GROWING UP IN SAN FRANCISCO SELLING LIBERTY MAGAZINES
(1 of 1)by Bill Roddy During the Depression years of the 1930s there weren't many ways that kids could make money and with an allowance of ten cents a week from my mother I had to find work.
On Saturday nights I used to walk up to Haight and Fillmore and the corner newsstand. An early edition of the Sunday Examiner was already out and the man who ran the stand would give me five or six papers to sell. I'd hop a Haight streetcar (the conductor let me on free) and I'd go through the car calling out, "Get your Examiner." I always got off the car when I still had a couple of papers left, because I had to use them to sell on a car going back to Fillmore. Otherwise it could have been a long walk.
But I only made two or three cents a paper and that was only on Saturday nights. I had to find something else. That's when I discovered Liberty Magazines.
There was an ad in the paper that said something like ... "Kids, how would you like to have your own business?" That sounded promising and within a week I was selling Liberty Magazines.
You were given a little white canvas bag with a strap that went over your shoulder. The bag had LIBERTY in red letters and the price, FIVE CENTS, under it. Here's a
cover of one of the magazines.
Cover courtesy of Vernald Topp The best places to sell them were in downtown office buildings. You would go floor to floor, door to door. Liberty sales boys had territorial rights, and you knew which buildings to avoid. Like those animals on the cover putting their scent on a tree.
To get downtown I'd use the Haight streetcars again. You would ask the conductor, "Can I sell my magazines aboard. I'll only go through once." That meant that you were supposed to get off the car in a couple of blocks, but if the car was crowded I wouldn't, instead I would hide behind the motorman at the partition separating the passengers.
Sometimes I could make it all the way downtown on one streetcar, but usually the conductor would spot me, and come up and tell me to get off at the next stop.
I'd just wait until the next car came along. If you were already at Haight and Market there were lots of cars to choose from.
We always rode the Market Street Railway. We never used the City owned Municipal Railway. Their conductors were civil service employees and I guess were told no free rides for magazine boys.
I sold at the Pacific Building, 821 Market at 4th . Their phone number was KEarny 3047. I never phoned them, but I thought I would digress for a minute on the wonderful prefixes San Francisco used to have. Here were some of them. (The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company had imagination in those days.)
HEmlock, EXbrook, UNderhill and how about this one... Joseph Musto was an importer of marble and abrasives and his phone number was GRaystone 6365.
My favorite, of course, was in Chinatown. Every resident and merchant had a CHina prefix... but back to Liberty.
I don't remember how many floors the Pacific Building had, but I went through everyone to call on the girls in each office. After awhile you would get to know them, and they would always buy a Liberty from you. The girls were very friendly and invariably pretty. They would tease you once in awhile and I'd would blush.
