by Everett Reid
My paternal grandfather, whom I never knew as he died before I was born, and his son, Uncle Charley, were boomer newspaper men.
Some land developer would buy a thousand acres of cut over, burned over land in northern Michigan, for instance, for a dollar an acre. Have it roughly surveyed into, say 10 acre plots, advertise it in Chicago and Detroit papers as chicken farms on which the buyer could become independently rich, and sell 10 acre lots for $495. The investors would build anything from nice homes to chicken coops, one end of which they shared with the chickens. Invariably they'd go broke and the land would revert to the promoter who'd resell it. By the same scheme useless land was sold in Georgia to grow peanuts, around Lake Charles, La., to grow sweet potatoes to make glue and south Florida just as "a good investment."
The place of the boomer newsmen in this setup was as follows: He had a press on skids and type cases with tight lids so the type wouldn't spill. The land promoter would make him a liberal offer to move to his place of business to "boom" it. A team would skid the press and type to a railroad car which would take it as near as possible to the scene of action and he'd find a building all ready in which he'd set up in the business of making Chipmunk Corners look like Jefferson and Woodward in Detroit. Along with a weekly paper in which every sale of a dozen of eggs was made to look like business to be reported by Dun and Bradstreet, he also printed "forecast" maps showing where the various churches, city hall, library and various stores would be located. Oh, the boomer newsman was a real promoter. Or would you say con man?
I never had any personal experience with newspapers. All I know is what Mama told me. As a girl she set type for her father and brother. But in my hobo days I knew a lot of tramp printers. I don't know why they were called "tramp" printers. They were really hobos, traveling men who worked. Tramps just traveled. They didn't work. In those days there were weekly newspapers published at every little junction. Mostly they were printed on Thursdays so they could be distributed on Fridays and their ads be available for Saturday shoppers. For almost all workers Saturday noon was pay time. As few print shops had enough work for full-time printers tramp printers were a blessing to weekly newspapers. Between times they traveled.
Maybe my memory of them is a stereotype but I see them as rough but intelligent men, who seemed always to be chewing on the dead stump of a cigar and drinking cheap whiskey. They were well read and highly regarded by their fellow hobos. Many carried a book and at jungle fires at night they would read to the other 'boes. They also read and interpreted newspaper stories of war and union affairs. Many were socialists. My first interest in Tolstoy's War and Peace came of hearing it read by a tramp printer.
I was recently in a newspaper office and saw a cute little girl sitting before what looked like a typewriter with a smoked window glass before and over it. She hit the keys and a series of words appeared on the screen. I asked her what it was and she said it was a computer. This surprised me. I thought a computer talked in jerky sentences.
"What does it do? I ask. She said she'd show me. She took something off into a backroom and pretty soon came back with a newspaper column all set to print.
What, no type cases? No inky hands and aprons? No clanking machinery: No type setter? No chewed cigar butt? No 50-cent-a-fifth whiskey? No box car travelers and no jungle fires? Lord, how the newspaper business has deteriorated. I'm glad I never whent in for it when my mother urged me to.
There doesn't seem to be much future in the business.
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