Saturday, December 26, 2020

Register pressman led Alabama's union movement in early 1900s

George William Jones superintended the Mobile Register’s press room for 35 years, led Alabama’s branch of the nation’s largest union group in the early 1900s, and dabbled in national politics.

Jones was serving as president of Mobile’s Central Trades Council when the Alabama Federation of Labor elected him vice president during its fifth annual session at Monroe Park in 1905. The following year, the members of the Federation elected Jones president of the state group. The Federation’s members seem to have kept re-electing him to the post until about 1911 when Jones took on job with the pressman’s union.

As a union chief, Jones spent his time doing what you’d think a union boss would do: making unions the monopoly suppliers of labor. He pushed for recognition of closed union shops, supported laws restricting youth labor, and backed farm union groups. The Federation supported the recently passed Immigration Act of 1907 aimed at restricting the increasing number of immigrants to the United States, keeping the labor market tight and wages high. Jones also lobbied the state Legislature to spend more money on government schools and other union causes.

The Alabama Federation took a surprising step in 1907, especially for a Southern union. After 1895, the American Federation of Labor approved segregated locals within its affiliates. Excluding blacks was a way of keeping laborers who could offer lower wage prices out of the market, again keeping the market tight and prices high. The Federation’s policy often resulted in black workers being excluded from union membership. But the Alabama group’s meeting in Montgomery in 1907 included black delegates, surprising given the racial prejudice of most white Alabamians against blacks at the time.

As president, Jones led the gathering, which included committee meetings scheduled at the Capital City’s Exchange Hotel. P. J. Greer, a black delegate from Birmingham, wanted to know how black members could meet with other committee members at the Exchange Hotel, which excluded blacks. The conference members moved their committee meetings to the Labor Hall so that black and white members could meet together.

In spring 1908, Jones became involved in a new national political party, the Independence League, formed by newspaper publisher and U.S. Representative William Randolph Hearst. Sometimes it was just called Hearst’s party. An Alabama state convention at the end of April nominated Jones and 21 others as delegates to the national convention in Chicago in July. Many of the delegates were associated with unions.

The party nominated Thomas L. Hisgen for president and John Temple Graves for vice president. The party opposed corrupt machine politics and supported a list of socialist proposals:

  • An eight-hour work day
  • A U.S. Department of Labor
  • Government ownership of utilities and railroads
  • A U.S. central bank

Hisgen and Graves received less than one percent of the popular vote and the national party collapsed after the 1908 election.

Jones appears to have left the Mobile Register about 1911 to become the first superintendent of the Pressmen’s Home outside of Rogersville, Tennessee. The home was part of a complex that formed the headquarters for the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union of North America from 1911 to 1967. At its peak the union was the largest printing trade group in the world, with more than 125,000 members.

The isolated Tennessee headquarters had to be a self-sufficient community. The complex had its own farms, water supply, trade school, sanitarium, retirement home, hotel, post office, chapel, hydroelectric power plant, and telephone system.

At some point, Jones returned to Mobile. He died at his home on July 2, 1925, 19 days short of his 66th birthday. He is buried in Magnolia Cemetery.

Sources

Montgomery Advertiser April 27, 1905 4; “Support withdrawn from Western Federation Miners—Next Convention at Birmingham,” New Orleans Times-Picayune April 29, 1905 14; “Alabama Federation of Labor holds convention,” San Jose California Evening News April 23, 1907 3; “Labor wants free textbooks,” New Orleans Times-Picayune April 23, 1907 3; “Will try to pass laws in July,” Montgomery Advertiser April 23, 1907 5; “Much time in talking,” Montgomery Advertiser April 24, 1907 5; “More delegates named yesterday,” Birmingham Age-Herald May 1, 1908 5:6; “Veteran pressman dies,” New Orleans Times-Picayune July 3, 1925 13:5.




Monday, December 14, 2020

On the waterfront: Charles J. Leanman


Some of the most colorful characters on the Press Register’s staff were the reporters who covered the Mobile waterfront.

One such was Charles J. Leanman, who began reporting with the newly established Mobile Press in 1929. His early life was filled with tragedy. An infant brother died at home in January 1914 and his mother Catherine died a week later.

A year later in 1915, his city policeman father, Charles E. Leanman, fell ill for five weeks before dying at age 33. His death left three orphaned children, a 9-year-old Charles, his 6-year-old sister Catherine, and 3-year-old brother Bernardine. Their widowed grandfather lived in Mobile, but he died in 1920. The young Catherine wound up at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum, but it’s not clear how her two brothers were cared for. Both attended Catholic Schools and Bernadine graduated from Spring Hill College.

Leanman’s interest in the waterfront came naturally. His grandfather, Captain Charles A. Leanman, was a well-known submarine diver and ship carpenter in Mobile. Charles’ two uncles, C. Leanman and Victor Bernard Leanman, served in the U.S. Navy.

On the newspaper, Leanman preferred writing features, but besides covering the waterfront he also reported on the courts and meetings of Mobile’s civic groups. He covered the luncheon meeting at the Battle House of the Lions Club on Tuesdays, Kiwanis Club on Wednesdays, and the Rotary Club on Thursdays. He also covered the luncheon meetings of the Real Estate Club and the Junior Chamber of Commerce.

The community groups had a practice of providing a free meal to reporters who covered their luncheon meetings, a practice that lasted well into the 1980s. This allowed Leanman to eat well during the hard times of the 1930s.

“I had kingly meals during the Depression,” Leanman recalled. “The Battle House served excellent meals, each beginning with a shrimp cocktail. It didn’t cost me a cent because I covered their meetings.” 

The civic clubs Leanman covered may have
held their luncheons in this dining room.
The Battle House was Mobile’s premiere hotel where many famous personalities often stayed when visiting the Port City. Leanman interviewed Richmond Pearson Hobson while the Spanish-American War naval hero sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel room. After retiring from the Navy, Hobson, an Alabama native, traveled the country campaigning against the use of alcohol and drugs.

At the Bienville Hotel on the northwest corner of St. Joseph and St. Francis streets, Leanman interviewed famed swimmer Fred P. Newton in 1931. In one of the many stunts that typified the period, Newton had recently completed swimming more than half the length of the Mississippi River. He swam the

Bienville Hotel
 more than 1,826 miles from Ford Dam, Minnesota, to New Orleans from July 6 to December 29, 1930.

Leanman also interviewed Great War flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, who had flown in his private plane from New York to Mobile for one of his airline industry ventures. Rickenbacker gave Leanman his first air flight, “Tearing through the air at 90 per—nothing but blue, concave skies above and desperately thin air below,” Leanman wrote.

An opportunity for Leanman to have his own adventure presented itself in 1932. Leanman’s regular rounds of waterfront sources included Norman Nicholson, port captain of the Waterman Steamship Co. On one visit with the captain, Nicholson invited Leanman to take a trip on one of the company’s ships, which would make a stop at London. Leanman was a great admirer of Charles Dickens and jumped at the chance to see something of the author’s homeland.

“I wanted to see the world,” Leanman said, but he also needed to make sure he had a job when he got back to Mobile. Leanman explained what he wanted to do to Press Register publisher Ralph B. Chandler and Chandler promised to rehire Leanman on his return.

The Waterman ship was a freighter and there were no passenger quarters, which meant Leanman would have to be a working crew member. As the ship prepared to sail, Captain Nicholson brought Leanman’s sister to the ship at the Alabama State Docks to deliver a typewriter. But they didn’t recognize him. “I was covered with soot, face and all.” He had been shoveling coal.

West Zeda
“I left on July 15 as the lowest form of human fungus aboard ship—a steamship wiper on the steamer West Zeda.” A wiper is mainly responsible for ship maintenance such as cleaning the engine room and work areas, and assisting other crew members with their work.

The West Zeda, “the slowest waterwagon on the Gulf,” was Leanman’s home for 95 days. From Mobile the ship sailed to Galveston before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean to London, a trip taking 22 days. In London, Leanman visited the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, where Dickens is buried, and the author’s home at 48 Doughty St., where he wrote Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and other works.

From London, the West Zeda sailed to West Hartlepool, located near Bowes, Yorkshire and places mentioned in Nicholas Nickleby like Dotheboys Hall and Smike’s grave. “From there the West Zeda steamed to Antwerp where I viewed the Waterloo battlefield and entrained later for Paris to see the Louvre, Place De La Concorde, Les Invaides, and other landmarks.”

When the West Zeda returned to Mobile, Chandler kept his word and rehired Leanman. Soon after, Leanman learned of Mary Ellen Caver, an Alabama Baptist missionary who had returned from Africa. She was in Mobile to conduct missionary training. Some the Port City’s black citizens had asked her to meet with Cudjo Lewis, born Oluale Kossola in the Yoruba kingdom of Takkoi in the Dahomey region of West Africa.

Kossola was one of the last surviving Africans among 130 men and women smuggled illegally into the United States as slaves aboard the Clotilda in 1860, 52 years after the United States abolished the African slave trade. Kossola had been captured and sold into slavery by a rival tribe.

Oluale Kossola
Courtesy of Doy Leale McCall Rare
Book and Manuscript Library,
University of South Alabama
As luck would have it, Caver had worked among the people of Dahomey and spoke their language. Leanman decided to go with Caver to interview Kossola, who was in his 90s, at his home in Plateau north of Mobile.

The old man “bombarded his missionary visitor with questions of home, of methods and modes of living, the changes that time has brought, and of his people,” Leanman wrote. Kossola told Leanman of his capture by an enemy tribe, his trip across the ocean in what would be the last slave ship to land in Mobile and his eventual sale to a plantation owner in Alabama before being freed.

Kossola died two years later. Kossola and the other former Africans who settled the Plateau community have since become a matter of intense focus to commemorate their lives.

Leanman had a banner year in 1933.

In the spring, harbor tugboats nudged the British freighter Cingalese Prince against the dock on the Mobile River. On board were the New York Times’ influential drama critic Justin Brooks Atkinson and his wife Oriana.

The couple were making a trip similar to what Leanman had made on the West Zeda, only bigger and more comfortably. The Cingalese Prince carried a few passengers, though it was no luxury cruise ship. The Atkinsons also were taking the freighter around the world from New York and back again over four months. Mobile was the ship’s first port of call. 

Brooks Atkinson
Leanman went on board to interview Atkinson, but the critic also spent some time in Mobile. He wrote, “Mobile has an idyllic appearance in the warm sunlight. Spring was rhapsodically balmy in Mobile…Late in the morning I sat in Bienville Square reading the local newspaper and listening to the migrant warblers murmuring in the treetops and watching citizens of Mobile sauntering by and it was difficult to remember that we were not acquainted.” Atkinson collected his observations of Mobile, other ports, and fellow passengers along with his philosophical musings into the book Cingalese Prince, published in 1934.

In the summer 1933, Leanman won national recognition for his coverage of the Mobile waterfront. He took a third-place award in a nationwide writing contest, “I Cover the Waterfront.” Interestingly enough, his colleague on the Mobile Press Register, Frances R. Durham, won the second-place award.

Judges selected the winners based on human interest, novelty of theme, and style. Each article had to be based on actual events and had to be part of the reporters personal experiences, either as a participant or observer. Leanman’s story concerned a frustrated romance along the waterfront during the Spanish-American War.

The third-place prize money of $25 (about $500 today) probably came in handy in August 1933. That’s when he married Mary Elizabeth Bell. The couple settled in Mobile and Leanman continued to cover the waterfront for the Press Register for the next four years.

In 1937, Charles and Mary moved with his sister Catherine and her husband Roy Lamas and their children to Memphis. The Lamases had been living in Biloxi, Mississippi. In Memphis, Charles reported for one of the city’s newspapers and Roy worked as a printer in a print shop.

Tragedy struck Charles again when Mary died sometime not long after the move. In 1940, Leanman and his kin climbed into a Ford car and drove to Burbank, California. Leanman again found a job as a reporter and his brother worked as a printer. Leanman spent the rest of his life in Burbank. He returned to Mobile in 1987 for a nostalgic visit. He died at age 96 on December 11, 2001, in North Hollywood, four months after his brother Bernadine.

Sources

Charles Leanman, “Veteran journalist recalls life in Mobile decades ago,” Mobile Press Register July 26, 1987; B 1:1; Charles Leanman, “News writer recalls memorable interviews,” Mobile Press July 27, 1987 A, 2; Charles Leanman, “Journalist relives trip across the Gulf,” Mobile Press July 28, 1987 A, 2; John (should be Charles) Leanman, “Journalist remembers top lawyers of his era,” Mobile Press July 29, 1987 A, 2; Amber Willard, “Pieces of the past,” Burbank Leader February. 26, 2000. Online: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jgnMD4iEdvoJ:https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-xpm-2000-02-26-export17950-story.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us; “Obituaries,” Burbank Leader December 15, 2001. Online: https://www.latimes.com/socal/burbank-leader/news/tn-blr-xpm-2001-12-15-export11661-story.html; “Death of Infant,” Montgomery Advertiser January 16, 1914; Catherine Mary Harrison Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503858/catherine-mary-leanman#; Charles Ernest Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503801/charles-ernest-leanman#; Charles E. Leanman obituary, Montgomery Advertiser February 10, 1915; Capt. Charles A Leanman, Find A Grave Memorial. Online: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90503621/charles-a-leanman#; Charles A. Leanman, Charles E. Leanman, U.S. Census 1910, Mobile, Alabama E.D. 96, Sheet 17 A; Catherine Leanman, U.S. Census 1920, Mobile, Alabama E.D. 99, Sheet 19 B; Bernard V. Leanman U.S. Census 1930, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania E.D. No. 51-194, Sheet 24 B; Charles Leanman, U.S. Census 1940, Los Angeles, California E.D. No. 60-512, Sheet 11 A; “Shipping News,” Virginian-Pilot and the Norfolk Landmark March 20, 1933 6:2; “Two of Press Register Staff Winners in National Contest,” Mobile Register, July 24, 1933 A, 5:3; “Francis Kester Wins Prize for Sea Story,” New York Times, July 25, 1933 Books, 22:4; Boston Herald, May 17, 1933 16:6; Grace Thornton, “Former slave sees God’s answer to his prayers, Biblical Recorder. August 24, 2018; Online: https://www.brnow.org/news/Former-slave-sees-God-s-answer-to-his-prayers; Sylviane A. Diouf, “The last slave ship survivor and her descendants identified, National Geographic. March 27, 2020. Online: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/last-slave-ship-survivor-descendants-identified.html; Afua Hirsch, “Why the extraordinary story of the last slave in America has finally come to light,” The Guardian, May 26, 2018. Online: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/26/why-the-extraordinary-story-of-the-last-slave-in-america-has-finally-come-to-light?fbclid=IwAR3Mr9; Richard F. Shepard, “Brooks Atkinson, 89, Dead; Times Drama Critic 31 Years,” New York Times January 14, 1984. Online: https://nyti.ms/29DyGFI; Charles Leanman, White Marriage License Index, April 19, 1823 through December 31, 1967, p. 1434. Probate Court, Mobile County, Alabama; “Brother Bernardine Leanman, St. Joseph's educator, 90,” Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger, August 19, 2001.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

Talented Press Register reporters draw national attention to Mobile waterfront


In a nationwide writing contest in 1933, two Mobile Press Register reporters took two of the top three prizes. That was an interesting result for a contest that drew entries from around the country.

United Artists Corporation sponsored the “I Cover the Waterfront” contest to publicize the release of its feature film by the same name. The movie starred Claudette Colbert and Ben Lyon in a story about an investigative reporter who romances a suspected smuggler's daughter. The studio opened the contest to all ship news and waterfront reporters.

Frances R. Durham won a second-place cash prize of $150 (about $3,000 in today’s dollars) for her feature story, “the Black Pirogue,” the tale of a man swept overboard. She wrote the prize winning story under the nom de plume Francis Gildart.

Durham was the Press Register society editor at the time of the contest, but earlier had covered the waterfront for the Mobile paper and several upstate Alabama papers. She covered the West Indian Hurricane, also known as the Great Miami Hurricane, of 1926. She also wrote the story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States. Lewis, together with 115 other African captives, was brought to the United States on board the ship Clotilda in 1860.

Charles Leanman, who covered the Mobile waterfront for the Press Register, won a third-place prize of $25 (about $500 today) for a story about a frustrated romance along the waterfront during the Spanish-American War.

Francis Kester of the Oakland Tribune in California won the first-prize of $250 (about $5,000 today) for his graphic story, “The Wreck of the Hanalei,” a 1914 marine disaster off Bolinas Head, California.

Judges selected the winners based on human interest, novelty of theme, and style. Each article had to be based on actual events and had to be part of the reporters personal experiences, either as a participant or observer.

The judges were Louis Wiley of the New York Times, Stanley Walker of the New York Herald-Tribune, and Paul Block, publisher of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade. The judges picked 10 winners from the entries around the county.

Sources

“Two of Press Register Staff Winners in National Contest,” Mobile Register, July 24, 1933 A, 5:3

“Francis Kester Wins Prize for Sea Story,” New York Times, July 25, 1933 Books, 22:4

Boston Herald, May 17, 1933 16:6 


Thursday, October 29, 2020

Crichton man pulls off hoax when radio news was hot

The New Orleans Times-Picayune devoted a section of its
Sunday edition to news about the development of radio. The
story "Mobilian dreams of patent; sells it for $300,000" appears
at the top of the first column on the left side of the page. 

Before the internet, email, and cheap long-distance calling, reporters had trouble confirming some facts and could be duped by bold hoaxers. One hoax out of Mobile on the eve of the Great Depression gained nationwide publicity before being debunked. 

In June 1929, the New Orleans Times-Picayune carried a story about an electrician in Mobile who had invented a device to eliminate radio static, a big problem in the days when AM radio dominated the airways. Mobile reporter Frances R. Durham wrote the story about W. A. Maxwell, a Crichton resident who claimed he sold his invention to the Atwater Kent Radio Corporation of Philadelphia for $300,000, plus a 25 percent royalty. That would be about $4.5 million in today’s dollars, plus royalties. So you can see why there was a lot of interest in the invention. 

Frances Durham
Durham provided elaborate detail of Maxwell’s invention and summarized the results: “Electrical disturbances, lightning and all manner of interference are said to be neutralized by the Maxwell static eliminator as effectively as a shock absorber takes up shocks.” 

Maxwell even claimed to have set up a demonstration set for public viewing, or hearing, at a local music house. 

Reflecting on his windfall, Maxwell shouted to the reporter as she was leaving, “I’ll have to pay income tax next year.”

It took nearly two weeks, but the hoax eventually fell apart, but not before being published by papers around the country. Starting in late June, newspapers from Boston to Columbus, Ohio, to Denver to Seattle began carrying denials from the Atwater Kent company that it had bought the static eliminator. Scientific organizations, broadcasting and radio authorities, and radio fans had deluged the company with questions about the supposed device. 

The company issued a statement that “There is no truth that we have purchased a static eliminator from W. A. Maxwell of Mobile. We have never seen either the apparatus or the man.” 

We don’t know what happened to Maxwell as the hoax apparently eliminated him from any more news stories. 

That Maxwell could have so easily fooled Durham is odd. She was a smart and experienced reporter. Durham graduated from St. Joseph’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. She broke in as a police reporter on the New Orleans States during World War I, when male reporters were in short supply. 

She had been the first reporter hired by publisher Ralph B. Chandler when he began the Mobile Press in 1929. With the merger of the Press and the Register in 1932, Durham became the first society editor of the Mobile Press Register. 

Durham was neither the first nor the last reporter to be taken in by a hoax. Until the internet took over as a fertile field for fake news, newspapers regularly printed hoaxes unknowingly.

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

The rise and fall of the afternoon Mobile Item



Evelyn Doyle, the wife of the Mobile Item’s circulation manager, Lionel Doyle,
wears a dress and hat designed to promote the afternoon newspaper
in this 1905 Erik Overbey photograph, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book
and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama.

The Mobile Item is a largely forgotten part of the Port City’s newspaper history today. But it once vigorously challenged the Mobile Register for market power and very nearly won out. In fact, the Item’s success may have been the reason it merged with the Register in 1916.

John Franklin Cothran, a 47-year-old Confederate veteran, founded the Mobile Weekly Item with his 14-year-old son, Lockiel, in December 1881. Sixteen years later, John and Lockiel formed the Item Publishing Co. with John’s other son, 24-year-old William, and Guy C. Sibley, to issue the Item daily.

Sibley may have been the major investor. He appears to have been the same Sibley who was president of National Collecting Company of Louisville, Kentucky. Charles S. Sibley, probably a relative, owned a wholesale lumber company in Mobile and was one of the stockholders of National Collecting.[1]

The birth of the Item was part of the remarkable increase in U.S. newspapers that had begun in the 1870s and continued unabated through the 1880s. In Mobile during the 20 years before 1900, there were five dailies, seven white-owned weeklies, five black-owned weeklies, and six specialized newspapers. Most of the papers were short-lived, but competed with the Item and the Register for ad revenue and subscribers.

The growth of afternoon newspapers such as the Item was a national trend more marked in cities the size of Mobile than in larger cities. It resulted from the increased demand for late telegraphic news and changing social patterns. People going shopping or headed home after work wanted the ads, reading matter, and entertainment material offered by afternoon publications. Theater patrons found it convenient to buy afternoon papers. Electric lighting made it easier to read newspapers’ fine print at night.

Women liked afternoon newspapers because they had more leisure time in the afternoons to read and shop. Department stores aimed their ads at these women readers. Daily afternoon newspapers and department stores sort of matured together through the late 1800s. From their beginnings during that time, Mobile’s department stores advertised heavily in the city’s daily newspapers, mainly the afternoon journals.[2] 

While afternoon papers grew, the morning Register struggled with continuing financial problems. To provide needed cash, publisher John L. Rapier persuaded the city’s leading businessmen and financiers to form a new stock company in 1889, the Register Co., to replace the John L. Rapier & Co.

Saddled with a considerable floating debt, heavy interest payments, and a lack of sufficient working capital, the Register nearly went under in the Panic of 1893. The owners almost sold the newspaper to pay its debts, but saved it through bankruptcy reorganization.[3]

The Item also gained in readers over the Register. In 1910, the Item reported to N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory, the industry authority on circulation and advertising, that it had 11,080 daily and Sunday readers. The Register reported just 7,000 daily and 9,000 Sunday. That meant the Item could garner more advertising and greater income than the Register.

In a separate advertisement, the Item “Guaranteed circulation over 11,500 daily. Largest circulation of any Mobile paper. Dominates its field—best advertising medium—absolutely necessary to a successful Mobile campaign.” The Item intended the ad to catch the eyes of national advertisers who were promoting brand names more and more.

A year later, the Item claimed in Edward P. Remington’s Annual Newspaper Directory that it was reaching 12,100 Sunday readers while the Register’s circulation remained unchanged at 9,000. If the trend continued, then the Register would have to give up the field. [4]

This happy situation for the Item was about to change. In April 1910, Frederick Ingate Thompson bought the Register. When Thompson took control of the Register, he was a rising media baron who very nearly established a Southern newspaper empire.

He provided the Register a much-needed infusion of cash. Thompson would make the newspaper attractive to a wider audience and take it into the age of big business. Under Thompson, the Register would become a profitable powerhouse of advocacy, progressive muckraking, and sensationalism, as well as serious news gathering, rebuilding some of its political influence in the region and the nation.

Thompson’s strengthened morning Register and the Cothrans’ growing afternoon Item soon clashed.

Progressive reformers in Alabama and across the nation had been working to sweep away old aldermanic forms of city government. Reformers associated mayors and councils with political rings, ward healers, spoils, cronyism, and corruption, of which there was plenty in Mobile.

Progressives in Mobile, which included Thompson, sought to replace the mayor and board of aldermen with what they considered a more business-like, three-member commission. The three members would rotate terms as mayor and divide up duties of city administration.

Current elected city officials, staff, and those who benefited from the existing system opposed the change. The Item early on supported a commission government. But when the campaign for the commission began in earnest, the Item switched sides and supported the aldermanic forces.

That put the Item at odds with the Register, which supported the measure. Thompson, worked with the city’s Progressive Association, a coalition of businessmen and professionals, to lead the fight for the commission.

The two sides fought bitterly. Old political alliances and friendships broke. The two newspapers’ advertisers undoubtedly pressured the publishers to support their sides of the issue.

On June 5, 1911, Mobilians turned out in large numbers to approve the commission government, 2,227 to 1,401. It was the largest turnout of voters in some time.

The Birmingham News gave much of the credit for the success of plan to the Register. “Too much cannot be said in praise of The Mobile Register for the splendid fight it made in behalf of Commission Government,” the News opined. “The victory of the good government forces would have been impossible but for the clean, intelligent and fearless campaign of this journal.” [5]

Each New Year newspaper carriers presented
their subscribers with a "memorial" souvenir
booklet of well-wishes for the year ahead.
The purpose, of course, was to get a tip.
 In the above photo, carriers of the Mobile Item
and their supervisor pose for a photo
to go on the front of their memorial.
In August 1911, the Item cut it subscription price in its circulation war with the Register. That meant that subscription route carriers and street sellers also would earn less. On the afternoon of August 21, apparently encouraged by outsiders, more than 150 carriers struck the Item. To get public support for their strike, the newsboys handed out flyers explaining their demands and paraded in the streets.

To deliver papers to subscribers, the Item turned to loading them in cars and having the drivers drop the papers off. The striking newsboys put out pickets who attacked anyone attempting to deliver the paper and destroyed any copies they could. The newspaper got police officers to ride with its drivers and immediately sought an injunction against the newsboys. Police also arrested several of the Item’s striking carriers. [6]

It also began to appear that the Register had a hand in the newsboys’ strike. Police arrested several Register employees for taking copies of the Item from carriers and tossing them in the trash. Among those arrested from the Register: John Oliver Milton Stuardi, the former Item circulation manager who had switched to the Register circulation department, his younger brother Norman E. Stuardi, Leslie Stevens, E. C. D’Olive, and John Allman.[7]

The newspaper’s advertisers may have begun asking about credits for their ads in papers that weren’t being delivered, adding to the pressure to settle the dispute. The Item’s management and members of the newsboys union met twice the afternoon of August 23.

The managers and newsboys agreed to ask the newly created three Mobile City Commissioners to arbitrate the dispute. The two sides also essentially agreed to the route carriers’ demands regardless of what the arbiters decided and the carriers agreed to return to work.[8] 

The Mobile Item was located at 118-120
Conti St., probably in the three-story
building in the space next to the
closest wall. The building was once
occupied by Klosky's restaurant.

At the end of the year a series of deaths left the Item with changing management and uncertain leadership. Founder John F. Cothran died on December 12, 1911, and William P. Cothran took over running the paper, his older brother Lockiel having died in 1899 at age 32.

James Callanan Van Antwerp, the firm’s secretary-treasurer, became president of the Item Publishing Co. Van Antwerp was the son of Mobile pharmacy entrepreneur and leading businessman Garrett Van Antwerp, Oddly enough, the senior Van Antwerp had died two days before Cothran. His father’s death may have required James to focus on running the family’s business interests instead of the newspaper, leading to another change.

At any rate, in April 1912, the stockholders sold the newspaper company, perhaps without William P. Cothran’s cooperation. Journalist John C. O’Connell, representing a group of wealthy Mobile businessmen, bought the interests of N. A. Richards and his wife, giving the investors control of the Item and capitalizing the company at $150,000.

While O’Connell managed the newspaper, Albert Peyton Bush, Jr., served as secretary-treasurer of the new Item company. Bush had wide-ranging business interests including being an owner in his father’s wholesale grocery firm, a director of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad, and president of the Mobile Cotton Exchange and the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. The sound newspaper experience of O’Connell and the extensive business connections of Bush seemed to bode well for the future of the Item.[9]

Cothran, meanwhile, took his profits from the sale of the Item and in 1913 used the money to start up another afternoon daily, the Mobile Post. He headed up the Post until 1914 when, apparently ill, he quit the paper, moved to Gulfport, Mississippi, and died in March 1915 at age 42.[10] 

Meanwhile, something was amiss at the Item. The ownership and management of the paper changed once again. In January 1915, Ralph R. Buvinger bought a large share of the newspaper’s stock and took charge as general manager. Buvinger already owned the afternoon Meridian Star in Mississippi, which was out-competing the morning Meridian Dispatch. He also was part owner of the Columbus Enquirer in Georgia. Buvinger sought to put the Item on a sounder financial footing and to improve the news and editorial departments. In March, W. M. Clemens, a cousin of Mark Twain, bought part interest in the Item and became the managing editor.[11]

Clemens, a native of Kentucky, had been in the newspaper business for more than 20 years, including as managing editor and general manager of the Memphis News Scimitar. In 1911, he became managing editor the Birmingham News, where he was before coming to Mobile. He also served as secretary treasurer of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, which moved its headquarters to Mobile with him.[12]

The shifting management at the Item damaged its ability to compete effectively against the Register. More important, however, was Thompson’s aggressive pursuit of advertisers, subscribers, and news.

By 1914, the Item’s circulation had grown to 12,000 readers. But the Register’s had grown even more. The morning daily had 14,000 readers and the Sunday paper could boast of 19,000 readers. And the Register’s growth would continue to outpace the Item’s.[13]

In April 1916, Thompson secured a controlling interest in the Item and became president of the Item Publishing Co., and on April 10, the Register began publishing the Item from its presses. Thompson continued the Item as the afternoon publication of the Register and suspended the Sunday Item. He reinstated the Saturday Item, which had been discontinued several months earlier.

Buvinger returned to Meridian to manage the Star. Several Mobilians persuaded Clemens to stay in the Port City as general secretary of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. After the United States entered the Great War in 1917, he served in the branch office of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The corporation built, owned, and operated a merchant fleet for the U.S. government in support of the war effort. Around early 1919, Clemens left Mobile to become managing editor of Hearst’s Atlanta Georgian and Atlanta American.[14]

A year after Thompson bought the Item, the name “News” was added to that of Item at the suggestion of a reader who thought that News-Item more accurately reflected the newspaper’s purpose. The News-Item continued to publish until 1932 until Thompson lost out to an upstart afternoon competitor, the Mobile Press. The merged company kept the Register but discontinued the News-Item and made the Press the afternoon paper.



[1] Young Ewing Allison, The City of Louisville and a Glimpse of Kentucky. (Committee on industrial and commercial improvement of the Louisville board of trade, 1887.), 94.

[2] Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism,  (Macmillan, 1962), 446-447.

[3] DR August 17, 1886 2:2; October 15, 1886 4:3; October 16, 1886 4:5; October 17,1886 3:3; March 20, 1889 2:1; July 19,1893 2:1; January 31,1895 1:2; Mobile County Chancery Court records, number 5399, August 16, Oct. 3, 1893, Inventory of Mobile Register.

[4] N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory, (Philadelphia, 1910), 28, 1199; Edward P. Remington’s Annual Newspaper Directory (New York: 1911), 11.

[5] David E. Alsobrook, “Patrick J. Lyons,” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Online: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2163. Accessed March 9, 2020; [“Commission Government Wins in Mobile,” Fairhope Courier June 9, 1911 4:2; “Mobile Throws Off Shackles,” Birmingham News June 6, 1911 4:1.

[6]“News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 22, 1911 3:5; “Newsboys Strike In Mobile,” Atmore Record August 24, 1911 1:3.

[7] “News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 23, 1911 6:4.

[8] “News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 24, 1911 11:4; “Newsboys Strike In Mobile,” Atmore Record August 24, 1911 1:3; “Strike of Newsboys Will Be Arbitrated,” Montgomery Advertiser August 24, 1911 3:4.

[9] Atlanta Constitution April 5, 1912, 2; Tuscaloosa News April 7, 1912 1:3; Fourth Estate, March 13, 1915, 26.

[10] N. W. Ayer & Sons American Newspaper Annual and Directory. (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer and Son, 1914.), 33.

[11] N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory, (Philadelphia, 1914), 33.

[12] “W. M. Clemens on Mobile Item,” Editor & Publisher Volume 14, Issue 3 March 27, 1915, 838; “W. M. Clemens Now With Birmingham News,” Judicious Advertising and Advertising Experience. Vol. 10, Issue 1 (Lord & Thomas Publishing House, 1911.), 115.

[13] N. W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual and Directory, (Philadelphia, 1914), 33.

[14] The Fourth Estate, April 15, 1916, 4:1; Editor & Publisher, August 7, 1920, 18:4.


Monday, August 3, 2020

Literary brotherhood of Alabama journalists

Loafers’ Club Front row, left to right: David R. Solomon, Artemus Calloway,
Eric Levenson, Octavus Roy Cohen, Perkins J. Prewitt and Henry Vance.
Back row: Jack Caldwell, Garrard Harris, James E. Chappell,
Petterson Marzoni, Leroy Jacobs, Edgar Valentine Smith
(
Jefferson County Historical Association)


EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is a follow-up of a previous one about Mobile Register staffers who were part of the Southern Renaissance literary movement that began in the 1920s. During the Renaissance, Southern literature gained considerable energy from writers just starting their careers. Their works would become American classics. The period marked the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams, Robert Penn Warren, and Zora Neale Hurston among others. 

Many American writers sharpened their literary tools, and paid the bills, as newspaper reporters and editors while they developed careers in what is commonly called serious literature. Mobile Register reporters and editors were among them. 

Between about 1910 and 1920, the Mobile Register’s staff included four men, Rice Gaither, Henry Herschel Brickell, Garrard Harris, and David Rankin Barbee who became prominent in American literature. A fifth staffer, Perkins J. Prewitt joined the Register and News Item in 1916 as a reporter and editor. Though Prewitt’s literary aspirations didn’t pan out, he and Harris later worked on the Birmingham News and were members of the literary group known as the Loafers’ Club. 

In the years after World War I, many Alabama journalists found that time as a newspaper apprentice could improve their writing skills and enhance their careers and reputations. The journalists could draw on the characters they met on the beat for the characters they created in their fiction. Events they covered provided plot ideas. 

The journalists also sought out others with similar writing passions. They came together in writers’ clubs or informal home gatherings to share their knowledge and skills, influencing each other’s writing. 

There were several formal literary clubs in Mobile in the early 1900s. The Register listed the Newman Circle, the Shakespeare Club, the Century Book Club, the A.B.L.S. Society, and the Mobile Chapter of the Southern Association of College Women, “all of a more or less literary character.” They also were mostly for women and none of them appeared to be the type to attract journalists, men or women, looking to write a best-selling novel or short story. 

Details on writers clubs for journalists in Mobile are hard to come. They didn’t seek a wide membership or create a formal organization. Often the members all worked together. Rarely did their gatherings merit mention in their own newspaper. 

Rice Gaither and his wife Frances are an example of the informal way writers gathered together to improve their craft. Gaither joined the Mobile Register staff soon after graduating from the University of Mississippi in 1910. He became city editor by 1914, and then the managing editor. 

For many years, the Gaithers used their Fairhope home as a writing retreat. They wrote from 9 o’clock in the morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A sign on the front door said “No visitors until after 4 p.m.” But during the weekends and in the evenings, the Gaithers opened their home to many of the South’s leading writers and artists. 

Those who visited with the Gaithers included artist and muralist John Roderick Dempster MacKenzie; popular journalist, novelist, and short story writer Roark Bradford; and successful businessman and author of numerous novels and short stories Williams March Campbell. No doubt, many local journalists who aspired to be novelists passed over the threshold of the Gaither home. Read more about the Gaithers in the post, Editors left their mark on American literature. 

In 1920s Birmingham, meanwhile, a group of male writers and journalists formed a literary and writers society they called the Loafers’ Club. The club limited its members to 12. 

The group met Wednesday nights, usually at the home of Octavus Roy Cohen, perhaps their most famous member. They discussed plots for their stories and offered advice for improvement. If a publishing house rejected a member’s story, the group helped revise the work until it was accepted for publication. They succeeded in getting national book and magazine companies to publish their works. 

Below are sketches of some Loafers’ Club members who also spent time as journalists in Alabama: 

Octavus Roy Cohen produced more than 60 novels, 250 short stories, five plays, and 30 film scripts. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1891, Cohen graduated in 1911 from Clemson College with a degree in engineering. Over the next three years, Cohen changed jobs and careers with amazing rapidity. After short stints working the coal and iron industry in Birmingham and writing for the Birmingham Ledger, Cohen returned to Charleston, became a lawyer and set up his own law practice in 1913. He also started writing short stories and returned to Birmingham the following year to marry Inez Lopez, also a writer. After Cohen moved to Los Angeles in 1935 to write movie scripts, the Loafers’ Club faded away. 

Edgar Valentine Smith (left)
and Perkins J. Prewitt
Perkins J. Prewitt is the subject of the earlier post Changing jobs for $3 more a week. Though he spent only about a year at the Mobile Register, that was time enough to get to know fellow literary aspirants Gaither, Brickell, Harris and Barbee. Prewitt graduated from Mississippi State College and started as a reporter on the Birmingham Ledger. After stints at other newspapers, including the Register, Prewitt returned to Birmingham to become city editor on the News from 1919 to 1925. He left journalism until 1945 starting Tab, a tabloid paper for teenagers. In 1952, he became the telegraph news editor and a Sunday columnist with the Montgomery Advertiser. Prewitt wrote several novels and short stories, but none were published. 

Henry Vance began his journalism career when he was around 20 writing for the Mountain Eagle in Jasper, Alabama. In 1913, he began writing for the Birmingham News working as a sportswriter, columnist, and humorist. He wrote a column called “The Coal Bin” and appeared regularly on the “Henry and Percy” radio show. Vance contributed stories to the monthly Smith’s Magazine, created for the “John Smith’s” of the world and with a circulation of 125,000. 

Garrard Harris is treated more fully in the earlier post, Editors left their mark on American literature. The point here is to note his association with the Mobile Register between 1911 and 1914, when he was the associate editor, and later with the Loafers’ Club in Birmingham. In spring 1920, Birmingham News publisher Victor H. Hanson hired Harris as associate editor, a job he held until his death in 1927. He joined the club while at the News. 

Petterson Marzoni, after serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy during World War I, moved to Birmingham with his wife. Marzoni’s father-in-law, Frank Potts Glass, was one of owners of the Montgomery Advertiser and Birmingham News. Marzoni became the drama editor with the News. Marzoni supposedly wrote the first weekly film criticism column in a U.S. newspaper, the Birmingham Age-Herald, acquired by the News in 1927. Marzoni wrote one story for Weird Tales, a fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine regarded by historians of fantasy and science fiction as a legend in the field. He also wrote stories for Black Mask Magazine, Metropolitan Magazine, and Good Housekeeping. MGM turned his story, “Big Hearted Jim,” into a movie called “Brotherly Love.” Marzoni served as editor of slave narratives and other narratives. 

Edgar Valentine Smith was Birmingham News copy editor, short story writer, and a playwright. His short story “Prelude” won the O. Henry Prize in 1923. He won the prize twice more during his long career with the News. 

Abram Artemus Calloway worked as reporter and editor in Birmingham for the Ledger, Age-Herald, and News. He wrote about 400 stories, novelettes, and serials which appeared in Hollands, Country Gentleman, Argosy All Story, Cowboy Story, Chicago Tribune, and other magazines and newspapers. His more than 3,000 bedtime stories appeared in the Birmingham News. Calloway and several of his fellow Birmingham journalists wrote for Weird Tales, a fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine regarded by historians of fantasy and science fiction as a legend in the field. During the1920s and 1930s, Calloway helped nurture young short-story writers by buying and publishing their stories in the News. 

James Saxon Childers, though a member of the Loafers’ Club, didn’t become a journalist until the 1930s, working as a part-time reporter, columnist, and book reviewer for the Birmingham News. After serving in World War I as an aviator and intelligence officer, he became a faculty member of the English department at Birmingham-Southern College. He wrote novels and biographies, but travel books were his most successful works. 

Jack Bethea became a reporter for the Birmingham Age-Herald in 1909 while a junior at Phillips High School. He became city editor at the Birmingham Ledger in 1916 and managing editor of the Birmingham Post in 1921. Bethea wrote five novels about the New South, coal mining and cotton farming. Collier’s Weekly serialized one in 1923. Two were adapted for the movies. 

Sources
Craig Allen, Jr., “Octavus Roy Cohen at Center of Loafers’ Club,” The Jefferson Journal, (Jefferson County Historical Association, No. 3, Summer 2012), 5-6. Online: http://www.jeffcohistory.com/images/NEWSLETTER_3rd_Qtr_2012.pdf. Accessed August 3, 2020. 

A. J. Wright, “Octavus Roy Cohen,” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Online: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-3716. Accessed August 3, 2020. 

Letter to Ralph Poore from Penelope Prewitt Cunningham, Birmingham, Alabama

  • Letters of Perkins John Prewitt, in the possession of his daughter Penelope Prewitt Cunningham, Birmingham, Alabama:
  • Telegram, D. R. Barbee, Mobile Register to Perkins J. Prewitt, May 24, 1916
  • Perkins J. Prewitt to Ruth Prewitt, May 31, 1916; Perkins J. to Ruth Prewitt, June 1, 1916
  • Perkins J. to Ruth Prewitt, June 4, 1916
  • Perkins J. Prewitt, an undated letter to a business friend later in life 

Henry Clay Vance, “Alabama Authors,” Alabama Library Association. Online: http://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/?p=2062. Accessed August 1, 2020. 

“Artemus Calloway,” Tellers of Weird Tales. Online: https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2011/07/artemus-calloway-1883-1948.html. Accessed August 3, 2020. 

“Pettersen Marzoni,” Tellers of Weird Tales. Online: https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2011/06/pettersen-marzoni-1886-1939.html. Accessed August 3, 2020. 

Abram Artemus Calloway, Alabama Authors,” Alabama Library Association. Online: http://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/?p=906. Accessed August 1, 2020. 

Samuel J. Mitchell, “James Saxon Childers,” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Online: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2344. Accessed August 1, 2020. 

Joe Ross, “Jack Bethea,” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Online: http://encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2336. Accessed August 1, 2020.


Friday, July 31, 2020

Register's Nicolson paving plan journeys through the mud and mire of Reconstruction politics


To lay pipes along Dauphin Street east of Royal Street, workers had to remove the round
wood street pavers, which can be seen stacked along the edge of the sidewalk.
The city most likely used the Nicolson pavement method, which sometimes
used round pavers instead of the usual rectangular pavers.
William E. Wilson photo, 1894-1905, Historic Mobile Preservation Society

The Mobile Register wanted the Port City to jump start its stagnant economy after the Civil War by copying civic improvements of such vibrant commercial centers as Atlanta and Nashville.

One the Register’s proposals called for getting the city out of the mud by paving some of the streets in the business district. The newspaper’s editors, downtown property owners, and many merchants believed that first-class streets would make Mobile more competitive with interior rail centers.

The paving plan ran into linked technical, financial, and political problems that illustrate the issues many Southern cities faced in trying to pave their streets. The paving plan raised questions about:

  • What paving material made the best street surface
  • How to fairly pay for street improvements
  • The role of newspapermen and city officials in promoting economic development and also in a position to benefit from the awarding of paving contracts

Mobile, like many American cities, found unpaved streets to be a constant bother. Before the war, some visitors complained that dust filled the air during dry spells while vehicles bogged down in the mud when it rained. An English visitor in 1857 hired a carriage to get him over the muddy streets from his hotel to a steamer on the Mobile River just a few blocks away.

As the largest city in the state and Alabama’s only seaport, Mobile’s businesses required a lot of drayage of goods over city streets. Horse-drawn wagons distributed goods unloaded from trains and ships along the city’s waterfront to warehouses and businesses around the town and to country stores in the region. Teamsters drove wagons loaded with cotton, textiles, lumber, food crops, liquor, and machinery to freight stations and docks for shipment around the world. Muddy streets could bring traffic to a standstill and damage valuable goods.

Cities didn’t have good choices for paving material that they could afford until the end of the century. Gravel sank beneath muddy streets. Granite was the preferred surface, but it was expensive. Reliable asphalt and cement didn’t become available until after 1890.

Mobile used ballast discarded from ships to pave some of the streets in the wholesale warehouse district near the wharves. These cobblestone pavements were slippery in Mobile’s frequent rains and dusty when dry. Horses and carriages traveling over stone pavers made an awful racket among the buildings on the narrow streets. The cobblestones also contributed to numerous cases of horse shin splints.

Crushed oyster shells served as a paving material for some roads leading out of town. Before the Civil War, wealthy citizens who took refuge from Mobile’s yellow fever epidemics in the western resort suburb of Spring Hill, paid to have what was then called Isabella Street paved with shell.

Renamed Shell Road, it began at Broad Street in Mobile and ended at Spring Hill College. The road had to be resurfaced with shells four times a year. Toll guards collected from 25 and 50 cents from travelers, depending on their carriages or wagons, to pay for the maintenance.

Four years later, road hands built a second shell road along Mobile Bay. To distinguish it from the original, the Shell Road was renamed Old Shell Road.

In the late 1860s, Nicolson pavement, consisting of treated wood blocks, became the craze among major cities in United States and abroad. Stone and granite were scarce and wood was abundant. Horse traffic made less noise on streets surfaced with wood. Advocates of wood pointed to its quietness, cheaper cost, and comparative ease of cleaning and repair.

Wood street pavers
Using the Nicolson system, workers placed one-inch-thick pine planks, that had been coated in boiling tar, on a graded roadbed. On the coated pine planks, the road workers then placed pine blocks in regular rows, grain end up. These blocks, about 10 inches long by 4 inches wide, also had been dipped into hot tar. A narrow strip of lath placed between each row kept the wood blocks from shifting. Workers applied a final layer of hot gravel and tar, and tamped it between the crevices. This created a smooth, level surface.

In its earliest applications, Nicolson pavement had problems. The soft pine tended to absorb water and began to rot. The moisture also caused the blocks to swell and heave. Heavy traffic pounded the blocks to shreds.

Despite the problems, the wood paving remained attractive because it was quieter and cheaper than other solutions, and paving companies made technical advances in the Nicolson system. Companies infused creosote under high pressure into the pavers rather than dipping them in tar. They replaced the plank foundation with a bed of cement. Workers fitted the blocks tightly together rather than spacing them. A steam roller smoothed the surface and final steps filled the joints with sand and covered the pavement with creosote oil. New Orleans used a method similar to this before 1868.

In April 1868, property owners on Royal Street petitioned the city of Mobile to have the Mobile Paving Company surface the one block between St. Michael and St. Francis streets with Nicolson pavement. The city had the authority to improve streets at the expense of adjacent land owners. The city allocated the cost to the landowners based on how many feet of the property fronted the street.

At this point, the street paving venture got tangled up in Reconstruction politics, and the business interests of the Mobile Register’s owner William D’Alton Mann and editor John Forsyth.

When one of the petitioners withdrew his signature just before his death, his executor sued the city seeking a refund of the paving tax to the estate. The executor argued that the city taxed the property owners before it had the authority to do so under the 1868 Reconstruction constitution. The Alabama Supreme Court disagreed and ruled the city also had the authority under the post-war 1866 constitution.

Whether the single block on Royal Street got paved in this initial effort isn’t clear from the court case. But in June 1870, the Mobile Register called on the city to spend $500,000 on Nicolson pavement for some of the major streets.

The only company in the city that could take on such a project was the Mobile Paving Company, incorporated in 1868. Mann invested $10,000 in the firm and served as president. In 1868, Mann also bought the Register for $40,000.

Editor Forsyth joined Mann as an officer in the paving company, probably having been bankrolled by the Register’s new owner. Other owners of the paving company included prominent Democrats such as Gideon M. Parker, and George A. Ketchum. That they were Democrats isn’t surprising since most politically active whites were.

But opposition to the paving measure didn’t split along racial or party lines. Wealthy merchant Moses Waring led the Mobile Board of Trade to oppose the venture. African American leaders also divided over the paving plan. Alderman Lawrence S. Berry endorsed the proposal, while Philip Joseph opposed it.

At the urging of the Register, the city had already committed itself to financing two railroad ventures and improving the harbor. Mann didn’t just champion railroads, he invested in building them, including one of those looking for backing from the city. He and Forsyth aggressively promoted this and other personal interests in the newspaper. They could reasonable argue, and did, that these ventures also benefited the economic development of the city.

Opponents of the paving measure worried that the city could not afford more debt. They pointed to the experience of Memphis. In 1866, city of Memphis contracted to pave 11 miles of streets with Nicolson pavement. The pavement soon began to deteriorate, leaving the city with a heavy debt and poor streets.

Critics of the Mobile proposal also questioned the fairness of taxing all citizens for improvements that would benefit only one part of the city. That criticism also struck at Forsyth, who had opposed protective tariffs that cost the South to the benefit of the North. It also underlined the charge that Forsyth and Mann now supported taxing others because they would personally benefit from the paving project.

The city set June 11 for a public vote on the paving venture. Both sides held rallies and money flowed freely to buy support or opposition not only among voters but also among public officials. Greasing the wheels of public debate with the essential oil of money was a commonly accepted practice at the time. But the custom added to the general perception of corruption during Reconstruction.

If not outspent, the supporters of paving venture were certainly outvoted, even though paving backers widely stuffed ballot boxes. The referendum failed by a vote of 3,960 to 1,370. More than 7 out of 10 voters said “no” to the project. A Register editorial complained that Mobile was being “held down and back in the race of progress.”

Exposed wood pavers on Franklin Street
north of St. Francis Street. 
Photo courtesy of Larry Bell
The failure of the paving venture proved temporary. Nicolson pavement eventually covered several miles of downtown streets. But most streets remained dirt. Even as late as 1915, the city had permanently paved only 38.5 miles of its 160 miles of streets. Another 35 miles were hardened streets. Nicolson wood blocks accounted for more than half of the paving materials used, followed by asphalt and vitrified brick.

Neither financing of paved streets nor railroads had the desired effect on the city’s economic growth. Mobile declined in rank among both American and Southern cities as its economy and population failed to keep up with the growth of other cities. Mobile dropped from being the fourth largest Southern city behind New Orleans, Charleston and Richmond in 1860 to being the fifth largest city in 1870 and eighth largest in 1880.

Mobile’s leaders saw that the South’s successful new cities especially had good railroads and roads. They believed that these facilities caused economic growth and aimed to get them for Mobile. But they got cause-and-effect backwards. It was the demands of economic growth that brought the infrastructure into existence. A dynamic marketplace provided what people needed and wanted. 

Sources

Wrenn, Lynette B. “’Get the City out of the Mud and Mire,’ Financing Street Improvements in Post-Civil War Memphis.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1988): 17-26. Accessed July 17, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/42626702. 

Harriet E. Amos, Cotton City: Urban Development in Antebellum Mobile. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985), 140. 

“Irwin v. Mayor, &c. of Mobile,” Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Alabama During December Term, 1876, and Part of December Term, 1877, Vol. LVII (Montgomery: Joel White, 1879), 6-14. 

Michael W. Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile, 1860-1890. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2002), 155-156. 

Lonnie A. Burnett, The Pen Makes a Good Sword: John Forsyth of the Mobile Register. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 166-168. 

Harper’s Weekly Journal of Civilization, New York, September 6, 1866. 

Dianne Timblin, “History on the Road, Cleveland’s Hessler Court,” Forest History Today, Spring 2008, 51-55. 

Nicolson Pavement, https://chicagology.com/prefire/prefire011 

Ryan J. Reed, “The Creosoted Wood Block: One Step in the Evolution of St. Louis Paving,” Landmarks Association of St. Louis, Inc. 

“The Nicolson Pavement, New Orleans Crescent, July 25, 1868 3:1 

“Mobile in a Muddle,” Eufaula Daily Times June 30, 1870, 1