Inspection Trip

A scant hundred feet from the Senate Office Building lies a dismal little thoroughfare named Schott's Alley. Its huddled brick houses have no plumbing, heat or electricity. In summer, the stench of its outdoor privies drifts through the open windows of the apartment building where many Senate secretaries live. But few Senators know that it exists.

Last week, as the Senate droned on about slums in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, Illinois' freshman Senator Paul Douglas invited his colleagues to inspect the slums that lie within the shadow of the Capitol. Four Senators made the first trip; seven the second. With Douglas as guide, the first group--Republicans Wayne Morse, Homer Ferguson, Raymond Baldwin and Democrat Theodore Green--set out with the air of men exploring an Arabian casbah.

They stumbled through alleys and courts littered with tin cans, gritty with cinders and broken glass, past tar-paper shacks and sagging frame and brick houses where rents ranged from $12 to $30 a month. They ducked under clothes drying on lines strung across the alleys. A policeman waved a hand at the rows of backyard privies: "We found a man frozen to death in one of these toilets last winter," he told them casually.

At a house on F Street S.W., an old Negro lay on a bare bedspring in the junk-crammed yard, taking the sun. One of his legs was off at the knee. Inside, his son and daughter-in-law lived with their nine children in two rooms. The eldest girl had just borne an illegitimate baby. Tattered cotton coverlets lay in disorder on the only three beds. Chunks of plaster had fallen from the walls, exposing the laths. There was no heat; water came from a faucet in the yard. The young Negro wife giggled in embarrassment, twiddled the wick of the oil lamp that furnished the only light.

Douglas gagged at the stench and bolted for the door. Ferguson demanded: "Aren't there any health laws? Surely, we don't permit that kind of thing?" The police officer explained that eviction notices were served but seldom enforced: where would these people go? In 1946, Congress had authorized $20 million for District of Columbia slum clearance, but it had never appropriated the money. Cried Baldwin: "The smell! The smell! It's bad enough when this high wind is blowing. What must it be like in the hot summer months?"

When the Senators got back, they went to the Senate washroom and scrubbed their hands thoroughly.

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