Different Washingtons

As you walk along the streets of the USA's capital, you will see different cities within the city. There is a Washington of politics and lobbyists. Its inhabitants move from the Capitol to House and Senate office buildings nearby, down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, to the cocktail lounge of the Mayflower Hotel for a conference with a V.I.P. (very im­portant person), then by taxicab swiftly back to the Capitol.

There is a Washington of government girls. It is centred at office buildings on Constitution Avenue or 15th Street, and is dedicated to the "great god paperwork". It is a Washington of hurried lunches in soda-fountains, of packed trolley cars, of bus rides to house developments across the Potomac River in Arlington, of Sunday afternoons at the zoo adjoining Rock Creek Park. There is a Washington of "Society" in George­town and along Massachusetts Avenue.

The newspaper man's Washington is a composite of all these cities. Hundreds of reporters are continually visiting the Capitol and White House, the court-rooms, the offices of department heads, the national headquarters of labour unions and business associations, the social haunts of "People Who Know" ("haunt" is an Americanism for a place which one often visits). Washington has a beautiful setting and an atrocious climate. It has a fine collection of first-rate minds as can be found in the United States, but lacks a first-rate secular university. It is a place where big money is made, but it is not a centre of commerce and industry.

UNIT 12

TAPESCRIPT 12A

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