The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1932-04-13
BY ARCH STEINEL

MRS. BELINDA BLANK has
w been ailing the last week
with lumbago. She's better at
this writing"
Do you remember lines similar
to these in the local column of
your home town paper?
Then do you remember how
you'd see Mistress Belinda after
her illness? Then she'd tell you,
in wonderment, that some one
must have read she had lumbago
and gave her name to a COM
pany selling cures for ailing limbs,
and how she was being deluged
with printed matter to buy bot
tie of "No-Rub," or some lini-
ment.
But now Mistress Belinda can
be told that her neighbors were
in no wise to blame for report
ing her frailty to patent medi-
cine company.
The blame-and you can not
call it that, if your rheumatism or
neuritis persists in getting in the
local. columns of your paper-is
placed squarely upon forty wom-
cen in Indianapolis, who make it
their business to search for hui
man aches and pains with a blue
mcneil
TUE women are employees of
Il the Central Press Clipping
Service, 912 knights of Pythias
building.
They read and clip 5000 papers
weekly in the states of Wisconsin,
Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Ken
lucky, Tennessee and Indiana.
And it's just one of their oldest
of odd jobs, this looking for ill
ness in the towns personal notes.
Daily papers in large cities are
poor fields for these hunters of
rheumatics, but the small-town
weekly is virtually a gold mine.
Twenty misses in the clipping
bureau blue-pencil the towns
sickly; watch for mention of va
rious products of corporations
bids to be let for street lighting,
waterworkS, fire trucks, and even
notes for publicity hounds who
buy the clipping service.
The blue-nenciled papers then
are given to six misses who do
nothing but snip the paragraphs
from their columns and paste
them to folders.
TINE misses who read for items
Il will average fifty to sixty
papers a day, while the clippers,
with their sharp shears, will wade
through $50 to 300 papers daily.
The clipped paragraphs are
folded, filed and mailed to the
company or invidual subscribing
for the service. The readers read
for everything under the sun in
serving clients.
Serial stories and the comics in
daily papers are my hardest
trials" says Harry w. Dragoo own
er and manager of the bureau.
They'll stop their reading for
the company sometimes long
enough to peruse a serial story.
That's when 1 wish every serial
story was in the bottom of White
river. Or, they'll be clipping at
a good pace and then they'll stop
long enough to see what Major
Hoople is doing or read Polly and
Her Pals" Dragoo says.
Dragoo is the city's largest
newspaper subscriber. He pays
out an average of $4,000 yearly
for subscriptions to newspapers
that his misses cut into shreds.
"DUT just think of all the
I'D money he makes selling the
waste paper you may remark.
Wrongl for Dragoo actually pays
money to have the waste papers
hauled away.
A job as a reader or clipper
means that the employee has a
recess twice daily during work
hours in addition to lunch hour.
I've found a ten-minute rest
in the morning and the afternoon
is conducive to more efficiency.
he says
But if the misses who read and
clip should tire cutting out the
illnesses of others and become de-