New-York tribune., 1907-10-02
FLAT TO FLAT FLIGHT.
OR TREKKING By TRUCK.
Being the Migratory M"ddle Of Ne70
YOrk'S MOUiRg Million.
And how do you like the new hat?"

"And how do you like the new flat?"
''Where are you living now?"
rs the janitor good-natured is he thor
oughly experienced"
These and many similar questions form the
greetings regularly the morning of October
o as New Workers crowd the subway and IL"
expresses on their way downtown. And the
all round queries should be more widespread
than ever to-day for yesterday about the
busiest moving day that Manhattan Island
has seen since October became the real classy
time to promote the cause of the Truck owners
Association.
OF course nobody knows why the first day OF
/ the tenth month should be reserved for a SHIRT
of domicile, but for two weeks moving van
companies, storage warehouse managers ana
about everybody having in stock the big four
wheeled affairs that look like peripatetic cot
tages have been bespoken to take mana III
the great fiat shuttle. Yesterday the game DC
gan and late coners found that the price OF
moving van about as much as a iAoil'h
rent for the new fiat. The rates were about
$50 at noon but the market was bullSh' ana
as the day wore along as much as 500 was pa'u
for
"It wasn't fiat price, at that" said one
Harlem man ruefully. "No, that's not pun
l mean there were extras. L learned long ago
that it pays to hand out 81 TO the driver ana
each of the furniture smashers. Somehow they
don't feel very happy on this day. and they
work out the rancor Of their souls on the i'id-
hogany sideboard. and-yes, l said mahogany
they break the dinner things unless lheS Ie
naclked in compressed air cushions. / always
count on paying thirteen months rent year.
YOU sec for my wife thinks we simply must
move and it costs a lot Maybe we're in state
of evolution; we always hope that finally we IL
attain the ideal fat So we try getting TO tha'
goal one year at a time
There were some other reasons for the great
trek Families were leaving elevator ana tele-
phone service apartment houses places thae
bave entrances reminiscent of those near-mar-
bic Renaissance clocks that never keep uhe'
and some of these same families, had the vans
been followed might have been found last even
ing in ordinary flats, where you depend upon
/ door cIIcker and then climb the stairs. Then,
again. it was the other way about-folks coming
from the less pretentious places where there was
only the one czar. the janitor TO rococo palaces
where there were a tribe of dusky grand dukes
in uniform 10 greet them. Such transitions
| from natSHfe to apartment dwelling might be
called the economic adjustment Of the year
/ But besides, those who move from restlessness
! and those who wish TO live up to or down 10
! their income, there is another class-perhaps
! small. A sidelight was thrown on 1t by chance
Yesterday as a Tribune reporter leaned against
the pillar of one of the apartment houses IN
| the early zoos. near Broadway. Three big vans
we're lined up in front. two of them in course OF
loading and the other being cleaned out and
the household goods we're piled on the sidewalk,
4 young man. who was also standing near by.
came up to the reporter and asked; Are you
looking for those Blanks too?'
whats that you?'' queried the reporter.
That's all right" said the stranger I'm n
bill collector, toe. This is our hardest day, all
right, keeping track of these people. You've got
to tip this elevator man in here II you want any
information The van men no good. They
have been paid by the beats to keep quiet"