I'll try to remember how it was on the outside. It was warm. Everybody was fighting somebody. The AFL which had been the dominant union in the country suddenly found that it's power was challenged by the new CIO, which entered into jurisdiction disputes. Newspapers often found that they were a third party in such disputes. I was working on the Herald Examiner, the morning paper there. It ended up that the fight folded the Examiner. Unions were fighting unions and unions were fighting newspapers, newspapers were fighting newspapers and newspapers fighting unions. Cops were shooting strikers at the steel mill. Strikers and strike-breakers were battling all over the city. When prohibition ended, gangsters who had been making their living riding shotgun for the beer trucks and fighting turf wars for the mobs turned to the unions, as business agents or strike goons. An equal number was hired by management as body guards or strike-breakers. Everybody was called a Communist. It didn't matter what you were for or against, anybody that didnŐt like you labeled you a Communist. The Daily Worker, the Communist newspaper was sold at the doors of all city newspapers.

In 1936 I started working in the circulation department, circulation promotion department, handing out premiums in the lobby of the Hearst Building. One day I went up to the delivery manager's office to see about more supplies. The boss was talking to two men as I came in and the boss motioned me to sit down as he went on talking. After a few minutes the boss said to the men, "Take the kid out and teach him to be a circulator". We went downstairs to a car by the loading platform and drove out Madison Avenue nearly to Cicero. I was sitting next to the driver in the front seat and the driver says to me, "Tell the man to bring us a paper". I called over to the newsstand operator and says, "Hey, bring us a paper". When I asked for the paper the newsstand operator walked over and handed me a Tribune. When he did that, the man sitting in back of me reached out and hit him over the head with a club, knocking him to his knees. When the man got up, the man who had hit him said, "Look you bastard, when somebody asks for a paper, you bring him a Hearst paper." Well, that completed my formal education as a circulator.

On the American we had between 100,000 and 125,000 home delivery circulation. It was divided into 91 home delivery branches and 9 divisions, including Chicago, Oak Park and Evanston. The branch managers called in their draw, that was the number of papers that they wanted to draw or have delivered to them each day. Branch managers and division managers were employees of the newspaper, unlike some of the papers that turned their delivery over to the news agencies. These were tough times for everybody, including the carrier boys. Every Tuesday the division managers would come into the office to report last week's business and get their orders for this week. One Tuesday, a division manager reported that two carriers at branch 35 had been robbed. This was not too unusual. The next week it was reported that 4 carriers had been robbed and two had been knifed. The boss began to scream. He gave orders to the division manager to get out there today and call him by 5 p.m. what the problem was. The problem was that the branch manager had given the carriers money changers, the kind that conductors wore on their belts, making change on the street corners. Carriers walking around jingling money was too much of a temptation in that day but it was too bad the branch manager was fired for this one dumb mistake.

Before I went to work on the newspaper I drove a dry cleaning delivery truck and about 2-3 times a month a business agent for the union would force me over to the side of the street, reach out and stick a gun in my belly and ask to see my union card. Fortunately, I worked for Jake. Jake was a sanitary trustee for the City of Chicago. I don't know what that was. I lived in Chicago for 20 years and I never found anybody that knew what it was, but it must have been a hell of good political clout, because all I had to do was tell these business agents that I worked for Jake and that cured everything. Most division managers carried their guns in their briefcases. One division manager always carried Lugar, because he thought that that scared the problems away faster. He would cut a hole in the bottom of his pants pocket so that he could drop the barrel through the hole in the pocket and the gun would lay flat in his pocket like it was a holster. The gun would lay flat against his leg and was not easily seen when he walked.

The home delivery edition was the "FLASH" at 2:30 and the "EIGHT STAR" at 3:30. As the day progressed, each new edition would feature something different. Racing edition 10 a.m., the morning line "SEVEN STAR" at 3:30, closing market prices. "EIGHT STAR" 4:30, late ball scores and the "GREEN DIAMOND" at 5:45, late racing results. A lot better news than you get from the television that rehashes 7 o'clock news at 11 o'clock.

Most departments got along without too much hassle. What you didn't see on Lou Grant was the circulation manager calling up the City Editor and tell him to get those guys off their butts down there because we were beat by the News and Times this week. There was no other paper on the Lou Grant to beat. Reporters and editors were the glory boys. Those were the people who you would read stories about. The soldiers were in the circulation department. What they were doing was not the type of stories the publishers were bragging about. We had a circulation manager who had a body guard like most others. The G-Men used to come into the morgue, look back through the back copies of paper hoping to pick up information to help them find someone that they were looking for. One G-Man always sat where he could look down the hall when the door was open. There was no such thing as air conditioners in those days, so the door was usually propped open all day. One day this G-Man got up, walked down into the hall and put the handcuffs on the boss' body guard. He had recognized him as a bank robber from Texas. The boss remarked that he didn't know if he should be more scared of his friends or his enemies.

Circulation was pretty much controlled by ABC (Auto Bureau of Circulation). That was like the Supreme Court governing the circulation of the metropolitan newspapers around the country. To be considered a metropolitan newspaper the circulation had to be a quarter million or more. ABC made such rules, no Sunday papers printed after 6 a.m. Sunday morning; no daily paper truck could leave the building before 9 a.m. and so forth. ABC also governed the sale of the papers. I remember one time the Tribune ran a promotion drive and was selling the Sunday Tribune for ten cents each week for 4-5 weeks. We couldn't sell the Examiner for ten cents if we wanted to. ABC said that the paper could not be sold for less than two-thirds of the regular price to be recognized as paid circulation. The regular price for the Sunday Tribune was fifteen cents so they were OK. The regular price for the Examiner was twenty cents so we were SOL. Even many years later when war broke out you will notice that the metropolitan newspapers with headlines of the Pearl Harbor attack are dated December 8. I don't know if any of this stuff is of interest to collectors today but it may help them understand things that are strange to them when they are reading old papers.

I am thinking of the person that wrote in the NCSA that the Tribune had the wrong date on the "Dewey Defeats Truman" story. The Tribune had the right date but the person who wrote was confused. If you ever happen to see the Chicago Herald-American dated December 8, headline "Japan Wars on U.S.", with a picture of the battleship West Virginia on the front page, this paper was on the streets of the loop twenty minutes after the teletype had flashed the news of Pearl Harbor. This was a replay from an edition that the presses were running at the time, a predated edition for country circulation. The paper, not a regular large printed paper for the city circulation. All news dateline on page 1 were December 7 except for Tokyo. Some editions of this paper had no ear on them, they simply replayed the front page and rushed it into the streets.