Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1903 — IRADE IN OLD CLOTHES. [ARTICLE]

IRADE IN OLD CLOTHES.

pm> i ■» i m+m '• vy „. New York Stock Is SMtete* to All Fart* of the Country. Ob* might imagine that th* eld llothes trade would be about the last to be affected by a period of commercial prosperity, but It la. to a very remarkable degree. Ton ten looking for pen with old clothes to fell are abundant In all parts of the city, but they are particularly persistent In Broadway, anywhere from Forty-second street t 6 Trinity Church, says the New York Times. A man who made an appointment at hi* hotel with one of these touters produced a suit with a sack coat, a cutaway and. a Prince Albert coat, as It still continues to be called. The man handed the latter two garments back. "Don’t want them,” he Bald. "Why, they won’t even take them at the pawnshops. Two years ago w* gathered In all the cutaways and frock coats we could lay hands on. Now Wo won’t touch thorn.” Now York leads In the shipment es old clothes to all parti of th* country, just aa she leads in .the manufacture of new clothes. In Seventh and Eighth avenues, just below Thirty-eighth street, the center of the eid clothes industry, truck loads of them are sent away every day. In crowded little rooms In the side streets in that neighborhood hundreds es men are employed making 4hese discarded garments "look like new.’’ A suit es clothes hag to be very good Indeed this year to pass muster with the secondband dealer. In hard times be will take almost anything that hangs together, for the old clothes demand never ceases, and must be filled with something or other. But when times are good and clothes are cheap the old clothes man Is very much In the game. He Is keen as a hunter In scenting his prey. It la a very sharp man who can get the better of hlaf. He Is polite, even obsequious, If there Is a Chance of a trade; If not, ha Is likely to say unpleasant things. The men who solicit old clothes In the streets are usually paid on commission. The more they bring in the more they make—and they are very much on the make.