Suburban Growth Meant Switching from Bicycles to Motorcycles to Deliver Newspapers

From the 1966 Spanish Fort Bulletin.

This photo from the History of Spanish Fort Alabama Facebook page reminded me of how newspaper youth carriers switched from using bicycles to motorcycles to deliver The Mobile Press Register.

The switch came for a couple of reasons. After World War II, Mobile's population became too spread out for carriers to cover the distances on bicycles. The papers also became heavier with many more pages.

That the Press Register allowed him to also deliver the Spanish Fort Bulletin is a surprise. Such suburban weeklies were beginning to take bites into the daily's revenues and circulation.

We don’t know much about the history of newsboys for The Mobile Press Register and I would like to see their stories told. Does anyone know Chuck Lackey?

The Good Old, Old Days and the Merely Good Old Days in the Newspaper Office

In the photograph on the left above, editor Erwin Craighead works at his desk in The Mobile Register in 1897. (Photo courtesy of the Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama.)

About 90 years later, Press Register photographer Ron Colquitt snapped the photo on the right of me toiling away at my editorial page editor job on The Mobile Press.

Craighead composed his editorials by longhand, while I wrote mine on a computer. But otherwise, Craighead would have found much that was familiar about the newspaper office of the 1980s.

How much will we old timers find familiar about the digital newspaper office?

Register Fights Great War with Editorial Cartoons

This year marks the centennial of the start of World War I, which began on July 28, 1914, and lasted until Nov. 11, 1918. America entered the war in April 6, 1917.

The war pitted the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire against the Allied forces of Great Britain, the United States, France, Russia, Italy and Japan. The Great War, as it was known by those who fought it, resulted in the deaths of more than 9 million soldiers.

As long as the Europeans were fighting among themselves, The Mobile Register opposed the United States getting involved in the war.

After German submarines in February 1917 resumed sinking all merchant ships, including American ships, supplying the allies, the Register demanded the United States declare war. As a port, Mobile's livelihood depended on seaborne commerce.

With a U.S. declaration, the Register made the anti-German syndicated cartoons of J.H. Cassel, such as the one above, and Rollin Kirby an almost daily feature in the newspaper.

Unlike during the Spanish-American War, the Register did not prepare for independent coverage of the Great War. Such coverage had become far too expensive, so the newspaper depended on the Associated Press for reports on the war.