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Making a Greater Washington Those who knew Washington before the Board of Public Works,under the leadership of Governor Shepherd,began the remarkable improvements,described elsewhere, and who have not visited the city since, can hardly imagine the great changethat has taken place everywherewithin its boundary....The growth and developmentof \Vashington duringthe past ten yearshave been wonderful.Nearly all the old landmarks have disappeared,and out of a rude, unpaved,dilapidated town has risen a statelycity,with most of the resources,the pleasures,the superiority of a metropolis.Onceitwas calledin derision"the onlychildof the Nation," but now it has attained to a magnificent manhood, and is entirely worthy of the pride and admiration of its parents. Pictzlresque Washington,1884 The demise of Washington's territorial government ended any last expectations that the city might become a laboratory for forging new social programs and establishing new social relations. In place of Charles Sumner 's vision for the future, Washington's leadership embraced earlier goals of growth and prosperity, standards that would be measured by the extension of residences throughout the whole of the District of Columbia and the buildup of the government's presence at the city core. Complemented by active neighborhood associations and the inception in 1889 of a new board of trade, government by commission dedicated itself to creation of what boosters came to call a "Greater Washington." The agents for this expansion of Shepherd's program for Washington lay in physical improvements , including the extension of streets, sewer lines, and streetcar lines into largely undeveloped Washington County, and the establishment at Rock Creek of a new park set apart to serve the entire area. Further efforts to reclaim the unhealthy flats along the Potomac River and to exercise control over the intrusion of railroad lines into the heart of the city lent support to claims that Washington was well on its way to becoming the most beautiful as well as the best governed city in the nation. "The capital has become a city," the Star proclaimed on the occasion of Washington's centennial in 1900, "with a city's duties, equipment and prospects. It has grown from a camp reluctantly pitched by most of the campers into a place of permanent homes, eagerly sought by sojourners, attracted by the city's charm of atmosphereor drawn by dutyto spend pleasant months asveritable residents."l The transitional period under commissioner rule that started in 1874 dragged on, lasting even longer than the territorial government it replaced. Necessarily, the commissioners made the restoration of Washington's finances their chief priority, but they maintained at the same time the general goal if not all the particulars of Shepherd's comprehensive plan for the city. The local press welcomed the new government as long as it stood by the federal commitment to provide the District with an annual payment matching local expenses. Emphasizing the importance of this provision, the Stardeclared in 1876,"The District people are not at all tenacious as to the form in which suffrage is allocated to them, so long as the 50 percent provision is secure." To this the new WashingtonPostadded, "No sensible citizen cares a straw" for election, since the city would gain more from Congress without it.2 Thus while a few diehard Radical Republicans continued to fight the loss of elective government, the Organic Act of 1878, which made the commission form of government permanent, easilypassed both houses of Congress. Only one member, Representative Mark Dunnell of Minnesota, cited the end of suffrage in Washington as his reason for voting against it." The Washington press welcomed the change. The Star,in fact, reacted strongly against efforts in 1879 and 1880 to revive the territorial system. Asking rhetorically whether citizens could have forgotten the bad experience "under Murder Bay politicians," the paper concluded that it "saw no reason to expect that the same class of politicians will not spring up again should suffrage be revived." No friend of Radical Republicans, the paper ran another editorial entitled "Cultivating the Dangerous Class," which placed the blame for previous misfortunes squarely on the "idle, vicious element of the contraband population." Claiming that a number of this "dangerous class" remained in Washington just waiting the "return of the flush time of suffrage," the paper expressed its preference for what it called the current program of public improvements efficiently spent, not handouts for "the idle masses."4 Throughout the last quarter of the century, the Starpointed with pride to Washington as a...

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