LIFE IN TRAILERS IN AMERICA.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 29 April 1937, Page 8

LIFE IN TRAILERS IN AMERICA.

FOUR MILLION PERSONS NEW ORK, April 2. It is estimated that four million persons are now residing in automobile trailers in the United States, avoiding rent and taxes. There were 736,000 registered trailers a year ago. At the present rate of progress, the new fad will become a serious problem for local authorities in whose areas they make their temporary home. Formerly known as "tin-can tourists," owners of trailers now include captains of industry, millionaires and the leisured class, who declare that they find in them more comfort than in trains. The comforts and equipment of some of the newest " travel coaches," as the manufacturers call them, are surprising. They include electricity, hot and cold baths, and refrigeration. Three hundred factories are deluged with orders. The Maharaja Scindia of Gwalior has just taken delivery of a "duplex" which accommodates 15 travellers. An American expedition from the American Museum of Natural History travels in a trailer that becomes a houseboat, with watertight compartments. When rivers are met, it is rowed or poled across, while the car is ferried on a raft. This, strange craft carries a fully equipped kitchen, electric fans, all-wave radio transmitting and receiving set, and a verandah 10ft wide, running its entire length. The Trailer Dentist The Ballet Russe travels in a special train, its principals by trailer. The trailer dentist parks his establishment at rural cross-roads. The touring doetor's equipment includes an operating theatre. The trailer school traverses an entire district. The clergyman holds services in his trailer, to which a tentlike shelter is attached. The trailer post office and telegraph office attends race meetings and agricultural shows. Fishing and sailing boats are carried across country on trailers. Barnstorming theatrical companies travel in them. A baby was born in a trailer; a man was murdered in a trailer; safe-blowers and burglars travel in trailers. The largest of existing trailer camps is in New York, where the authorities intend providing a "trailer city" for the world's fair.

University students now sleep in trailer dormitories on the campus. Some trailer camps elect a mayor and council each year. The courts, appealed to by angry home-owners whose properties depreciated when trailers camped nearby, have decided, in the first case, that a trailer is a home, and must conform to building regulations, prescribing a minimum of 500 cubic feet of space for each person. Railroads, hotels, and restaurants are up in arms against the new craze for trailers, which, by the end of 1937, are expected to house a nomadic group equal in volume to the population of Australia.