Kenosha News - Early 20th Century

Early 20th Century

In 1901, George Hewitt left the Evening News to enter the automobile industry. His interest in the paper was sold to Samuel S. Simmons, a member of another prominent Kenosha family and nephew of local industrial giant Zalmon G. Simmons of the Simmons Bedding Company.

Genial Sam Simmons left a position with the Chicago Gas Company to edit his hometown daily newspaper. The new partnership of Eugene Head and Simmons continued until 1913, when they incorporated as the Head-Simmons Publishing Co.

When Hewitt left the paper in 1901, so did George Johnston, who was replaced as city editor by Walter T. Marlatt, a Hoosier and the first of a family of newsmen who would be associated with the Evening News for a half century.

In 1903, the linotype and a technique called stereotyping, a process for molding semi-circular printing plates for the new rotary press, were introduced. Before the newspaper got its first linotype machine – it would add two more in 1913 and, eventually own 13 before they were replaced by computer-generated typesetting in the 1970s – all type was hand set.

The linotype machine did away with the letter-by-letter, line-by-line manual task, casting entire lines of type in molten metal, 550 degrees hot. The linotype was an automatic, keyboard-operated machine that had been invented about 20 years earlier and still was not in common use. The linotype clicked and clacked, whirred and vibrated. One by one, slugs of lead type were molded, a line at a time, six lines a minute, 360 an hour. A typical operator might set 10,000 words of newspaper copy each work shift.

On September 7, 1915, Eugene Head died suddenly at the age of 48. Head had taken the struggling newspaper and built it into one of the most successful dailies in southern Wisconsin in less than 20 years. His death brought a reorganization of Head-Simmons Publishing Co., with Sam Simmons filling the vacant office of publisher.

City editor Walter Marlatt became editor. Marlatt had begun his journalism career in 1889 as a cub reporter in Indiana. After newspaper jobs in Indianapolis, Philadelphia, New York and Chicago, he had come to Kenosha in 1896 as headmaster of a private school. He joined the Evening News after a short stint as editor of the weekly Kenosha Daily Union.

Ralph S. Kingsley, who started as bookkeeper in 1908 and advanced to assistant business manager, became business manager. Eugene’s son, Clarence E. Head, who joined the paper in 1913 and would remain active in its management for nearly 59 years, was named assistant business manager.

On March 8, 1917, Simmons died suddenly at age 47. The death of the well-liked publisher caused a major disruption of the business for almost eight months, until Simmons’ estate was settled.

In October 1917, a new company, the Kenosha News Publishing Co., was organized by Marlatt, Kingsley and Clarence Head. It purchased the entire holdings of the Head-Simmons Publishing Co., and took over the newspaper and the large printing establishment. Marlatt became president, Head became vice president and assistant business manager and Kingsley served as secretary-treasurer and business manager.

Marlatt was an energetic and enlightened progressive, actively promoting a number of important civic causes. He served on the city council for six years and was considered the father of Kenosha’s public health and park ordinances.

It was during Marlatt’s watch that the Evening News took on some of the key editorial elements of a modern newspaper, including a sports page and a society section that, unlike many Wisconsin papers of that era, was allowed to give fair coverage to the women’s suffrage movement.

In the summer of 1914, the paper joined the Associated Press and received a bulletin service by long distance telephone, supplemented by mailed releases. Then, for several years, the Evening News relied on a telegraphed bulletin service, usually not more than a single column of late news each day.

In 1917, United Press service was added to AP, an hour and a half a day of telegraphed news highlights. Two years later, AP’s full-time leased wire service was installed. At that time, the newspaper hired Charlotte “Charlie” Oakes, an experienced operator from South Dakota to monitor the machine that transcribed the incoming news stories on a typewriter.

An automatic teletype machine, which was 50 percent faster than the best Morse operator, was introduced to the newsroom in 1926. It could produce both typed copy and punched ticker tape to be fed directly into the linotypes. These clattering devices continued to bring the world to the Evening News editorial office until the advent of a computerized system in the mid-1970s.

Wire service news gave the local paper an advantage over its Milwaukee and Chicago newsstand rivals. Besides its coverage of local happenings, the Evening News could, because of its later deadlines, bring readers more late-breaking national and international news than the competing big city papers. Later, in 1922, radio added another dimension to Evening News coverage of events elsewhere in the country and the world. A powerful receiver was installed in the editor’s office and monitored for breaking news reports.

The first news of President Warren Harding's death in August 1923 reached the editorial office by radio. Radio broadcasts also usually beat the wire services with sports scores and stock market reports.

The Evening News also subscribed to the Newspaper Enterprise Association, which supplied features, non-timely interpretive stories, illustrations and photographs in matrix form. The National Newspaper Syndicate also furnished feature materials, including such comic strips as “Salesman Sam” and “The Duffs.”

In its early days, the Evening News could be purchased at the newspaper’s office, or from newsstands or “street boys.” In later years, home delivery was left to a series of independent dealers. That all changed April 1, 1921, when the company organized its own “guaranteed” delivery service to some 700 Kenosha homes. Within three years, 4,000 homes in the city and in other smaller communities in Kenosha County were getting doorstep delivery.

By the newspaper’s 30th anniversary, in 1924, there were 80 people on its payroll and 58 carrier boys delivering papers throughout the county.

In April 1925, Walter Marlatt became ill at his desk and died a short time later at home. His brother, city editor Ernest F. Marlatt, was promoted to editor and corporate secretary. The younger Marlatt, with a master’s degree from Harvard, had come to the News in 1917 from Indiana, where he had been a high school principal and superintendent of schools. As city editor, he supervised the two general assignment reporters who covered government, police and courts. He remained in the editor’s chair for 23 years, during which time his staff grew to eight.

Business operations were assumed by Kingsley, who became publisher and president. He led the corporation until his death in 1963, guiding the newspaper safely though the Depression. He also was active in numerous civic efforts such as Kenosha Youth Foundation, United Fund and the Chamber of Commerce.

Meanwhile, the circulation of the Evening News, under the guidance of Willis H. Schulte, had shifted almost entirely to home delivery, through the development of a carrier-merchant plan. The News also became a member of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, assuring advertisers of accurate circulation figures.

Schulte, who began his long association with the paper as a seven-year-old newsboy in 1914, was 17 when he was placed in charge of circulation. As his career progressed into six decades, it was estimated that he had supervised and influenced some 6,500 newspaper carrier boys and girls. In later years, his work was carried on in the circulation department, first by Frank Sisk, and now by James F. Jones.