Las Vegas Age

A WASHINGTON DAYBOOK
By HERBERT C. PLUMMER

WASHINGTON, Mar. 5.—There are people from every corner of the United States living and working in Washington. From the cities and villages and hamlets they come by the thousands, attracted here by the many jobs to be had with the government.

But there is one striking thing about this cosmopolitan population. Whether a man has been here for years or a few weeks, and though he may never expect to live again in his native haunts, he never forgets the place whence he came.

The many state societies are ample proof of that. These people in self-imposed exile seek each other out singly and collectively. Senators and government clerks are brothers under the skin when they meet in Washington and remind each other of how great it is to be a Georgian, a Virginian, or a Pennsylvanian.

We were impressed, for example, of just how it must be to be a Georgian after attending a meeting of the natives of this state the other evening.

Georgia Songsters

Dr. Malcolm H. Dewey had brought his aggregation of college songbirds from Emory university all the way from Atlanta to sing negro spirituals and southern melodies to some 1,500 or 2,000 natives of Georgia who now are in Washington.

And was it a Georgia evening? Why, the ball room of the hotel in which the meeting was held was just as much a part of Georgia as if it had been in the heart of the Georgia capital. And when the boys concluded their program with the singing of "Dixie," the applause must have penetrated even to the vice-president-elect's apartment on one of the top floors of the hotel.

Senator and Mrs. J. W. Harris were seated in a box well up to the front. Senator and Mrs. Walter F. George also occupied a box with a party of friends.

Every representative and his wife from the Cracker state was present. We picked out in the crowd the faces of Rep. and Mrs. Thomas M. Bell, Rep. W. W. Larsen, Rep. and Mrs. E. E. Cox, Rep. and Mrs. M. C. Tarver, and Rep. and Mrs. Leslie Steel. All occupied boxes and were surrounded by Georgia friends.

A Senator's Favorite.

Unless our memory fails us, it was the request from Senator George's box that prompted the singing of the most popular of all negro spirituals, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."

Occasions like this are typical of similar ones staged by the numerous other state societies. A person from Maine or Florida or any other state may have lived so long in Washington that he regards himself a Washingtonian, but it is a safe bet that he has not forgotten or ever will forget that he is at heart a native of one of these 48 states and glories in it.