Published by The Evansville Courier

Many boys carried The Evansville Courier to local homes and sold the papers on street corners during the early 1930s to supplement their family incomes.

"The daily paper sold for 3 cents and we made a half-cent for each paper we sold. Sunday papers went for 7 cents. We made a little more on those papers, but they were twice as heavy," remembers Charles W. Smith of Newburgh.

Smith carried The Courier in 1930 when he was 12 years old.

"I got up about 2 a.m. and walked to the newspaper building on Main Street," he said. "If I got there too early I would lay down and take a nap, and the pressmen would wake me when the papers were ready."

Courier newsboys would congregate in the light of dawn to fold their papers and prepare for the morning's work.

Smith delivered The Courier on his Downtown route, then took the extras to the corner of Second and Main streets where Woods Drug Store stood.

"Lots of people ate breakfast there before work and they would buy my papers when they came by," Smith said. "I would sell the papers until they were gone - or it was time to go to school."

"I didn't make much, but every nickel I made helped to feed the family and pay the rent. Times were hard. But we (his four brothers and sisters) worked, and we made it."

As the months passed in 1931, The Courier printed appeals by local banks asking depositors to assist in their reopening. It told of a church in Johnston City, Ill., that held an all-night prayer meeting seeking relief from unemployment and social restlessness. And an Evansville relief fund for the unemployed reached its halfway mark that November with $51,500. Courier and Journal employees donated $524 to that fund; the Courier Co. added anotheren attended the party that year than in any previous year.