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.

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

 

Newsreels once contended with newspapers for audiences

Ship launching newsreel at the Mobile's Crown Theater
Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Newsreels, largely forgotten today, were a major news medium for most of the 20th century providing audiences a “you are there” quality to news events. Newsreels, like radio and TV, at first complemented the news coverage of the Mobile Register and other printed media. Later they competed for audiences.

Silent versions of newsreels had been around since the early 1900s and were enormously popular. When newsreels added sound in the late 1920s, they became wildly more attractive to audiences. At the high point of newsreels’ popularity, more than 7 out of every 10 Americans watched them every week.

Theaters most often showed newsreels as part of their entertainment programs before the feature film.

There also were theaters dedicated to showing only newsreels. They projected a one-hour reel with a mix of news, entertainment, and travel features in a continuous loop all day long.

Newsreels took their style and structure from newspapers and served as an illustrated supplement to the stories audiences were familiar with from the dailies. Audiences watched newsreels to see for themselves the events they had read about in the newspaper. Many years later, when television supplanted newsreels, this audience relationship reversed. TV viewers bought newspapers to read more details about the stories they had seen broadcast on the small screen.

Just as newspaper owners invested in the new medium of radio, they also backed the newsreel business. William Randolph Hearst, for example, owned Hearst Metrotone, one of the big five newsreel companies, the other four being: Fox Movietone, Paramount, Universal, and Warner-Pathe, owned by RKO after 1931.

Whether any newspaper owners in Mobile produced newsreels or operated newsreel theaters or other theaters isn’t known. But there are at least two existing newsreels about Mobile and there may have been others. One of the two existing newsreels is a Pathe film from the silent era and shows President Woodrow Wilson’s visit to Mobile in 1913. The other, produced during World War II by the Office of War Information Bureau of Motion Pictures, shows the effect on the Port City of the influx of tens of thousands of war workers.

Evidence that there were other local newsreels comes from a 1920 photo by Mobile photographer Erik Overbey, whose photos also appeared in the Register. His photo of the Crown Theater on Dauphin Street shows a hand-lettered display board announcing “TODAY. LAUNCHING THE CITY OF MOBILE AT CHICASAW,” apparently a newsreel about the launching of a cargo ship at the Chickasaw shipyard north of Mobile.

Newsreels lost audience popularity in the long transition to television. But even early TV programs sometime used newsreels. Newsreels managed to hold out in some theaters until the early 1970s when the medium disappeared.

Sources

Selina Williams, “Newsreels, 100 Years Legacies: The Lasting Impact of World War I,” the Wall Street Journal. Web: https://graphics.wsj.com/100-legacies-from-world-war-1/newsreels; Accessed on August 11, 2019; “Collecting news,” The Newsroom blog, British Library, December 16, 2018. Web: https://blogs.bl.uk/thenewsroom/2018/12/index.html?_ga=2.122523720.239422061.1565540831-2095941634.1565540831; Accessed on August 11, 2019; Luke McKernan, “ Newsreels and history,” XI Jornadas de Investigação do CIAC Faro, February 9, 2017. Web: https://lukemckernan.com/2017/02/12/newsreels-and-history/; Accessed on August 11, 2019; Joseph E.J. Clark, “Canned History: American Newsreels and the Commodification of Reality, 1927-1945,” (Dissertation, Brown University: 2011). Web: https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:11195/; Accessed on August 11, 2019; Scott L. Althaus, “The Forgotten Role of the Global Newsreel Industry in the Long Transition from Text to Television,” International Journal of Press/Politics 15(2) 193-218. Web: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1940161209358761; Accessed on August 11, 2019.

1911 Mobile newsboy strike part of a wave of labor unrest around the world

In August 1911, one group of newsboys in Mobile engaged in a brief two-day strike. Viewed in isolation, the strike was an event of little significance except to those involved. Seen in perspective, the incident was part of a wave of labor unrest around the world. It also may have been connected to newspaper competition and political changes in the Port City.

In England, in what became known as the Great Unrest, hundreds of strikes erupted in 1911 involving nearly a million workers. Among other labor actions, between 1900 and 1914, thousands of newsboys in the United States and Canada engaged in strikes against newspapers and news agencies.

The socialist Industrial Workers of the World, often just called the “Wobblies,” stirred up some of the strikes against newspapers and other industries. The Wobblies sought to overthrow the free market and to create a “workers’ commonwealth.” The union was active along the docks of the Gulf Coast and in the Piney Woods timber industry.

We don’t have any evidence that the Wobblies or other labor organizers were behind the newsboy strike in Mobile. But the youths certainly would have been aware of what fellow newsboys and adults had been up to around the country and the world.

In nearby New Orleans, 250 newsboys marched to Lafayette Square in July 1911 in protest of two papers raising their price to carriers. The New Orleans Daily States and the New Orleans Item raised the wholesale price of their 2-cent papers from 1 cent to 1 ½ cents.

The strikers littered the streets with shredded newspapers, beat up scabs, and marched in a night parade. The strike ended when the papers raised their retail price to 3 cents and restored the newsboys half-price discount.

In Mobile, newsboys also erupted when faced with a cut in their wholesale discount. The Mobile Daily Item told its carriers in August 1911 that it was reducing the subscription price of the newspaper from 15 cents to 10 cents a week. For each subscription, 6 cents would go to the paper and 4 cents to the carrier. The Item published weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings.

The Item may have cut its subscription price in its circulation war with the morning Mobile Register. The Item’s 12,000 readers was just under the Register’s 14,000.

The youths who delivered the Item on subscription routes objected to the new pricing. On the night of Sunday, August 20, one of youths visited the home where many of the carriers lived. He called on them to meet at the Central Trade Council Hall on Monday morning, August 21, to form a union and strike against the Item.

At the meeting, the carriers formed Newsboys Union No. 1. But the President Judge of the Central Trades Council ruled that it couldn’t recognize the group as a labor union because it had been put together solely to call a strike.

Nevertheless, a committee of youths from the new union met several times that morning with the Item’s management. The carriers demanded 6 cents for their share of the new price. The carriers also demanded that the paper pay them 6 cents for delivering deadheads, or free copies. Deadheads went to political friends and relatives of the editor, publisher, or other employees of the newspaper. The managers responded that the paper couldn’t make a profit supplying subscriptions at the price the newsboys demanded. The managers said they were open to arbitration of the dispute.

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.

It also began to appear that the Item’s competitor, the morning Mobile 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: J. O. Stuardi, the former Item circulation manager who had switched to the Register circulation department, Norman Stuardi, Leslie Stevens, E. C. D’Olive, and John Allman.

The Item’s management and members of the newsboys union met twice the afternoon of August 23. 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 managers and newsboys agreed to ask the newly created three Mobile City Commissioners to arbitrate the dispute. The two sides also agreed that the route carriers would get 5 or 6 cents a week for each paper delivered regardless of what the arbiters decided and the carriers agreed to return to work.

This gave the labor dispute a political cast. The city had just adopted the commission form of government, considered to be a progressive reform for good government that would break the power of ward bosses.

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. Progressives in Mobile 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 Mobile 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. The Register’s progressive Democrat owner, Frederick I. 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.”

We don’t know the result of the commission’s arbitration in the newsboy strike. As had been the case in other newsboy strikes around the country, there may have been no formal announcement. The paper may have just spread the word that the two sides had agreed and the strike was over.

The Item’s opposition to adopting the commission government would seem to have made it unlikely the new commissioners would support the newspaper’s position. Plus the newsboys already seem to already have won the dispute with the Item agreeing to increase carriers’ share to 5 or 6 cents of each subscription.

Newsboys Union No. 1 doesn’t appear to have outlived the strike. The carriers had managed to flex their muscle and to show managers at the Item, and the competing Register as well, that they could seriously disrupt newspaper distribution if their interests were harmed. The newsboys proved, to the delight of some and the surprise of many, that they could organize and win a strike.

Sources
Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News, A History of America’s Newsboys. (Oxford University Press, 2019), 414, 418

N.W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory, 1914, 33

“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

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

“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

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

The event-filled and tragic life of Mobile newsie Charles Archie Johnson

This fading image, graciously provided by Heritage Auctions, HA.com, gives us an early glimpse of a well-known Mobile newsie, Charles Archie Johnson.

Johnson became a pawn in the struggle between Democrats and Republicans for control of Port City politics during Reconstruction. Mobile newspapers gave Johnson a lot of attention in their pages but so did other papers around the country. Newspapers on the Gulf Coast continued to follow Johnson’s misfortunes until he died in 1903.

Johnson poses in a photographer’s studio on this carte de visite, a photographic calling card, just 2.3 inches by 4 inches. I found the photo online in 2020. Unfortunately, it had been sold in 2017. It is heavily stained and has been folded in half, resulting in the deep horizontal crease. The photographer chemically treated the finish, giving the tone an altered color. I corrected the tone to improve the clarity of the image.

Johnson’s past before coming to Mobile is just as unclear as the image. One of two different stories may be true, or it also is possible to look at the two stories as parts of the same tale.

According to a story in the New Orleans Picayune, Johnson had been the slave of a Confederate army captain who was wounded during the battle of Murfreesboro. This is taken to mean the Battle of Stones River from December 31, 1862, to January 2, 1863, in Middle Tennessee, and not the First Battle of Murfreesboro, a cavalry battle in July 1862.

This story, which may have been embellished, holds that while Johnson was carrying his wounded master from the firing line, he too was wounded in the right leg. Doctors had to amputate the limb above the knee.(1)

In this version of events, we don’t know if Union or Rebel doctors amputated Johnson’s leg or what happened to him before he showed up in Mobile after the war. Although Stones River was an inconclusive battle, the Confederates withdrew, making it likely that Union troops picked up Johnson from the battlefield and took him to their hospital for care.

As Heritage Auctions points out, the Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System database lists a Charles Archie Johnson, apparently a liberated slave, as a veteran of Company D, 92^nd Infantry Regiment, U.S. Colored Infantry. He appears to have mustered into service as a private on October 24, 1863, with the 22^nd Infantry Regiment, Corps d’Afrique, organized at New Orleans on September 30, 1863.

The regiment saw duty at New Orleans, Brashear City, New Iberia, and in the District of La Fourche until January 1864. The Army ordered the troops to duty at Port Hudson on January 4 and then to Brashear City in April. The Army took advantage of the move to reorganize the unit as the 92^nd Infantry. The Army discharged this Johnson after the end of the war on December 31, 1865.

It’s possible that the Johnson wounded at Murfreesboro somehow found his way to New Orleans and later enlisted with the Corps d’Afrique. Or these may be two entirely different men.

At any rate, the Johnson who sold newspapers in Mobile was suited only to menial labor, regardless of having only one leg. Most observers at the time seem to agree that Johnson was a “mental, intellectual and physical cripple . . . who can scarce distinguish between right and wrong, whose mind borders on idiocy. . . .”

That description may have somewhat exaggerated Johnson’s mental limitations as those who used him sought to present the newsboy as deserving sympathy. All newsboys also tried to look sorrowful in order to elicit larger tips from their patrons.(2)

The Johnson who sold papers in Mobile would seem, then, to have lacked the capability to shoulder arms and wasn’t the man who enlisted in New Orleans. But he still could have served as a teamster or other laborer with the Army toward the end of the war.

At some point, the news peddler Johnson, who was about 25 in 1865, found his way to Mobile. Union black troops were still stationed in Mobile and perhaps Johnson came to join friends or family. He earned a living by hawking newspapers along Royal Street for the Mobile Daily Tribune and blacking shoes. Johnson sold his papers wearing the outlandish costume he dressed in for the photo. It is an exaggerated military uniform with large epaulettes. It may have been a cast off band uniform.

Written on the back of the photo is, “Hon Archie Johnson Gentleman of Color / G. Horton's Friend / 1867 Mobile Ala.” The phrase, “G. Horton’s Friend,” was meant to be tongue in cheek.

In 1867, U.S. Major General John Pope had appointed Gustavus Horton mayor of Mobile. Before the war, Horton had been a successful and prominent businessman. During the war, Horton had remained a unionist and suffered persecution, even though two sons and a son-in-law served in the Confederacy. After the war, he became a Republican.

As mayor, Horton fired ineffective white policemen and hired black officers in their place. He also replaced some white laborers with blacks. Both moves angered white Democrats.

The Tribune may have hired Johnson just to torment Horton. As Johnson went about the streets selling the Mobile Tribune, he wore placards with the paper’s headlines, which were often critical of Horton and fellow Republican Frederick G. Bromberg, who was the city treasurer in 1867. On one occasion Johnson cried, “Here’s yer Mobile Tribune, wid all about Mayor Horton and his Bromberg rats.”

Written on the hat that Johnson is wearing in the photo is “Bromberg.” Another word, which may be “Horton,” is written below Bromberg.(3)

Among his duties, Horton presided over the Mayor’s Court to try cases for minor offenses. Police officers arrested Johnson at least three times during the summer 1867 for disorderly conduct, probably related to his frequent drunkenness. The court could fine offenders, order them to post a bond to insure good behavior, or order them to leave the city. Horton ordered Johnson to leave.

When Johnson didn’t leave the city, Horton had an officer put him on a steamer to New Orleans. But Mobile’s Democrats chartered a steamer and chased the boat carrying Johnson. Overtaking the other boat, the Democrats took Johnson aboard their steamer and back to Mobile. The steamer arrived with a band playing Dixie and banners flying. The Democrat partisans put Johnson in a carriage and paraded past large, cheering crowds.

Johnson’s days as a pawn in this political chess game weren’t over. Mayor Horton had an officer put Johnson on a train and escort him to Montgomery. Again the peg-legged veteran returned, no doubt aided by the Democrats. Policemen arrested Johnson again and Horton ordered him to post a $500 bond to keep the peace.

In a few weeks, Johnson was back in front of the mayor charged with disorderly conduct, drunkenness, and resisting arrest. Horton ordered the newsboy to pay a $50 fine or serve 30 days in jail, and pay a peace bond of $300.

Johnson undoubtedly was getting help and encouragement in his battles with the mayor from Democrats, particularly the owners of the Tribune, the Mobile Times, and the Mobile Register. Certainly, there is no way that Johnson made enough money selling papers and shining shoes to pay all his fines and return trips from banishment.

The editor of the Nationalist, a Republican paper, charged the Democrats with being behind Johnson’s antics. The newspaper said Johnson got drunk and allowed “himself to be tricked out by the Tribune buffoons and their allies in such a manner as to necessarily create an excitement upon the street, and endanger the public peace.”(4)

Horton’s opponents now snared mayor in the federal government’s own laws. They turned U.S. law aimed at securing black civil rights against the white unionist mayor. Johnson’s bosses and the other Democrat editors charged that Horton’s arrests and sentences of the street vendor were politically motivated and deprived Johnson of his civil rights. They charged Horton in federal court with violating the U.S. civil rights act.

U.S. District Judge Richard Busteed, although a fellow Republican, was an opponent of Horton. In Horton’s trial, Busteed excluded evidence that other mayors had commonly expelled troublemakers, often whites, from the city. A jury found Horton guilty. Busteed had the mayor briefly jailed before slapping him with a $250 fine.

With their point made, the Tribune and other Democrat newspaper editors apparently ceased using Johnson to torment the mayor. In 1868, voters elected Horton as probate judge of Mobile County, which took him out of Reconstruction political controversies. Archie Johnson, as he was usually called, continued to hawk the Tribune along Royal Street and to get into trouble with the law for many years.

On one occasion in January 1868, however, Johnson needed the help of the police. Johnson presented himself at Mobile’s guardhouse in such an excited state that it was sometime before police could calm him down enough to understand the problem.

Johnson’s Democrat patrons had favored him with numerous gifts, including a gold stud. He had a sentimental attachment to the gift and carried it with him each time he was expelled from Mobile. On one deportation to Montgomery, Johnson was broke but refused to sell the stud for the money he needed.

Johnson accused a fellow newsboy named Palmer of stealing the stud. Police arrested Palmer and put him under a $100 bond to appear in Mayor’s Court.(5)

But it was usually Johnson who was in trouble. In November 1874, a policeman again hauled the newspaper vendor into the Mayor’s Court, with Alderman Underhill presiding in the absence of the mayor. The officer explained that Johnson was drunk and disorderly all the time and that he made too little money to live on. Underhill must have taken pity on Johnson because he didn’t assess a fine.

In January 1875, Johnson was back in court, this time before Mayor Alphonse Hurtel. The Tribune reported that Johnson “got into a weaving way and became very noisy and abusive near the corner of St. Michael and Joachim” streets. The mayor fined Johnson $10 “and he will languish in durance vile unless some friend comes to his rescue,” meaning the newsie was stuck behind bars until someone paid his fine.

The Mayor’s Court must have sent Johnson again from Mobile at some point because in May 1876, he was in Pensacola and in trouble. The Pensacola Gazette reported that a photographer caught Johnson breaking into his studio one night. Deputies confined Johnson to the county jail.

The news stories don’t say so, but it seems likely that someone else directed Johnson in his petty criminal ways. Given Johnson’s limited abilities, he would have needed a Fagin, a fence, to tell him what to steal and to exchange the goods for shelter or cash. It also possible that Johnson simply didn’t know legal from illegal and right from wrong. Regardless of the reasons for his activities, Johnson paid the consequences.(6)

The Pensacola court found Johnson guilty of burglary and the judge sentenced him to 10 years in the state penitentiary. Johnson applied to the pardoning board in 1882 for a reduction of his sentence. Whether that happened isn’t clear, but whenever Johnson was released the veteran newsie returned to the Port City. By 1880, regular passenger rail service linked Pensacola and Mobile, making it easier and cheaper for Johnson to travel.(7)

The sound of Johnson crying the news could again be heard on Mobile’s streets. A correspondent for the New Orleans Times-Democrat in August 1897 recalled for his Crescent City audience the colorful cries of Mobile street vendors. These included the charcoal man or woman, ice man, butcher boy, fruit wagon driver, beer bottle collector, and, of course, one particular newspaper seller.

“In the past who does not remember ‘Charles Archie Johnson’ the one-legged negro, with a voice that equaled that of a bugle, and whose call, ‘Times-Democrat,’ could be distinctly heard for eleven blocks?” Mobile newsboys such as Johnson sold out-of-town newspapers such as the Times-Democrat as well as Mobile newspapers. “Archie is still with the gang, but his loud calls have grown to respectable limits, old age and a fast life having had their effect, but his voice is yet good for six squares.” The Mobile Register said Johnson had “stentorian lungs.”(8)

A year later, in 1898, an unknown photographer captured Johnson chatting with a passerby in Mobile. The photo, in the collection of the Alabama Department of Archives and History, had only identified the man as a “newspaper carrier.” (The department has since updated the identification.) News stories make it clear that Johnson was a well-known character in Mobile, which explains the photographer’s interest. Besides, how many one-legged, African American newsies could there have been on Royal Street in Mobile at that time?

In the photo, Johnson is resting the stump of his right leg on the steps of the U.S. Customs House at the southwest corner of Royal and St. Francis streets. He appears to be carrying on a lively conversation with the well-dressed older man wearing the derby. Judging from a number of photos of the Customs House, this area was a popular place for men to gather and talk. It would have been a good place to sell newspapers.

The state archives doesn’t identify which newspaper he is selling. It’s likely he’s hawking the Mobile Register, but it could have been the Mobile Daily Item or another newspaper such as the New Orleans Times-Democrat, which was shipped to news agents in Mobile.

In March 1899, Johnson was back in Pensacola and back in trouble with the law. He and a comrade, Charles Wright, were charged with petit larceny and held for trial. The jury found Johnson guilty, but acquitted Wright. The judge sentenced the hapless newsboy to 30 days in the county jail at hard labor.(9)

In January 1903, Pensacola’s opera house called the police to deal with rowdies, apparently newsboys, at the ticket box. When the police arrived, they caught Johnson crawling over the shoulders of those ahead of him trying to reach the box. The next morning, the police court judge sentenced Johnson to work 60 days on the city’s street gang.(10)

Not long after completing his sentence in Pensacola, Johnson was back on the streets of Mobile hawking papers. About April 9, 1903, Johnson fell seriously ill and was taken to the city hospital. He died 20 days later, never having recovered.(11) 

(1) “Mobile Negroe’s Adventure,” Pensacola News, April 29, 1903 3:4
(2) Harriet E. Amos Doss, “Trials of a Unionist: Gustavus Horton, Military Mayor of Mobile during Reconstruction,” 123-144, in Michael Thomason, editor, Down the Years: Articles on Mobile’s History. (Mobile: Gulf Coast Historical Review, 2001), 136; Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System, National Park Service. Online: https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/search-soldiers.htm. Accessed February 8, 2020.

(3) Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. (The Macmillan Company, 1905), 482. Online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41680/41680-h/41680-h.htm#f_1291. Accessed February 8, 2020.

(4) Harriet E. Amos Doss, “Trials of a Unionist: Gustavus Horton, Military Mayor of Mobile during Reconstruction,” 123-144, in Michael Thomason, editor, Down the Years: Articles on Mobile’s History. (Mobile: Gulf Coast Historical Review, 2001), 133-134

(5) “Charles Archie Johnson Robbed,” Mobile Daily Times, January 6, 1868 5:1. The Times gives the name of the thief as “Palmes,” but this appears to be a typographical error.

(6) Mobile Daily Tribune, November 6, 1874, 3; Mobile Daily Tribune, January 15, 1875, 3; Mobile Daily Tribune, May 13, 1876, 2

(7) Pensacola Commercial, April 1, 1882, 3:5

(8) “Record of happenings in the Gulf City yesterday,” New Orleans Times-Democrat, August 12, 1897, 9:3; “The Surrender at Montgomery,” Pickens County Herald and West Alabamian, December 14, 1870 2:6

(9) “The Criminal Court,” Pensacola News March 13, 1899 2:5; “The Criminal Court,” Pensacola News March 18, 1899 5:2

(10) “Rowdy opera house patrons,” Pensacola News January 29, 1903 1:6

(11) New Orleans Times-Democrat April 9, 1903 9:4; “Mobile Negroe’s Adventure,” Pensacola News, April 29, 1903 3:4