100 years ago in Washington D.C. (by way of Spokane): Elizabeth Poindexter had a harsh take on job-seekers in the capital

Elizabeth Gale Poindexter, wife of Sen. Miles Poindexter of Spokane, continued her irreverent takedown of Washington, D.C., in her weekly syndicated column.

Her subject this time was job seekers, who flocked to the nation’s capital every day, begging for work. She said President Warren G. Harding spent nearly half his time dealing with job-hunters – and so did senators and representatives.

Some were routine staff jobs, nearly always dispensed through political patronage. Even the job of messenger is “not to be sneezed at by a good many young men who want to see Washington, or better still, to draw the money while staying home – there has been quite a bit of that.”

Nepotism was rife.

“The worst of it is that jobitis is infectious,” she wrote. “A man comes here and lands something; within a few weeks all his sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and neighbors are in, looking for berths, and they stick, even when they are pretty certain they are going to lose out.”

The “really big jobs,” such as judgeships and bureau chiefs, were not so easy for senators and representatives to dispense. That did not mean they didn’t try.

“Washington is a city of promises, and by corollary, a city of broken promises,” she wrote. “ ‘Oh, yes,’ the job hunter is told. ‘You want to be a judge of the Supreme Court or Secretary of the Treasury? Why it’s a cinch – we’ll fix that right up for you.’ At this point, the poor devil, waits here, exhausting his funds and those from whom he can borrow money, while the job he wants goes to someone else.”

She concluded by saying the legislature “ought to be more than a glorified employment agency.”

Also from the Poindexter file: To no one’s surprise, Elizabeth Gale Poindexter’s columns were ruffling feathers in D.C.

No less a personage than Mary Roberts Rinehart, one of the most famous novelists of the day, defended Washington society. She said drinking in D.C. was “neither more nor less than anywhere else.” She said that there was nothing “humorous” about a nervous Washington hostesses calling the State Department to ask for dinner-party seating advice. It was merely to observe proper diplomatic protocol.