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.
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| 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.
