. Federal offices now occupy 22,219,287 square feet of floor space in Washington, expect to need 2,790,000 more in the next six months. Some strange quarters Government offices have been squeezed into:

> The Alien Registration division of the Department of Justice is housed in an abandoned roller-skating rink.

> Part of WPA is in a onetime home for nurses.

> The Social Security Board is scattered piecemeal over Washington: in the old Portland Hotel, the Rochambeau Apartments, various other odd corners.

> The Civil Service Commission has four floors above a furniture store.

> Part of the Treasury works in the three top floors of the Raleigh Hotel. Treasury files are kept in the famed old Belasco Theatre, across Lafayette Square from the White House.

Two months ago the President remarked that some Government agencies would have to leave overcrowded Washington. First to go was the Department of Interior's tiny Grazing Division, which took 40 employes to Salt Lake City. On Oct. 1 the U.S. Forest Service will move its Regional office to Philadelphia.

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