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| Pre-Dark Knight Christian thle and friends tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York in the Disney movie musical Newsies. |
The Disney live action musical
Newsies
was a big time flop at the box
office in 1992 losing millions of dollars and generating a mini-crisis for the studio. It turns out people would
not pay to see singing and dancing
urchins play out class warfare on
the streets of old New York. Since
then the movie achieved a minor cult
following largely because the intrepid young hero was played by Christian Bale, who grew up to be the Dark Knight.
After languishing mostly in
obscurity for nearly twenty years, composer Alan Menken and Lyracist
Jack Feldman with the backing of the mighty Disney empire enlisted Broadway maven Harvey Firestone to write a new script. It premiered to rave reviews at the at the Nederlander
Theatre on March 25, 2012. It went
on to earn Tony and Drama
Desk Awards for Menken and choreographer
Christopher Gattelli plus a slew of other nomination. The show ran for more than 1,200
performances.
The real life Newsboys’ Strike of 1899 was less charming and far more dangerous.
It was another chapter in the grim class
war that was a staple of turn of the 20th
Century life, albeit with a somewhat happier
ending than many conflicts.
The 1890’s was a period of heavy competition among the 15 major daily English language newspapers published in Manhattan and others in Brooklyn.
Respectable broadsheets like the
Post,
Herald, Tribune, Times, Morning Sun, and American were challenged
by the more sensational Yellow
Journalism sheets, Joseph Pulitzer’s
New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s Morning and Evening Journals.
The battle for circulation,
particularly between the Hearst and Pulitzer papers, was often literally fought
out on the streets with gangs of thugs
hired to wreck delivery wagons, burn
piles of papers at distribution points,
and assault vendors on the
streets. Even the “respectable” papers engaged in this activity to one
degree or another.
There were about 10,000 newsboys—and
a few newsgirls—on the streets of
Manhattan and thousands more in Brooklyn and outlying areas. They were
both cannon fodder and ground troops in the circulation wars.
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| Many of the newsboys--and girls--were homeless and nearly naked like the waifs huddled together for warmth on a sidewalk. |
Depicted in popular literature as plucky
little businessmen rising in the world, most of the newsboys, some as young
as six years old and ranging to their late teens, were desperately poor. In fact the majority were homeless—orphans, run-a-ways, abandoned cast offs. Many slept
on the streets. Some found refuge in homes
for waifs. Some squatted
in empty buildings. Others
slept dozens to a shared room in
some of the city’s worst slum tenements.
Some still lived with large, impoverished and usually immigrant families who need all hands to eke out a living.
The kids were generally hungry,
dirty, and cold. They were also tough
as nails and regularly brawled
for control of the best locations
both with and without the encouragement of company circulation agents. Contemporary writers sneeringly compared
them to feral dogs.
Kids lined up as early as 4:30 in
the morning outside circulation docks.
They bought their newspapers by the bundle
of 100. That was about all smaller children could carry. Some
had wagons or carts and were able to take several bundles. Before 1898 they
paid 65 cents a bundle and sold them for two or three cents apiece, depending
on the paper. The papers were un-returnable and kids generally stayed out
until the sold the last one. Often on the streets for fourteen hours, a street hawker might make 30 cents a
day, barely enough to eat.
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| Photographer Lewis Hine often made newsboys his subjects. Here he shot a group purchasing their bundles on a circulation dock. |
Conditions had generated conflict
for years. The first recorded newsboy strike was way back in 1866 and
there had been strikes, mostly for reduced cost for bundles, again in 1884,
1886, 1887, and 1889. But none had been well organized or lasted more
than a day or two. Papers had no trouble using the natural gang-like rivalries among the sellers
themselves, hired plug-uglies, and blackballing strike leaders to crush
the strikes.
The Spanish American War was a bonanza for the newspaper
business. Hearst had practically created the war himself with dramatic
accounts of the Cuban Insurrection
and the explosion of the battleship USS Maine in Havana harbor. Lurid accounts of action caused papers to
literally fly out of the vender’s grimy hands. Taking advantage of the
situation, all of the papers raised their prices to 85 cents a bundle.
Despite the increased costs, newsboys were able to marginally prosper on vastly
increased sales.
When the war was over, newspaper
sales plummeted to pre-war levels or even lower. All of the papers
except those owned by Pulitzer and Hearst returned to pre-war pricing.
The papers probably expected trouble, but were confident that they could handle
it. They were wrong.
The street urchins had evidently
been learning something from watching labor struggles unfold in front of them
on the streets, particularly recent street
car and Teamster strikes.
They learned the value of mass picketing
and of going after all avenues of the papers’ circulation. And they may
have been listening to street corner
orators about the value of solidarity.
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| A handbill circulated by the strikers to the public. |
Although sometimes portrayed as a
spontaneous action, the refusal of newsboys to handle Pulitzer and Hearst
papers on July 20, 1899 seems to have been well planned in advance.
Manhattan vendors secured the cooperation and support of newsboys in Brooklyn,
then considered almost a different world. For several days thousands of
boys from both sides of the East River massed
on the Brooklyn Bridge snarling traffic and blocking circulation to the
entire of Long Island. Similar
actions around trains bound for New Jersey blocked circulation on the
other side of the Hudson including
markets in suburbs like Yonkers, Up-State New York, and Connecticut.
Almost daily rallies of as many as 5000 vendors clogged key points in the
city.
Amused and delighted at the
misfortune of their rivals, other papers, especially the Times sympathetically chronicled the
struggle, particularly the rousing speeches of the strike leader identified
only as Kid Blink for his eye
patch. Estimated to be 13 or 14, he was credited with the organizing
skills of a mini-Napoleon. Whether
he was the strike true “leader” or just a colorful spokesperson, the Times loved to record his speech in
exaggerated street argot:
Me men is nobul, and wid such as dese to oppose der
neferarious schemes how can de blokes hope to win?
Friens and feller workers. Dis is a time which tries de
hearts of men. Dis is de time when we’se got to stick together like glue…. We
know wot we wants and we’ll git it even if we is blind.
The papers fought back with
everything they had. Goons
attacked rallies and tried to pick of individual strikers. Police were roused to bust heads and make arrests. Calls went out for scabs, confident in the popular maxim of railroad robber baron Jay Gould that he could always hire half the
working class to beat up the other. But the strikers held firm. And
scab peddlers met with rough justice
from the fists and clubs of strikers.
As the strike dragged on,
circulation of the Pulitzer and Hearst papers plummeted while their rivals
profited handsomely from their losses. It was reported the circulation of
the World dropped from 360,000 papers
daily to less than 125,000.
After two weeks the press tycoons ran up the white flag. Although they refused
to lower the bundle price, they did agree to buy back unsold papers, which made
peddling them marginally profitable again. The competing papers, with
their lower bundle prices, also felt compelled to start buying back copies,
lest the ire of the newsboys turn on them.
The reform was lasting. Unfortunately the newsboys’ organization
was not. It disappeared along with Kid Blink and other colorfully monikered figures like Barney Peanuts, Race Track Higgins, Crazy
Arborn and Crutch Morris.
But their victory lived on.
And, I guess, that is something to sing and dance about.
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