Career, Pay-as-you-go
In 1903, he took over his father's newspaper, the Winchester Star. The newspaper had slipped into debt under his father's ownership. The paper owed $2,500.00 to its newsprint supplier, the Antietam Paper Company. The company refused to ship more newsprint on credit. Harry Byrd cut a deal to make daily cash payments in return for paper. As Byrd would later say, "when you have to hunt for them that way, you get to know how many cents there really are in a dollar." He eventually bought the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record and several other papers in the Shenandoah Valley; his family still owns these papers today.
This was the first appearance of Byrd's famous "pay-as-you-go" policy. The experience, combined with other experiences of his youth, gave him a lifelong aversion to borrowing money and to debt of any kind.
"I stand for strict economy in governmental affairs," Byrd proclaimed. "The State of Virginia is similar to a great business corporation ... and should be conducted with the same efficiency and economy as any private business." In a fifty-year political career, no statement of Byrd's ever more succinctly spelled out his view of government.
In 1908, at the age of 21, he became president of The Valley Turnpike Company, overseeing the Valley Turnpike, a 93-mile toll road between Winchester and Staunton. Earning $33 a month, he was required to drive the entire route at least twice a month to inspect it and arrange for repairs. As automobile traffic increased, he saw to it that road conditions were maintained within the revenues available. He served in that capacity until he became elected to state office seven years later. He would maintain an interest in roads and tourism throughout his career, always tempered however, by his pay-as-you-go philosophy.
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