The Smiths Win the Race

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 71, 25 March 1933, Page 18

The Smiths Win the Race

( ' Once and for all the ancient rivalry jfc*f the New York Smiths and the Cohens is settled, says the "Literary

Digest." The Smiths win. Besides J conquering the nearest rivaL.in easy fashion, the Smiths also polish off the r Browns, the Joneses, the, Johnsons, and .the, other big_ families. 'By,.a margin •often feet of type in the first volume of the New York City, directory, they leave the Cohens a badly-beaten run-ner-np. The writer says':— "The Smith.' family meanders along lor 94ft,. at fourteen lines of type an inch. The Cohens cover 84ft, the Browns 67ft, and the procession of big shots in the space world is brought rap by the Millers, the Johnsons, the [Williamses, and the Joneses, in that order. "Ths canvassers turned up authentic namesakes of John Bull, Al Capone, Enrico Caruso, Charles Chaplin, Christopher Columbus, Oliver Cromwell, Jack Dempsey, Henry Ford, . Robin Hood, Jesse James, Helen Keller,' Annie Laurie, Harold Lloyd, Mary PickfoTd, Paul Revere, Berngsrd Shaw, and John L. Sullivan. In one particularly good day's hunting they raised a Woodrow "Wilson, a John Doe, and a • Richard Roe."

'The-first volume of the directory "is ■ a./healthychild," adds the "New York -Herald-Tribune," "weighing 191b and standing 13in in height." It contains f* names, addresses, and occupations of citizens of Manhattan and the Bronx. It "is the first of its kind in seven

years and the-first in history to include all five boroughs in its prospectus.?'.

The idea of compiling the directory was originally that of the Emergency Unemployed Belief Committee. And it produced 120,000 days of work for the city's unemployed. __ Eight/ ■ hundred canvassers, plodding through all kinds of weather, "asked approximately 100,000,000 questions, some of them embarrassing. • They interrogated housewives and got something new in the way of directory matter—the .first name of every wife in the two boroughs.

"One great problem confrouted the unemployed-data seekers. They found it difficult to pin down the city's shifting population, members of which, as soon as the compilers turned their backs, were likely to move to Few Jersey or the Canadian Eockies. Compilation of the directory began in December, 1931, and in the interval nearly 1,000,000 New Yorkers changed one home for another."

An idea of the magnitude of this problem, was furnished by Mr. Arthur Morgan, moving expert, of the firm of Morgan and Brother. Mr. Morgan estimated that about 500,000 citizens changed dwellings last autumn alone at a time when .the directory still was in tho making. The Consolidated Gas Company added to this the report that the number of movers last September, based on meter lockings and unloclcings, was close to 400,000.