1930s Newsboys Learned Lessons that Lasted a Lifetime

EDITOR'S NOTE: The story below is adapted from one I wrote for The Mobile Press Register in 1984.

Many prominent people in Mobile learned about work by delivering newspapers during the 1930s.

The paperboys shared many things in common. The 1930s were the years of the Great Depression and the newspaper carriers were young boys looking for a little money for themselves and their families.

W.C. Helveston, who was the Mobile County administrator from 1971-1995, recalled that “It was the only money I had. My people didn’t have any” money to give him to spend.

Kenny Crow Sr., who in 1984 was retired from Crow-Kennedy Electric Co., Inc., remembered winning $50 in a citywide subscription campaign for The Mobile Times.

“Fifty dollars in those days, cap’n, was a lot of money for a kid to get a hold of,” he said. “I really did it for the money. Nobody had any.”

For delivering about 200 papers in the Washington Square area, Helveston earned about $10 to $12 a week.

Andrew M. Wiik, who in 1984 was with the CPA firm of Wiik, Reimer, Lawrence & Dudley, had a much smaller route, making about $2 or $3 from his subscribers of the Times.

W.C. Helveston

Helveston was 13 years old when he began throwing papers from his bicycle for The Mobile Press in 1939. Later he switched to a route for The Mobile Register, which he said caused him to develop a life-long habit of reading the morning newspaper.

Helveston recalled that when the paperboys had to throw the Sunday paper they would just stay up all night Saturday. Helveston and the other carriers would take dates to see a movie and, after taking their dates home, they would go to the Electrik Maid Bake Shop, eat pastries and play pinball until it was time to get their newspapers.

Crow just got up at 3 a.m. Sunday to fold and load his papers.

The 10- to 12-page papers were small enough then, Helveston said, that the paperboy could roll the paper into a tube shape and crimp it into a half-moon before sending it sailing to the porch.

While Helveston rolled his papers into a tube shape, most others had to fold their papers into a square, recalled Maurice Castle, a newspaperboy for the Times from 1933-35. Castle, who in 1984 was the clerk of Mobile County Circuit Court, also was a former city editor of The Mobile Press.

Wiik, who began carrying papers when he was 16, said he just folded his papers in half. “I got pretty good where I could fold them in half and sail it,” he said.

During the 1930s, subscribers paid weekly, although a few did so monthly. Saturdays were devoted to collecting the 10 or 12 cents a week subscription cost.

A universal experience among paperboys, who bought their papers on credit from the newspaper, was the difficulty of collecting the money due them from subscribers.

“I had trouble at times collecting money,” said Crow, who delivered papers beginning in his sophomore year at McGill Institute. “Some people just didn’t have it.”

Crow explained that some people took the newspaper although they couldn’t afford the 10 cents a week because, while radio had passed its infancy and TV was yet to be, people depended on papers for the news.

Part of the paperboy routine for Times carriers was to solicit subscribers one or two nights a week, Castle said.

The papers offered prizes for the most subscriptions—baseball gloves and bats, bicycles and, in the case of Crow, money desperately needed in the Depression.

Robert Zietz, who in 1984 was head of the Special Collections Division of the Mobile Public Library, had a somewhat different experience from the other carriers.

Zietz began delivering The Mobile Register in Chickasaw when he was 9 years old. But rather than run his own route, Zietz delivered papers for Mrs. J.C. Davis, mother of the man who was the Chickasaw mayor in 1984. Mrs. Davis paid Zietz a weekly salary. She held the franchise on an entire district and paid others to deliver for her.

Zietz worked to get spending money like the other carriers, but instead of using a bicycle, he walked his route.

Quite different from the experiences of the paperboys who delivered papers to subscribers at their homes was that of the paperboys who sold papers on the streets.

Berkley Thompson, who in 1984 was retired from a highly successful newspaper supply business he founded, was one of the street sales paperboys.

Thompson began selling newspapers on the street at age 11 for The Mobile Register in 1931. By age 14 he became a street sales manager for The Mobile Times and later for The Mobile Press Register.

Between 1929 and 1932 the Register and the Press were separately owned and competition for sales was fierce. Street sales work was particularly rough.

At time, delivery trucks were overturned and bundles of newspapers would be set on fire, Thompson said.

On the four corners at Royal and St. Francis streets, paperboys staked out their territory and trespassing was cause for a fight, Thompson said.

Thompson said he had about 350 paperboys on the streets selling papers for the Register. Because it was during the Great Depression, many of the paperboys were not boys at all, he said, but big husky men looking to earn some money.

All of the paperboys from the 1930s thought their experiences were good for them and taught them lessons that lasted a lifetime.

“You had to be at the job,” Helveston said. “You always had to out on your route. You went out sick and in the rain.” Sometimes, Helveston said, he delivered his papers while he was sick, but then wen t home to bed and missed school.

Crow said being a paperboy taught him “how to sell.” Working for the underdog Times, which was therefore harder to sell, Crow said he learned how to confront people, how to act.

Helveston said “It taught you how to manage a business. The better job you did, the more money you made.”

Helveston died in 2013 at the age of 86.