Port City Problems and Newspaper Circulation Grew in World War II

A human flood washed over Mobile during the Second World War bringing drastic, sweeping economic and social change. Thousands of men and women from the farms and small towns of the rural South flowed into Mobile to take the jobs offered by a wartime economy.

Between April 1940 and March 1943, the population of the city rose from 78,000 to 125,000.

Shipbuilding, aluminum production, chemical plants and a major U.S. Army Air Corps base brought waves of people who changed a leisurely paced small Southern city into a chaotic, overcrowded metropolis.

Housing became inadequate. People lived in tents, trailers and shacks, overwhelming public services.

With the war workers came their children who overwhelmed the school system. By the 1942-43 school year, the school system had to operate in double shifts of four hours each. More than 2,000 children attended no classes at all.

Mobile Press Register Publisher Ralph B. Chandler understood the seriousness of the problems the city faced. On the news pages of the paper he exposed the problems. On the editorial pages he proposed solutions. Behind the scenes he worked to make the proposals a reality.

The paper published a rental directory and appealed to homeowners to make spare rooms available to those with no place to stay. Poignant stories pulled at Mobilians’ heartstrings: a wife who came to Mobile to join her husband being forced to sleep two nights in the bus station; an ill woman who took a cot in the city jail rather than sleep on the streets; a man who camped in a tent outside the home he was evicted from.

The Press Register’s circulation grew rapidly with the population, which demanded newspapers to read. In January 1939, the Press Register had a circulation of 43,985. By January 1942, circulation had grown to 65,193, in increase of about 48 percent.

The newspaper had problems keeping up with the demand for its editions, especially after 1942 when publishers faced rationing of newsprint because its production used too much material, transportation and labor critical to the war effort.

The presence of the Brookley military air base allowed the Press Register to get extra supplies of newsprint.