Children Of The City Part 3

It was in Milwaukee that the system got its truest test. The Milwaukee Newsboys' Republic, established in 1912, was modeled on the Boston one. The boys elected their own congressmen, policemen, and judges; they wrote their own laws and held their own newsboys' court. According to the published reports, the Milwaukee experiment proved as successful as the Boston original. Taxpayer money was saved as cases were s.h.i.+fted from the Juvenile Court to the newsboys' court, and the street trader laws, which had been "practically useless" because unenforceable, were rescued from oblivion.34 Though the boys no doubt accepted and supported the republic because it gave them the power to regulate their own trade, the adult reformers who celebrated the experiment in Milwaukee were more impressed by the "splendid opportunity" it furnished "for the training of future citizens." According to Outlook, the republic "bids fair to make for law and order among the boys who have always const.i.tuted one of the worst problems of the social workers.... It cannot fail to be a splendid instrument for the making of future citizens of the United States. When one considers the cosmopolitan character of Milwaukee's population, this little democracy, with its American Chief Justice, its German President, and its Russian-Jew Vice-President, becomes an important agent for the a.s.similation of our second and third generations of foreigners."35 Common sense and practical success did not lead to longevity or expansion for these experiments in self-government. Philip Davis and Perry Powell, his counterpart in Milwaukee, might have trusted the children to regulate their own trade with justice, efficiency, and wisdom. But these were exceptional men. Elsewhere (and in Boston after Davis's retirement), it was the accepted wisdom that the street traders were too young, too foreign, and too common to be given any responsibility at all. The self-government plans foundered because they gave the children precisely what most adults, including the reformers, were convinced they should not have: a degree of autonomy on the streets. The newsboys' republics might have succeeded in putting back into operation long-disregarded ordinances and statutes, but they had accomplished this at a price most reformers were not willing to pay. When given the choice, most preferred allowing the laws to remain unenforced to giving the children the responsibility for managing their own affairs.

The Boston Newsboys' Republic survived only as long as Philip Davis remained Superintendent of Licensed Minors. His successor, on taking office, disestablished the republic and replaced the court's newsie judges with an appointed adult. As might have been expected, the boys refused to accept the new superintendent's authority. Instead of cooperating to enforce the laws, as they had done under their republic, they pulled together to evade his futile attempts to police the streets by himself. According to one investigator, Davis's successor was quickly and easily outwitted by the children he was supposed to be supervising. "The boys know him too well and give warning up and down the line as soon as he comes in sight." Madeleine Appel, in her own informal canvas of the busier Boston districts, found that less than one half of the boys were properly licensed. The majority hawked their papers in open violation of the laws.36 Boston, January 23, 1917, 4 P.M. "Group of newsies selling in front of South Station. Four of them said they were eleven years old. Saw no badges in evidence." (Lewis Hine Collection, NCLC) In the long run, it was those adults who believed in the sanct.i.ty of the laws who suffered the most from the failure of the experiments to take root. Without the children's cooperation, the street trader laws were unenforceable-and the children knew it. Try as they might, the reformers could not solve the problem. They rewrote the laws, s.h.i.+fting responsibility for enforcement from police to school officials and back again. It made little difference. The children had learned from experience that as long as they cooperated to regulate their own trade and evade laws they considered unreasonable there was little the officials could do. The children were too many, and the strength of their informal ties too strong, for the adults to succeed in regulating their activities on the street.

* Boston has in 1892 pa.s.sed the first city ordinance requiring newsies to apply for and wear badges when selling on the streets. By 1915, eleven states and several munic.i.p.alities had similar legislation.21.

As Davis himself later admitted, his idea was not original, but modeled on the George Junior Republic in upstate New York and the Newsboys' a.s.sociation in Toledo, Ohio.

Working Together.

The reformers could not help worrying about the street traders. How, they wondered, could eleven- to fifteen-year-olds care for themselves away from home, school, and the block? What the adults failed to understand was that the children who left school and home to work downtown were not abandoned like orphans to the storm. They entered the life of an active, organized community with its own structures of authority, law, and order. The streets were not jungles and the children were not savages.

The children, as we have seen, took care of one another at play on the block. They continued the practice on the downtown streets of the city where they worked every afternoon. Big kids watched after smaller ones, experienced hustlers taught newcomers the rules of the game, streetwise veterans took the rookies under their protection. As an editorial writer in the trade journal Editor and Publisher observed of the newsies, "To the credit of the bigger lads be it said, the younger boys, if they behave decently and honorably are actually pushed in and helped by the elder."1 Instead of bullying or beating up the little ones, the older hustlers entered into cooperative business relations.h.i.+ps with them. The newsies had their own apprentices.h.i.+p system. Children starting out on the streets could, if they chose-and many did-work as "strikers" for older boys. In return for a commission of up to 50 percent, the big boys provided the strikers with papers to hawk, a place to sell, and protection when necessary. While the big boys expanded their coverage and their profits, the younger ones were spared the ha.s.sle of dealing with circulation managers, paying cash in advance for their papers, and having to worry about those they could not sell.2 The older children helped out the younger ones as a matter of course and because it was good for business. It was the accepted wisdom on the streets that customers would rather buy from a cute young kid than an adolescent who needed a shave. The little ones were also better salesmen. While the older boys were too mature and dignified to run up and down the streets shouting their wares, "the youngster," according to Maurice Hexter in Cincinnati, "takes keen delight in making his voice resound because he just 'loves to holler' and looks upon salesmans.h.i.+p as a game."3 Though self-interest was no doubt behind much of the elder boys' cooperation with the rookies, there were many instances where the big ones had nothing to gain from helping out but helped out nonetheless. Harry Bremer, an investigator for the National Child Labor Committee, discovered on a Sat.u.r.day night visit to Jersey City that the younger children who sold the Sunday World on Sat.u.r.day evenings got their papers from the older newsies, who routinely went "over to the World Building in New York ... to bring back a supply for all." The same informal arrangement held among the Elizabeth, New Jersey, newsies. "The older boys go in to New York City about four o'clock Sunday morning and bring papers out" for themselves and the younger boys to sell.4 There was nothing in the least extraordinary about such cooperative relations.h.i.+ps. Children of different ages were quite accustomed to working and playing together on the streets. Today, when children are more likely to accept the propriety of strict age grading carried over from the cla.s.sroom, fifth-graders play only with fifth-graders, fourth-graders with fourth-graders. At the turn of the century, such age segregation made little sense. Though most of the boys, as David Macleod has observed, probably preferred playing with children no more than three years younger than they were,5 children regularly worked and played on the streets with their siblings and with their siblings' friends and cla.s.smates. The arrangement benefited everyone. Older street traders got the use of younger brothers and sisters as unpaid a.s.sistants, the little ones got to stay out on the streets with their older brothers and sisters, and parents rested easier knowing that the older children were watching over the younger.

A good many of the tiniest street traders-who appeared to be alone-were in fact working with older siblings. A concerned citizen who lived on Madison Avenue in New York City contacted the Charity Organization Society in 1906 to report a boy no more than six years old who she claimed was selling papers in all sorts of weather on the street corner. The society, a reform group which investigated such cases, sent out a special "visitor," who promptly reported back that the child in question was neither abandoned nor orphaned nor the victim of parental exploitation. He was simply helping out his big brothers, who owned the corner newsstand.6 In Chicago, another concerned citizen, this one a lawyer, made a similar request to the Illinois Humane Society. Touched by the plight of a "girl about eight years old who has only one leg [and] sells papers at 18th Street and Wabash," the lawyer informed the society that he had "on evenings bought all of her papers and at other times [given] to her 20, 30, and 50." He asked the Humane Society to find out if the girl were indeed a worthy recipient of charity. The investigator sent out on the case never did find the little girl; but he did track down her mother, who admitted readily that the girl sold papers on the street, but always in the company of her brother. Surely, the mother asked the investigator, there could be nothing wrong with a little girl helping out her big brother. As the investigator departed, the mother asked that he please see that the gentleman who had been leaving the large tips was thanked for his kindness.7 Not all family groupings were as innocent as these. The good samaritans who worried about the little ones alone on the streets never seemed to notice their big brothers-for a very good reason. The big boys stayed out of sight so that the little ones would appear to be by themselves. Living tableaux were artfully constructed to elicit sympathy, sales, and tips from well-meaning customers. Tiny, innocent-looking children properly presented were worth their weight in pennies. The well-tutored "waif," standing alone on a corner meekly holding out some item for sale, was hard to resist. Only the trained observer would look for the older sibling across the street.

William Hard, a Chicago journalist, followed 'Jelly,' an Italian newsboy, one Sat.u.r.day night on the way to the elevated railway station to meet his ten-year-old sister. "She had dressed herself for the part. From her ragged and scanty wardrobe she had chosen her most ragged and her scantiest clothes. Accompanied by his sister, 'Jelly' then went to a flowershop and bought a bundle of carnations at closing prices. With these carnations he took his sister to the entrance of the Grand Opera House. There she sold the whole bundle to the people coming from the performance. Her appearance was picturesque and pitiful.... As soon as the flowers were sold and the people had gone away, 'Jelly' took his sister back to the elevated station. There he counted the money she had made and put it in his pocket. He then handed her out a nickel for carfare and, in addition, a supplementary nickel for herself."8 The children of the street cooperated with one another for purposes other than deceiving potential adult customers. They worked together to regulate their trade and protect their profits from the employers, suppliers, circulation managers, and publishers, who were interested in soaking the last ounce of profit from their labor. The eleven- to fifteen-year-olds who worked every afternoon on the downtown streets of the city did not have to read Locke or Rousseau to understand that, without some form of "social contract," life on the streets would be pure h.e.l.l. Each downtown district had only a finite number of busy intersections, streetcar stops, train stations, and good "corners." Had all the children battled daily for the few key spots, none would have had time or energy left to sell their wares.

The children maintained order on the streets by respecting one another's property rights. They did not recognize the rights of railroads to the "stuff" on the tracks or the rights of landlords to the copper wire left behind in empty houses, but children who had built up a trade on a corner deserved to have their property protected.

Adult observers were astounded by the children's loyalty to one another and their unwritten laws. Jacob Riis questioned one thirteen-year-old newsie as to why he didn't try to take away the "corner" from the older boy who owned it. "He has no more right to the corner than you have," Riis egged the boy on. "Why don't you fight him for it?"

" 'He's my boss,' was the dogged reply.

" 'But suppose some stronger fellow drove him away?'

"The answer was prompt: " 'I'd get other boys and get it back for him.' ...

" 'Did you ever hear of anyone taking a boy's corner-just taking it?'

" 'I heard of it, but I never knowed it. It is his corner.' "9 In Milwaukee, Alexander Fleisher engaged another newsie in the same dialogue; he, too, was intrigued by the boys' commitment to their laws. Right, not might, seemed to rule on the streets. Fleisher asked one of the bigger boys why he didn't take over the "Palm Garden," one of the better spots for selling papers. The boy answered that he would not even consider moving into territory "owned" by others. "If the policeman did not interfere, the other boys on the street would, and in the end it would be impossible for him to sell papers at all."

By collectively legitimizing the property rights of established street traders, the children brought order to the streets and provided for a smooth transition from generation to generation. When traders got ready to leave the streets for other work, they could hand over t.i.tle to their corners-and their customers-to younger brothers or sell it to the highest bidders. There was a going rate for each piece of real estate, established by the children who bid on it. Once the new owner paid the price, the location became his. Any child who wanted to work there had to pay him a commission.10 The children enforced their laws in their own ways. The police were not going to do it for them. The standard punishment for trespa.s.sing was being chased away and, if caught, beaten up. Dominic Pavano, who had been chased off a corner at Park Row near City Hall, explained to a New York Child Labor Committee investigator that "a big boy, stranger to him, accosted him, asked him how much he made, and then took the money from him by force and ran away, telling him he would be killed the next time he came there." Harry Browne had also been "chased off" a corner that did not belong to him. Harry complained to the investigators that "it was very hard for a 'white boy' to make anything at paper selling [because] the Jews and Italians hung together to hold the most profitable places and corners." Harry would either not admit or had not yet figured out that his problem had less to do with race than with the territorial imperatives of street trading. He had been chased away not because he was "a white boy," but because he had been horning in on someone else's trade and territory.11 Most newsies did not get into trouble as Dominic and Harry had. They stayed away from "owned" corners or made a deal with the owner. The unwritten laws of the street were so well known and obeyed that there was little need for violence. Mervyn LeRoy, the Hollywood producer, recalled in his autobiography that in San Francisco, just after the 1906 earthquake, "newsboys had to battle it out for choice corners."12 But his experience was exceptional. Other autobiographical accounts and the dozens of published and unpublished newsboy studies report little in the way of violence. The children were too busy trying to earn money to waste time fighting one another. They were, in fact, so well organized and law-abiding that one New York City truant officer complained that the small boys who should have been looking to the police for "protection as to trade and territory" were looking to the older newsies instead.13 Most newspaper circulation managers relied on the boys to regulate their own street trades. They not only refrained from interfering, but did what they could to enforce the boys' unwritten laws by refusing to sell papers to newsies who did not properly "own" the territory they sold from. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer informed its readers in October 1917, "Newsboys hold squatter t.i.tle to corners and buy and sell them from each other. The newspapers have no financial interest in the corners, but, with the police, recognize established 't.i.tles' in the interest of order."14 Unwritten laws governed the boys' behavior in the newspaper offices and distribution centers as well as in the streets. The sooner the boys got their papers in the afternoon, the sooner they could start selling them; no newsie wanted to be stuck in line while outside in the streets customers began looking for their afternoon editions. In most cities, the boys established and followed a simple seniority system. The older newsies got their papers as soon as these arrived from the press rooms. When they had been served, the rest of the boys lined up to get theirs.15 The circulation managers and their a.s.sistants worked with the boys to smooth out kinks in the distribution system. In Portland, Oregon, where there had been "continual fighting and hard feeling over the Sat.u.r.day night places" on the line, the "circulator," a former newsie, proposed a solution. The "regular midnight boys" who sold every night would get their papers first, followed by the "boys who only sell Sat.u.r.day nights." The new procedure, it was hoped, would "eliminate some of the hard feeling and wrangling." The boys, knowing that the better regulated the distribution process, the sooner they would all get their papers, agreed to give the proposal a trial run. If it worked they would support it; if not, they would return to the old system. The decision, in any event, would be theirs.16 St. Louis, May 1910. A photograph of "Burns Bas.e.m.e.nt Branch." The boys have lined up to get their afternoon papers from the a.s.sistant circulation manager. The older boys are at the front of the line, the younger ones just behind. (Lewis Hine Collection, LC) Newsies, unfortunately, did not always get along so famously with the adults they did business with. The boys helped to organize their own distribution systems when they could. There were, however, times and places where this was not possible. In cities where the boys were too spread out for centrally located distribution offices to serve them all, the circulation managers hired truckers to deliver the papers at their corners. Though this system saved the hustlers a great deal of time, it made it more difficult for them to join together to protect their interests. In Cincinnati, for example, the boys, isolated from one another geographically, found themselves at the mercy of the supply men who, according to Maurice Hexter, regularly extorted bribes to insure delivery "at the earliest possible moment, when the demand for the edition is strongest. One little chap told [Hexter] that he usually gave his supply man a silk s.h.i.+rt for Christmas"-probably in addition to weekly bribes.17 When the publishers and circulation managers were too thickheaded to understand the children's worth or their potential organized strength, the boys had to-and did-take special measures to bring them back to their senses. In Boston, where the newspapers in 1901 unilaterally changed the distribution procedures, the newsies appealed directly to the publishers for a return to the status quo. When, as should have been expected, the publishers refused to listen to their grievances, the boys organized themselves into a union, applied for and were granted an AFL charter, and sent off an official delegation to bargain with the manager of one of the city's leading dailies. When they were again rebuffed and even humiliated by the manager, who refused to negotiate and "took occasion to make sport of [their union, the boys] declared a boycott.... The result was a surprise not only to the manager of the paper but to the newsboys themselves. The circulation of the paper fell off rapidly and advertisers complained. The manager invited the Union to a conference." In the end, the boys won everything they demanded-and more.18 The street traders carried with them from their home blocks the inchoate sense of unity that had suffused their play communities. Just as in their play communities they had experienced what Huizinga referred to as the feeling of being " 'apart-together' in an exceptional situation,"19 so downtown were they united by their shared isolation from the adult world that surrounded them. They were separated from the other inhabitants of the downtown shopping, entertainment, and business streets by age, cla.s.s, and need. They were different-and they could not but perceive that difference every time they shouted their wares, collected their tips, or made their way back home to their working-cla.s.s neighborhoods.

In the long run, the unity born of that difference made their experience at work more enjoyable and more profitable. The children trusted one another rather than the adult suppliers, circulation managers, and deliverymen. Their trust and cooperation made it easier for them to establish and enforce their own territorial laws. And those laws, in turn, smoothed the conflicts and eliminated the contests that might have arisen between them.

The child labor reformers who observed and reported on the boys at work were surprised by the degree to which they cooperated with one another. In their relations.h.i.+p with their adult suppliers and customers, the little hustlers were little demons. But in their relations.h.i.+p to one another, they were friendly and supportive. Street trading was not a solitary but a group activity. Multiple connections-work, play, cla.s.sroom, and neighborhood ties-held the children together in friends.h.i.+p, not rivalry.

Philadelphia, 1910. This Lewis Hine photograph shows us three newsies who work together every afternoon and on Sat.u.r.day nights till midnight. The middle boy, Morris Goldberg, is Jewish; his companions, "the Mellitto Boys," are Italian. (Lewis Hine Collection, NCLC) The child experts attributed such att.i.tudes and behavior to the children's lower evolutionary state. Children, as G. Stanley Hall argued (persuasively enough to convince observers of children as astute as Jane Addams), were in their development recapitulating the evolution of the human species. Adolescents at play and at work embodied the savage personality in their eschewal of individualistic compet.i.tion for the comforts of members.h.i.+p in and solidarity with the group.20 The experts-and there were dozens of them who accepted Hall's formula-were unable to see beyond their own theoretical framework. The children's community of the streets was no atavism, but a response to their social situation. The children worked together because they had more fun that way and earned almost as much money.21 They cooperated because solidarity with other children meant protection for all against the adults they did business with.

Unions and Strikes.

Joseph Pulitzer, nearly blind, so sensitive to sound he exploded when the silverware was rattled, and suffering from "asthma, weak lungs, a protesting stomach, insomnia, exhaustion, and fits of depression,"1 managed his newspapers in absentia for the last twenty years of his life. Nearly every day he received memos from the New York World office providing him with the information he required: financial reports, circulation figures, summaries of lead stories and features, lists of headlines in the World and its rivals, office gossip, and evaluations of key personnel. In July of 1899, a new subject appeared in the memos. Don Seitz, managing editor and chief correspondent, noted that the paper had "had some trouble to-day through the strike on the part of the newsboys." A July 21 memo headed "On the Newsboys Strike" reported further that the strike would "probably be sporadic for some days" but a.s.sured Pulitzer that "we have the situation well in hand." Twenty-four hours later, the tone of the memos had changed: "The newsboys strike has grown into a menacing affair.... It is proving a serious problem. Practically all the boys in New York and adjacent towns have quit selling." By the twenty-fourth, panic had set in. "The advertisers have abandoned the papers and the sale has been cut down fully 2/5.... It is really a very extraordinary demonstration."2 Indeed it was. The New York City newsies had formed their own union and gone out on strike against not only Pulitzer but also William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the rival New York Journal. Before their strike was over, the boys would succeed in seriously cutting back circulation of the two afternoon papers and forcing the two most powerful publishers in the nation to alter their distribution practices.

The story of the 1899 strike has never been told. In his mammoth history of journalism, Frank Luther Mott refers to it in a sentence.3 No one else, to my knowledge, has ever given it that much notice. Children bringing down big-city newspapers by unionizing and striking is too improbable a scenario for anyone, even historians, to take very seriously.

The children of the city, as we have seen, took their money-making seriously. When their earnings were threatened, they did what they had to in order to protect them. They cemented their informal communities of the street into quasi-formal unions, held ma.s.s meetings, elected officers, declared strikes, paraded through the streets shouting their demands, "soaked scabs," and held together as long as they possibly could. Along the way, they tried to have a good time. The children's strikes were serious matters, but they were also occasions for community celebration, for marching en ma.s.se up the avenue, for playing dirty tricks, for making and wearing signs, and for ganging up against troublesome adults, especially the boss's still loyal employees and the police who tried to protect them.

The New York City newsies were, in 1899, in the enviable position of being irreplaceable. Their successors, as we shall see, would not be so well situated. As it became apparent through the early decades of the new century that there was money to be made selling papers, more and more adults would move into the business, setting up news distribution companies or opening and operating independent newsstands. At the turn of the century, however, the children were still, by far, the major distribution source for the afternoon dailies. Publishers and circulation managers could threaten, intimidate, and try to bully them back to work when they struck, but they could not replace them.

The event that was to lead to the newsies' strike of 1899 was the wholesale price increase that Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World had inst.i.tuted in 1898 at the height of the Spanish-American War circulation boom. The publishers, especially Hearst and Pulitzer, had been spending far more money competing with one another in extra editions, splashy front pages, and eyewitness reports than they could hope to recoup on advertising and sales.4 By raising prices to newsies from five cents to six cents for ten papers, they expected to reduce their losses to manageable levels.

The boys, as long as they were making money hawking extra editions with horror-story front pages, did not protest the price increase. By the summer of 1899, however, as the news grew tamer and the headlines shrank, they began to feel the pinch of the penny increase.

City Hall Park, New York City, late 1890s. Hawking the World on the steps of City Hall. These children had probably walked a number of blocks from their homes to City Hall to sell their papers. Without papers to sell, they would have been out of place; with them, they became as much a part of the landscape as the adult businessman to their right. (Alice Austin Collection, Staten Island Historical Society) It is difficult to say where or precisely how the strike began. The first reported actions took place in Long Island City, where the newsies discovered that the Journal deliveryman had been cheating them. On July 18, they took their revenge by tipping over his wagon, running off with his papers, and chasing him out of town. Flushed with success and in a fighting mood, the boys "decided to make a stand against the World and [Journal] for 50 per hundred." (This had been the price before the increase.) They demanded a price rollback and gave notice to their supply men that they were no longer going to buy the Hearst or Pulitzer papers. According to Don Seitz, who reported on all this in his letter to Pulitzer in Bar Harbor, the news of the Long Island City action traveled quickly into Manhattan, where "a young fellow named Morris Cohen, who sells about three hundred Worlds a day in City Hall Park got hold of the boys and got them to strike."5 Seitz notwithstanding, it is unlikely that Cohen by himself precipitated the strike in Manhattan. (His name was never to appear in any of the newspaper reports of the strike.) The boys who sold papers downtown, in the City Hall and Wall Street districts, gathered every afternoon outside the newspaper offices on Park Row, nicknamed Newspaper Row, and in City Hall Park. Most were students who worked part-time, but there were a significant number-many more than there would be in later years-who had left school entirely to hustle for a year or so until they were old enough to find steadier, more lucrative employment. The full-time hustlers sold the morning papers and the early editions of the afternoon ones. They were joined after three o'clock by the schoolboys, who arrived in plenty of time for the afternoon rush. During the spring and summer of 1899, the boys' afternoon discussions must have been punctuated by denunciations of Pulitzer and Hearst and strategic discussions on how to fight back. When word arrived about the Long Island City action, the downtown newsies, perhaps called together by Cohen, put away their red-hots, closed down their c.r.a.p games, and a.s.sembled in City Hall Park. That afternoon, July 19, they organized their union and announced that they would strike the next day unless Pulitzer and Hearst rolled back their prices. Officers were elected, a "committee on discipline" chosen, strategy debated, and delegates sent out to spread the word to the newsies at Fifty-ninth Street and in Harlem, Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Jersey.6 City Hall Park, New York City, late 1890s. Two bootblacks in City Hall Park, where in 1899 the newsboys would organize their union and their strike. (Alice Austin Collection, Staten Island Historical Society) The newsies acted swiftly not because they were children, but because the moment was fortuitous. The Brooklyn streetcar operators were already on strike, and though they would ultimately be defeated they were, for the latter part of July, tying up the police so tight there were few left on the downtown Manhattan streets. As Boots McAleenan, aged eleven, explained to a reporter from the Sun, "We're doin' it now because de cops is all busy, an' we can do any scab newsboy dat shows his face widout police interference. We're here fer our rights an' we will die defendin' 'em. At de rates dey give us now we can't make on'y four cents on ten pape's, an' dat ain't enough to pay fer swipes."7*

On the first afternoons of the strike, the downtown boys gathered in front of the newspaper offices on Park Row to physically prevent the delivery wagons from leaving with papers for uptown and the suburbs. As the Sun reported on July 22, "Fully a hundred boys were gathered in Park Row at the hour when the first editions of the 'yellows' usually come out, and as soon as the wagons started there was a great howl and a shower of missiles which made the drivers' jobs uncomfortable. The police came on the run and the boys scattered hastily, for an order [from the Committee on Discipline which was running the strike] had gone out, it is said, that the police are not to be injured. All the boys were armed with clubs and most of them wore in their headgear placards denouncing the scab extras and calling on the public to boycott them."8 Though they did their best, the downtown boys were soon "scattered by the advance of the constabulary." The trucks-with their newspapers-rolled out to the distribution points uptown and out of town. The drivers who delivered to Columbus Circle were the first to discover what the newsies had in store for them. A crowd of four to five hundred boys had gathered at Fifty-ninth Street to await their arrival. "They had decorated the newsstands and lampposts with banners inscribed, 'Please Don't Buy the World or Journal,' 'Help the Newsboys,' 'Our Cause is Just', 'We Will Fight for Our Rights,' and other pregnant sentiments. As soon as the wagons came up the boys pressed forward and began to hoot and howl.... Though pushed back [by the policemen], they did not scatter. They formed a circle, and as fast as any man got his bundle of papers and tried to get away with them they sweeped down upon him with yells of 'Kill the scab!' mauled him until he dropped his papers and ran, then tore the sheets into small bits and trampled them in the mud."9 At other distribution points, the same scenario was played out. In Brooklyn the boys "appointed committees to meet the delivery wagons and every driver who dared defy the newsboys was bombarded with a choice collection of stones, with which the pockets of the rebellious youngsters bulged."10 The Jersey City boys met the wagons at the ferry and tore up the papers as they were thrown down.11 The Yonkers group sent delegations to the incoming trains to capture the papers as they arrived.12 The boys were in constant communication. The strike committee, elected by the downtown boys, sent representatives to the outlying regions; the outer suburbs elected delegates to travel downtown to Park Row. The Sun, glorying in this successful strike against its two major compet.i.tors, reported in full the visit of Spot Conlon, District Master Workboy of the Brooklyn Union, who, attired in pink suspenders, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with "greetings an' promises of support.... 'We have tied up de scab sheets so tight dat y' can't buy one fer a dollar in de street. Hold out, my gallant kids, an' to-morrer I meself, at de head of t'ree tousand n.o.ble hearts from Brooklyn will be over here t' help youse win yer n.o.ble sc.r.a.p fer freedom an' fair play.' "13 The Journal and World did not, at first, take the strike very seriously. Their opponents were after all only children, too small, inexperienced, and irresponsible to win a contest with adults. It was not until the advertisers began requesting "allowance on their bills on account of the strike" that the publishers realized the gravity of the situation. The newsboys were not only on the way to shutting down street circulation; they had won a public relations battle for the sympathy of the public. "The people," Seitz reported to Pulitzer on July 24, "seem to be against us; they are encouraging the boys and tipping them and where they are not doing this, they are refraining from buying the papers for fear of having them s.n.a.t.c.hed from their hands."14 The strike closed down distribution of the papers in Manhattan and, within days, spread uptown to Fifty-ninth Street and Harlem and across the rivers to Long Island City, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Newark, where according to Seitz "the paper was completely obliterated."15 In Mount Vernon, Staten Island, Yonkers, Troy, and Rochester, New York; Plainfield, Trenton, Elizabeth, Paterson, and Asbury Park, New Jersey; New Haven, Connecticut; Fall River, Ma.s.sachusetts; and Providence, Rhode Island, local newsies joined the strike.16 Though it is not possible to do an ethnic census of the strikers, the names reported in the papers provide evidence that boys of all backgrounds partic.i.p.ated in all aspects of the strike. Among those arrested were Abe Greenhouse, Ike Miller, Joe Mulligan, Frank Gia.s.so, Donato Carolucci, 'Grin' Boyle, Albert Smith, Edward Rowland, Mikki Fis.h.i.+er, and William Reese and John Falk (the latter two identified by the Sun as "Negroes"). The elected strike committee included Barney Peters, Jim Galty, Crutchy Morris, Abe Newman, and Dave Simons.17 The boys, all of them, were in dead earnest about their strike. The fact that the publishers refused to take them seriously just spurred them on. Every day, they met the delivery wagons at the distribution points, pelted them with stones and rotten fruit, captured as many bundles as they could, and then paraded up and down the streets with banners, leaflets, songs, and cheers, proud of their accomplishment but on the constant lookout for any scab papers that might have gotten through.

The children used their wits-and numbers-to advantage. The Sun reported an incident from the third day of the strike, when a small boy appeared in front of the Journal office with a stack of papers and a policeman by his side. The strikers, poised outside to make sure no one got away from the office with papers to sell, were at a loss as to what to do. "Barefaced defiance by a mere 'kid' would demoralize the rank and file if left unpunished. Yet there was the policeman with a night stick and there was the lesson of three of their number already sent to juvenile asylum for a.s.saulting scabs....

"Up spoke Young Myers, sometimes called Young Mush, on account of his fondness for taking his girl to Corlears Hook Park Sunday evenings.

" 'That cop's too fat to run fast an' I'll get him after me if you'll tend to the scab when he gets away,' he said.

"The leaders promised to attend to the scab if Young Myers would remove the policeman. Walking innocently up to the Journal boy, Myers grabbed a handful of his papers and ran as fast as his legs would carry him. The Journal boy yelled for help and away went the policeman after Young Mush. The Journal boy watched the pursuit with interest. A second later he had other things to think about. Fifteen strikers surrounded him and the blows came in thick and fast. The Journals that he had were taken away and torn into ribbons."

A second policeman rescued the boy, who retreated to Frankfort Street; there he was met by the strikers, who "invited him to join them, which he did in a hurry. A half hour later he was leading an attack on a boy who was trying to smuggle some Worlds and Journals over to Brooklyn."18 The "bluecoated servants of capital," as the Sun referred to the policemen, did their best but were overwhelmed by the persistence and sheer numbers of the strikers. They managed to arrest a boy here and there but were powerless against the huge crowds that gathered at the distribution centers and marched down the main streets on the lookout for scab papers.

The newspapers, now frightened by the recognition that the strike was for real, called in their favors from politicians and police captains. As Seitz reported to Pulitzer on July 24, "I have been up to headquarters, arranging to break up certain strike points, with the help of the police, to-morrow." The Journal, which had been running editorials condemning the police for their actions in other strikes, quickly reversed itself: offending editorials were "suppressed," including a full-page diatribe against the police as "friends of monopoly." With its editorial policy now favorable to the department, the Journal's editor made his way "to see Mayor Van Wyck in the matter of better police protection." According to Seitz, the "Mayor had expressed his friendly purpose towards us; very friendly purpose I judge from what Los [Journal's editor] said."19 The publishers needed police protection for the army of scabs, thugs, and a.s.sorted toughs they had hired to get the papers on the streets. When their supply of available adults was exhausted, they sent their agents to the Bowery lodging houses with the offer of two dollars a day plus commission for any man who would sell Worlds or Journals. The boys followed the agents into the flophouses to explain their case. According to a story in the Sun on July 23, the b.u.ms agreed to support the boys: "I'm a Bowery b.u.m ... and one of about a hundred that's signed to take out Worlds and Journals to-morrow. But say, we ain't a-going to do it. It's all a bluff. We told them scouts that we'd do it when they offered $2 a day, but everyone of us has decided to stick by the newsboys and we won't sell no papers."20 Those few who appeared at the newspaper offices the next day did so only because they had found a way to make their two dollars without breaking the strike. As they left the offices with their bundles, they dumped their papers in the streets; then, after a short while, returned to the publishers, demanding their money. " 'Say, dis is easy,' said one of them: it's a reg'lar cinch. But don't give it away. I wouldn't be doin' it but I needs de money.' "21 The only trouble the boys had was with the women who owned their own stands. Though Annie and "Mrs. Cry Baby, the only name by which they [had] ever known the eccentric German newspaper woman who is a familiar figure at the [Brooklyn] bridge entrance" were with them, other "newswomen around the bridge entrance," while pretending to support the boys had "been caught selling the boycotted papers, hauling them out from under their shawls when they [were] called for by customers. This base deceit ... angered the boys very much, but they [were] at a loss to find a remedy."

" 'A feller don't soak a lady,' said Kid Blink, 'and yer can't get at them women's scab pape's without soakin' them.' " The best they could do was to threaten the women and try to coax their customers away from them.22 The boys were well aware of the value of public support. To publicize their cause they took up a collection, and, with the eleven dollars they secured, printed up thousands of circulars to stuff in the nonstruck papers and hand out in the streets and at the bridges, train stations, and ferries. They organized parades and street demonstrations, and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, made their case to the reporters from the nonstruck dailies.

For the boys, and for the public who read about their strike, the highlight of the two weeks was the ma.s.s meeting held at New Irving Hall on Broome Street. Some five thousand boys from all over the city showed up to shout their support. The two thousand who were able to squeeze into the hall were greeted by Frank Woods, the voice of the Polo Grounds and a former newsie. A few local politicians saluted the strikers, songs were sung, strikers cheered, and scabs booed.

The newsboy speakers played to the larger public through the medium of the reporters from the nonstruck papers. Early in the evening the chairman, conscious of the effect favorable reports might have on building public support, asked the reporters present to please refrain from quoting "the speakers as saying 'dese' and 'dose' and 'youse.' "

Bob the Indian, one of the first speakers, promised the boys that they were going to win their struggle, but pleaded with them to keep the violence down. "Now I'm to tell yer that yer not to soak the drivers any more.... No you're not to soak 'em. We're a goin' to try to square this thing without violence; so keep cool. I think we'll win in a walk-on the level I do."

Kid Blink, a strike organizer, urged the boys to stick like "glue" and a moment later like "plaster." "Ain't that ten cents worth as much to us as it is to Hearst and Pulitzer who are millionaires? Well, I guess it is. If they can't spare it, how can we? ... I'm trying to figure how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, an' I can't see it."

The boys sat or, rather, stood and cheered through speech after speech. Crazy Aborn told how the circulation managers had tried to bribe him; Newspaper Annie shouted her encouragement; Dave Simons, president of the union, presented the a.s.sembly with a set of resolutions to vote on; Warhorse Brennan, the oldest newsie, and Jack from Park Row saluted the boys. Racetrack Higgins reported that the Brooklyn boys had hired a band to lead them over the bridge to Irving Hall but were prevented from "parading" by the police commissioner, who denied them a permit. The last scheduled speaker of the evening was "Hungry Joe Kernan, the newsboy mascot [who] sang a pathetic song about a one-legged newsboy." With a few brief remarks by a few more newsies, the meeting came to a halt, the boys reinvigorated and ready to carry their strike to its conclusion.23 The boys held together for the rest of that week and the next. Though there were rumors of scandal and a hasty trial and removal from office of two of the strike leaders, the boys continued to keep the World and Journal off the streets. Seitz, summarizing the effects of the strike for Pulitzer, admitted that "the loss in circulation ... has been colossal." The press run had been reduced from over three hundred sixty thousand to one hundred twenty-five thousand, while returns more than doubled from the customary 15 or 16 percent to an average of 35 percent. "It is really remarkable the success these boys have had; our policy of putting men out [adult scabs] was not helpful, yet it was the only thing that could be done. We had to have representation and the absolute disappearance of the paper was appalling."24 The publishers conceded defeat in the second week of the strike by offering the boys an advantageous compromise. The price would remain where it was, but the World and Journal would henceforth take back all unsold papers at 100 percent refund. The boys agreed to the offer and on the second of August returned to the streets.25 (Frank Luther Mott claims that the "strike ... was eventually successful" in forcing the papers to rescind their price increase. I have not found any evidence to support his claim.26) The newsboys' union did not survive long enough to take credit for the victory. Toward the end, all that remained were the leaders and their statements to the press. The union had done yeoman work in getting the strike started, arranging the ma.s.s meeting, and spreading the word to the boys and the public. Once the boycott took hold, however, its days were numbered. The strike was so decentralized that the citywide organization had little to do. Each group of newsies policed its own district: the Harlem boys patrolled theirs, the Jersey City boys theirs. Though each group considered itself part of the larger whole, none felt obligated to accept decisions arrived at outside the local district.

Had the publishers formally negotiated with the union, the organization might have been strengthened or at least given something to do. But the publishers, perhaps wisely from their perspective, ignored the union. When they decided to compromise with the boys they simply spread the word-through the circulation and branch office managers-that they were going to accept 100 percent returns. The boys, without formal vote or decision, accepted the agreement and queued up to buy their papers.

The New York City union, like most of the other children's unions, was an ephemeral organization with a limited life span. The children paid no dues, had no salaried officers, and probably did not expect their union to outlive the particular struggle it had been called into being to address.

The children's unions owed their existence-and whatever strength they possessed-to the informal networks that preceded them. The boys knew and trusted one another from the neighborhood and the streets. No extensive organizing campaigns were necessary to convince boys to join a union with their friends. Ironically, the informal community structure that made establis.h.i.+ng unions so easy had the opposite effect on sustaining them. Because the boys were already tied together in multiple social relations.h.i.+ps, they did not need permanent unions to regulate their trade or create a community of mutual interest.

The New York newsie strike of 1899 left no organization behind it, but it did not recede into the past without leaving its mark up and down the East Coast and as far west as Cincinnati. Children everywhere learned about the New York City strike from their local papers. In Lexington, Kentucky, the newsies followed the New York boys' example and called a strike against the city's major afternoon paper. In Rochester and Syracuse, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Boston and Cincinnati, the messengers went out on strike. As the papers reported, with less and less levity as it spread, a "strike epidemic" had broken out.27 The children, it appeared, felt some sort of generational pull to go out on strike in support of one another. From Providence, Rhode Island, to South Jersey, children who sold the Journal and World went out in support of the New York boys. In Cincinnati, the newsies went out in support of the messengers.28 And in New York City, still the hub of activity, the messengers and bootblacks joined the newsies in what nearly became a children's general strike.29 Although, unlike the newsies, most of the messengers and s.h.i.+neboys had left school and worked full-time, they too belonged to the children's community of the streets. Like the part-time street traders, they lived at home and were expected to turn in their wages to their parents. Like them, also, they held back part of their earnings to spend on their own good times.

Of all the children's strikes, the s.h.i.+neboys' provided the nonstruck newspapers with the best copy. Here was the perfect strike: no individual or business was going to suffer, and the mostly Italian boys-with their exaggerated accents-were even more colorful in print than the newsies with their "deses" and "dems." The s.h.i.+neboys, for all the good cheer with which their action was reported, did not leave their stands to amuse the rest of the city. They had real grievances and no other way to force their employers to act on them.

The boys who s.h.i.+ned on the Staten Island and East River ferries were employed by a Vincent Catoggio, who owned all the "concessions" on the ferries and made between twelve and fourteen thousand dollars a year from them. While the boys slaved away, Catoggio, they claimed, lived like a prince with diamond rings on all ten fingers. To make matters worse, the boss had recently inst.i.tuted a new and, for the boys, degrading system. To make sure that no boy pocketed the proceeds from a s.h.i.+ne, Catoggio required them to ring a bell each time they got a customer.

"Of coursa, we go on a strika," Looking-gla.s.s Wadalup (named for the quality of his s.h.i.+nes) was reported as having said only days after the newsies had led the way with their strike. "Da bossa he maka all da mona, and he wanta maka da men rings upa da s.h.i.+na same like da monka ringa de bell in de circ. Nexta ting we know he wanta putta colla and chaina ona da men sama lika jocko."

The boys threatened to throw their stands into the sea should their demands not be met. Catoggio offered them a 20 percent wage increase to six dollars a week. They took it, though as "Tony Rocco, who s.h.i.+nes shoes on one of the Staten Island boats," confided to a reporter, the boys were still looking for seven dollars. "We maka our union stronga first. Then we strika for the seven doll."30 Like the bootblacks, the messengers were galvanized into action by the newsies' example. As the Sun reported, "The boys haven't any more cause of complaint now than they have always had, but simply yielded to the strike epidemic." The boys, it was true, were not striking to overturn recently established practices, but they were not playacting, as the Sun implied. Their major grievance was the "tax" they were charged for their uniforms and, in the case of the American District boys, for clean white linen collars. "Mind yer," one of the boys told a reporter, "they take 50 a week out for uniforms and before yer wear one out yer've paid for it a half dozen times over. But d'yer own it then? Not on yer life. They takes it away, gives yer one that some large boy has grown out of, and keep right on taking yer 50 a week."31 The boys wanted nothing more than what was due them as American workers and citizens: the right to buy and wash their own uniforms and collars. The American District and Western Union boys also objected to their companies' policy of s.h.i.+fting their work hours and not telling them until the night before when they were going to work. They demanded as well full pay for every telegram they carried out of the office, not simply for those which were delivered.32 The messengers' strike was called for July 24, just four days after the newsies went out. Though the boys from the different companies had different demands-and different schedules-they tried to coordinate their actions. If they were successful, they could close down the city or, at the very least, slow down Wall Street. The Postal Telegraph Company boys were the first to go out. "They made things lively downtown ... and seriously impaired the company's service" until the police arrived to chase them away. That afternoon the Western Union boys joined the strike, but trooped back to work when the district manager agreed to their demands. The American District boys waited until the next day, payday, to walk out.33 As might have been expected from the difficulty the boys had coordinating their actions, their strike was going nowhere. The boys had been in such a hurry to get started, they had not bothered to form a union-even a weak one, as the newsies had. Their lack of organization did not help their cause. Neither did help come from the older boys, out of school, out of work, and only too ready to take the places of the striking messengers. As the Tribune reported on July 27, three days after the boys had walked out, the strike "like a badly charged rocket has about fizzled out, after a few weak sputters."34 It is difficult to imagine a different outcome. The companies and the business community had too much at stake to allow the boys to close down shop for even an afternoon. The city could survive without s.h.i.+ned shoes or afternoon papers, but not-in this era, at least-without its telegrams. In Cincinnati, when the boys struck, the companies and their clients hired cabs to deliver the strikebreakers and their messages. Elsewhere, the strikes were quickly broken by a combination of intimidation, cabs, scabs, and police guards.35 The messenger boy strikes of 1899 achieved little. The boys' grievances remained simmering until 1910, when a new generation took up where the old one had left off-unfortunately with much the same results. Though the boys in 1910 had a solidly organized union behind them and a.s.sistance from union organizers and other sympathetic adults, they were no match for their employers. In New York, in 1910, and in Detroit, where the boys struck for higher rates in 1914, the telegraph companies beat them down with the telephone and with "Bowery b.u.ms" hired by the day. The b.u.ms were paid at rates much higher than the boys. Once the strikes were broken, the boys were offered their old jobs-at the old rate of pay.36 New York City, 1896. The photograph on top shows three independent bootblacks looking for s.h.i.+nes on a busy city street. Above is one of the new "stands" that was putting the independents out of business. Few customers would pay a nickel to a boy with a shoes.h.i.+ne box when for the same price they could sit on a throne on one of the stands. (Alice Austin Collection, Staten Island Historical Society) In unionizing and striking to protect their rights and their profits, the children were behaving precisely as they believed American workers should when treated unjustly. Unions and strikes were part of the urban environment. It was the rare working-cla.s.s boy or girl who did not have a father, brother, sister, or relative who was a union member or sympathizer. The papers the children hawked were full of stories-and not unsympathetic ones-about strikes for better wages and working conditions. The New York City boys who struck in 1899 had that very week hawked papers with banner headlines describing the strike of the Brooklyn streetcar operators. The Boston boys who struck in May of 1901 had spent a good part of the preceding month shouting headlines about the brewers', plumbers', linesmen's, and machinists' strikes.

The newsies were themselves independent merchants, but that did not prevent them from patterning their organizations after labor unions, calling them "unions," and applying directly to local and national federations for certification and support. The Boston boys who joined the AFL in 1901 were so serious about their union affiliation that they raised money to send newsie Thomas Mulkern to the 1906 Annual Convention, where he introduced a resolution calling on the adult unionists to "make a special endeavor during the coming year to organize the newsboys throughout the country." In Detroit, the boys in 1914 appealed directly to the Detroit Federation of Labor for a.s.sistance when the News unilaterally broke its unwritten agreement with them. In Chicago, where in 1912 the Hearst papers locked out the pressmen in a complicated, long-simmering dispute, the newsies not only refused to handle any struck dailies but tried their best to prevent Hearst's imported scabs from selling them. The strike was a b.l.o.o.d.y one, with more than one newsboy's head smashed before it was over.

Fortunately for the newsies, such actions were rare. So, too, were the occasions on which the boys felt compelled to unionize and strike to protect their interests. As long as business was good, the publishers were content to abide by their unwritten agreements with the newsies. For a decade and a half after the 1901 Boston strike, business was good-so good on the retailing end that adults were encouraged to move into the distribution business. By the beginning of World War I, a significant number of adults, some of them independent newsstand owners and operators, others employees of large distributing companies, had joined the children on the streets.

As had occurred during the Spanish-American War, circulation increased during the World War I years; but costs, propelled upward by a newsprint shortage and wartime revenue measures, rose even faster. Publishers struggling to maintain their profit margin or simply survive had to raise their advertising rates or their prices.37 Since compet.i.tion with other papers and with the magazines prevented them from boosting the advertising rates, they attempted to balance the books by charging the public more for their papers. The newsies and the independent dealers a.s.sumed that they would retain the same percentage of the selling price under the new price structures. They were mistaken.

The Pittsburgh papers were among the first to boost their prices. In December of 1916, the newsies were informed that under the new price structure they would take home a much smaller percentage of the sales price than they had been getting. Outraged by the publishers' unilateral decision to break what they considered a long-standing though unwritten agreement, the boys refused to sell any papers at the new prices. According to Editor and Publisher, "a virtual boycott was placed ... on the sale of newspapers in the city." Regrettably, the boycott did not hold long enough to force the publishers to the bargaining table. Recognizing that the boys were not going to voluntarily return to work, the publishers set out to force them back-or replace them entirely. They erected newsstands at key locations throughout the city and staffed them with loyal adults. The boys, unable to keep papers off the stands or customers from the papers, were forced to concede defeat and call off their strike.38 In Seattle, Minneapolis, and New York City, the newsies reacted as the Pittsburgh boys had to the publishers' attempts to unilaterally change the unwritten agreements that governed their street trades. They were no doubt encouraged, as their predecessors had been, by the example of adult union members, who were in these same years resorting more frequently to strikes to redress their grievances. The second wave of newsboy strikes occurred during a period, 191618, in which more than a million adults struck each year-"more," according to David Montgomery, "than had ever struck in any year before 1915."39 The Seattle and Minneapolis newsies had better luck than their Pittsburgh counterparts, in large part because the publishers in those cities were less prepared for battle. The Seattle newsies had, for the past seventeen years, abided by an agreement reached between their former union and the publishers. In 1917, when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, citing increased paper costs, broke the agreement by raising its prices and changing its pricing structure, the boys quickly organized-or, more properly, resurrected their old union-and went out on strike. Both the AFL-affiliated Central Labor Federation and the rival IWW chapter offered a.s.sistance. The Post-Intelligencer, out on a limb as the only paper to have raised its prices and be struck, caved in at once.40 In Minneapolis, the newsies also went on strike the moment the publishers raised their prices. They were, from all accounts, enormously successful. On the third of July, the day after the strike, the New York Times reported: "Virtually no newspapers were sold or delivered in Minneapolis today, several hundred vendors and carriers having gone on strike." The publishers, not about to surrender to a bunch of children, tried to get their papers into the streets with scab vendors. The newsies attacked, "several severe riots" ensued, and, according to Editor and Publisher, the governor intervened, notifying "the Mayor and Chief of Police that unless the disturbances were stopped immediately, he would suspend them from office." The pressure from the top forced the publishers to the bargaining table.41 The Minneapolis boys had been so militant-and so successful-in pressing their demands that they frightened into existence a new coalition of concerned citizens and reform groups. The "concerned citizens" blamed the "recent boycott" not on the publishers, but on "the effects of street life upon growing boys." The boys were obviously learning the wrong things on the streets: to organize, protest, strike, and survive. The only solution was to remove them from the streets-and quickly-before another generation was similarly corrupted. "We believe it would be for the ultimate welfare of the newsboys themselves to eliminate their business entirely."42 The New York City publishers were among the last of the big-city publishers to raise their afternoon prices. (Could they have remembered what had happened the last time they'd tampered with the newsies' profit margin?) On January 16, 1918, without advance notice, they made their move. Every New York and Brooklyn afternoon paper which had sold for a penny raised its price to two cents. The vendors were informed that 0.6 cents, or 30 percent of the new selling price, would go to them; the remainder was for the publishers. The newsies objected immediately and strenuously to the new pricing formula and demanded a return to the old one (under which they had received 40 percent of the selling price).43 The strike began in Brooklyn but quickly spread to Manhattan and from there to the Bronx. There were battles at the Brooklyn Bridge, Times Square, uptown at 125th Street and Eighth Avenue, and everywhere else scabs tried to peddle the struck papers.

For the first week of the strike, the boys were rather successful in keeping the papers away from the scab newsies. According to the Tribune, "In the greater city the only papers to circulate freely were 'The Call,' ... and 'The Brooklyn Times,' ... These two papers were peddled everywhere by iron-lunged 'newsies,' who besought all to 'help the newsies win the big strike.' "44 The newsies kept the