Many trailers are traveling restaurants. M. L. Skinner of Rochester, N.Y. operates a hot-dog stand from one end of his and lives in the other. Living quarters and restaurant are separated by swinging doors. He earns a good livelihood as he travels carnival circuits, selling to carnival people and public alike.

More than one family has abandoned the city to combine business with pleasure in a trailer. Accompanied by his wife, Roy L. Iladett, demonstrator of fishing tackle, drives 20,000 miles yearly, home and business headquarters never more than ten feet distant from the steering wheel. H. K. Lewis and members of his family tour the United States every year giving professional theatrical performances. They park the trailer near the theater, don costumes and grease paint, and walk through the stage door ready for a performance. George Ramey, who sells women's clothing, carries 1,800 dresses on racks in his rolling salesroom, and displays them to prospective purchasers at the curb. At night, he curtains off the samples and enjoys the comfort of his rolling home.

Four workmen engaged in constructing gas lines in the Middle West save rent as they move from job to job by "batching" in their trailer. Instead of paying rent of sixty dollars or more a month. they live in their trailer for less than five dollars. Elsewhere. families beat the high cost of living as they follow seasonal occupations in the beet fields of Colorado, the Texas cotton plantations, berry farms of Kentucky, and California's fruit groves, by living in trailers.

The reason for this prodigious increase is partly economic. "With the rising cost of real-estate taxes, it is only natural that people are seeking new means of cutting down their living expenses." , one man who has built several hundred trailers told me. "The man living on a small pension, for instance. can live in a property-tax-free rolling home, moving whenever and wherever he chooses on an income of fifty dollars to $100 a month. He may reside in a southern state during the winter at no greater cost than his coal bill in the North.

"Another large group who eventually will come to trailers are the owners of summer cottages, who will find in the trailer, a cottage which can be transported to more desirable locations. Others who will come to occupy these portable homes are those suffering from heart ailments and other diseases which can be helped by climate and altitude. People who have some spare time during part of the year are turning by thousands to trailer; show people, teachers, and athletes, for instance"

The typical trailer of today is a one-room affair, with the kitchen usually a part of the combination living-dining room. As the vehicles become more popular, they are rapidly changing form. People who start this season with an inexpensive unit, next year will be adding electric refrigerat ion, shower baths and hot water. Next, they will divide their single room into two or three. Then will be achieved the real homes on wheels.

Here are some of the things you'll get as trailers advance: Even the small. less costly units will have full air conditioning for comfort in both summer and winter. The majority will be streamline and weigh less than the present average of about 1,300 pounds Most of them will come equipped with radios, while light-metal-alloy body construction is gaining in favor. All will have easily cleaned upholstery and beds as comfortable as you'll find in good hotels. More expensive trailers will be equipped with brakes operated from the driver's seat, and the majority will be soundproofed.

Meantime, how much do you have to pay for a trailer, and what will you get for your money? The range is wide, from $100 for the simplest kind of camping-type trailer to $14.000 for a deluxe house trailer with beds fur six people. In the former, you get little more than a two-wheeled truck for carrying your bed and other supplies, while the latter boasts electric refrigeration, air-conditioning equipment, insulation against heat and cold, telephone system between trailer and car, and ice water, all the comforts of home.

For $395 you can purchase a comfortable house trailer, finished to match your car, with a bed for two, plus a dresser, sink, and water piped to the sink. With good care, such a unit will give satisfactory service a decade or longer.

If you wish to add $100 to the purchase base price, you'll get a similar unit, with sleeping accommodations for four: one double bed and two singles for the children.

Step up the price to about $795 and you'll find yourself contemplating a fine mahogany interior finish, taking food from an ice box, sleeping in a Pullman-type bed, cooking meals over a three-burner gasoline stove whose fumes escape through a ventilater in the roof, drinking water piped from storage tanks to a hand pump at the sink, which is hidden under a cutting board, and using a separate dressing room and compact closets to keep your clothing clean and neatly pressed.

Trailer owners already have become gregarious. An average of 500 trailers daily were parked in San Diego, Calif., during the recent exposition. Again in California, forty or more trailers frequently take to the highway for a two-day mass picnic. Members of the "Travel Home Club", founded by R. T. Baumberger, who started building trailers as a hobby, take jaunts of 200 miles or more between Friday night and Monday morning.

Across the continent in Sarasota. Fla., is the largest trailer park in the world. Last summer,947 units were parked on its grounds during the annual trailer convention. Those attending last year's convention registered from forty-two states, plus the District of Columbia and four Canadian provinces.

Sociologists look on the tremendous increase in trailers as indicating a fundamental change in attitude toward the traditional obligations of home life. "It may not be amiss," said 0. T. Kreusser, director of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, "to predict that if present trends in buying cars, or buying homes continue, an increasingly large part of the population will live and carry on their home and business pursuits more around the automobile and less around a house as a fixed abode."

Already, tens of thousands spend their winters in the South, migrating like birds in the North when spring comes, and living on wheels virtually the year 'round.

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