June 27, 2024 • 49 mins
When paperboys stopped delivering a couple of very big newspapers in 1899 it was a big deal. Big enough that the two biggest publishers in the world got pretty scared. But did it actually accomplish anything?
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know. Extra extra read all about it. Stuff you
Should Know. Release is an episode on the Newsy strike
of eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Oh boy, I knew you were going to say something
like that, by the way.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah I did too, but I didn't know what that's
what it turned out to be.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, that's the beauty of you. Thanks man, never know
what you're gonna get.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I appreciate you appreciating me. So apparently we're way, way,
way behind the curve because stuff you missed in history
class did an episode on this, like all the way
back in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's time we did this, I guess one hundred something
years on from the actual strike. Yes, it needs to
be covered by us.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, so we can. Are we copying them now if
it's fourteen years later or whatever?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah? Yeah, we just go on the stuff you missed
in history class site and figure out new topics.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Geez, who was the host back then?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Who knows? It was such a rotating cast at that point.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Who yeah, I mean this was before Tracy and Holly.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, shout out Tracy and Holly keeping it on lockdown
a stuff you missed in history class for years now.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That's right. They got the reins and they were like mine, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
The horse is like, stop jerking me around.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So you mentioned one hundred plus years or something, this
was a If you're wondering what a news he is,
it was a paper delivery person, usually a paper boy
or a newsboy, although we will see there were other
people delivering papers in New York City. Yeah, and they
went on strike in eighteen ninety nine. A bunch of boys,
(02:00):
generally boys got together. We're like, hey, we're tired of
making thirty cents a day. We want to make like
fifty cents a day.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, And thirty cents a day sounds like a very
small amount. It actually was about eleven dollars in today's money,
which is still a pretty small amount to survive in
New York City. And a lot of those newsboys, it
turns out, were just barely surviving. Like a lot of
them were pretty much every single one of them was
(02:29):
working class tops.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I don't think there was any middle class at the time,
and there certainly weren't any like aristocratic newsboys, so like
you were working class at best, if you even had
a home, if you were not an orphan, if you
were not living on the streets. Yeah, and almost all
of them were at the time, like very marginalized communities
(02:53):
like Irish kids, Jewish kids, Black kids like it. It
was a it was a neat kind of like cross
section of America that or New York at least at
the time that had been kind of thrown together, put
together at this job. And there was a lot of
them doing it to something like ten to fifteen thousand,
depending on who you asked at what decade. But from
(03:15):
what I saw, Olivia helped us with this, and I
think she said something like fifteen thousand at the time
of the strike we're talking about, which is eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yeah, And most of these kids were probably tweens and teens,
you know, some of them were as young as six
and seven years old. Of course, some of them were
late teenagers, even reports of some of them being like
twenty twenty one years old. When it came to sort
of leading these organization or leading these meetings in these
(03:46):
this strike. But they were generally teens and tweens. And
like I said, they weren't all boys. There were some girls,
there were some married women, there were some disabled adults.
Really mostly boys though, and these were all regardless of
who it was, these were all people that, like you said,
we're looking to you know, say, you know, I made
(04:07):
thirty cents today, I'll give twenty five cents to my family,
and I'll get a box of cookies for a nickel.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And oh, you could buy a car for a nickel
back then.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I actually did some because spending powers different than you know,
just what would that be in today's dollars? And I
did look up in nineteen hundred what you could get
for some of this for like, you know, ten to
thirty cents.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Oh cool, Well, a box of cookies was a nickel.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, so the car thing was wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Right, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
A box of cereal was a dime, can of Campbell's
soup was a dime. A package of Quaker oats was
a dime. Seven pounds of potatoes was a dime. Wow,
literally wow. And you could get a lot of steak too.
Meat Meat wasn't as expensive as you might think. So
it was kind of weird that way, But that just
kind of shows you a little bit of what thirty
(05:03):
cents a day would buy you. And you know, the
way these boys were doing it. They were basically free agents.
They didn't work for the newspaper or work for a company.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They would go out.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And hustle on their own, buy these bundles of newspapers,
like one hundred newspapers, and then sell them at a markup.
So generally, like, hey, what was the original price that
they were charging.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Fifty cents per bundle of one hundred is what the
papers charged the newsboys at first.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, and they would sell them for generally a penny apiece,
but sometimes mark them up to two or three cents.
But none of that adds up to thirty cents, So
I'm trying to reckon with all that.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I think that they didn't necessarily make it through the
entire bundle in a day h They might have some
left over and they had to eat that.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Cost totally makes sense, Josh, jeez.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's my take. That's what I got from it.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
No, I think you're right, because that that reckons with
a little thing here at the end as far as
what the newspapers offered them.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right exactly. And so these kids would work sun up
to sundown. They would be on the street shouting out
the headlines all day long selling papers. I read a
contemporary account who talked about how like when you walk
down the street, they run up to you and like
essentially make you buy their newspaper. And it was a
(06:28):
it was like a hardscrabble life. Like the impression that
we have of it is like these tough little kids
who all smoked cigarettes and cigars and like gambled and
and you know, playing craps and stuff like that. Like
that was real. It was even worse than that, like
we have almost a romanticized version of it. It was
that plus grittier. Is the life that these kids were living,
(06:50):
hustling on the street selling newspapers every day and in
different places around the country. Chok, they had like rules,
but New York was not one of those places.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
When you say contemporary contemporaneous, sire. Oh, I just wondered
if you've since it's a thing now with the.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Show, I've you just grabbed me by the ankle and
dragged me back, and I fell on my face as
I was pulled down. But other than that, it's good.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
What I was hoping you would say is like, no,
it was contempts, it was contemporary. It was contemporary. Jeez,
Now I'm confused. Like I read it in Vice last week,
it's about the news voice strike. Shut up, Chuck, Okay,
So what is it?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Contemporaneous would be what I meant to say in contemporaries today.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, I'm so sick of this. I am too dumb,
stupid words.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'm just gonna say I read an account from the
time that I'm speaking of.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Oh that's nice. You know there's a word for that. Yeah,
but I don't know what it is, all right, So
let's get into this.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You said other cities were a little more organ eyes
with rules and like, hey, you can only work so
many hours, and maybe you have to be a part
of an actual organization or something, and you got to
wear a uniform.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
New York was a wild West.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
This was a time when William Randolph Hurst and Joseph
Pulitzer were really running the show with their big time papers,
The New York World. Well, I guess I should read
it the opposite way. The New York Journal in the
New York World, respectively. And so the Spanish American War
comes along in April of eighteen ninety eight, and news
(08:34):
was hotter than ever. Everyone wanted to get their hands
on a newspaper. So they said, hey, this is a
good chance to raise the price on these newsies, on
these newsboys to sixty cents from fifty cents, because covering
wars is expensive.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
This will also help us cover this war.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, it was a legitimate price increase in the World
and the Journal were not the only papers that that
to pay for their rather expensive coverage of the war.
And the newsboys at the time were like, this is fine.
It makes sense because we're selling so many more papers
than we normally do. We're actually probably a little better
(09:13):
off even at the sixty cent bundle price point.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, because we're selling out exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
They were selling out, maybe selling multiple bundles in a day,
who knows. But the problem came when the Spanish American
War ended and other papers returned to their As the
circulation went down, the other papers went to their pre
war prices per bundle, but the Journal and the World
(09:41):
did not, and that really stuck under these little newsboys crawl.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And this gets very colorful here pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So my god, some of these quotes are just amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Sort of strap in, we also have to set up
sort of the time in which this took place. In
the late eighteen hundreds, there were it was just a strike,
heavy union heavy time. There was a trolley strike going
on in Brooklyn and Manhattan that even though the adults
were the trolley drivers, a lot of these Newsy's parents
maybe worked in that field or they were sympathetic. So
(10:15):
these kids got involved and they were you know, throwing
rocks at scab drivers and stuff like that, so you know,
they knew what striking was all about and sort of
the strong arm version of how to go about a strike.
And there were also other newsboy strikes before this, like
in the few years proceeding in Boston, Dallas, and Detroit.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So this strike of eighteen ninety nine, like if you
type in newsboy strike, all you're going to get back
on the internet is the strike of eighteen ninety nine. Yeah,
so significant, and the reason that it differentiated itself from
other strikes was in scope, in depth, in organization, like
in just a few days, as we'll see, like these
(10:58):
kids went from a bunch of ragtag, you know, rough
and tumble seven year olds to forming like a union
and like defending themselves in the face of being run
over by greedy fat cats essentially.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, I mean it's just a couple of weeks, really.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, the whole thing was less than fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And they also led Boston, Detroit, in Dallas and Nicknamery.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yeah they did. Yeah. The kids in New York definitely
had the nicknames down.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
All Right, I think it's a pretty good setup.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know, Chuck, I've got to agree with you as
well on your take on the setup.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Okay, all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk
about the literal tipping point.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right if you want to know, then you're in luck
just to suffuse.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Stuffuge No, all right, we mentioned a literal tipping point,
and that's a bit of a stupid pun.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Because on July eighteenth of eighteen ninety nine, it was
a Tuesday. There were some newsboys in Queen's and Long
Island City that found out that one of the journal
delivery people that brought the bundles to these guys was
stealing papers from their bundles and shorting them on each bundle.
And they were like this is not going to stay
(12:29):
in my friend And they literally tipped over his wagon,
chased them off, and stole the papers. And this was
in screenwriting terms, this would be called the inciting incident.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Right, This is where the gun is introduced an act one.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Sure you've been going to that one a lot lately,
but it's the only one I know. I love it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Think about it though, like a bunch of little kids
tipped over a wagon, chased away the adult driver, and
stole a bunch of papers. Like that was what they did.
And that's a really great indicator, or I guess example
of what a bunch of little kids can do if
you put enough of them together and tick them all
off at the same time. It's like ants, Like how
(13:11):
ants can just do all sorts of amazing things if
they collectively combine their strength. Same thing with seven to
fifteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, other people have said it before me, but there
is no scarier group of humans on earth than a
group of young boys.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, and I imagine all of these kids too. All
of these boys are just like fifteen thousand Scott Farcas
and Grover Gills. That's who I imagine the two bad
kids from a Christmas story.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Absolutely, and their brains aren't fully formed yet, so they're
not capable of making like rational decisions. And there's a
mob mentality. And I'm just telling you, if you're on
the streets and you see a group of like nine
teenage boys run in the other.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Direction, yeah, that's great, that's great advice.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And Antoni, it's not me, it's well known fact.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Okay, I'm not disputing it at all.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, especially you. You better get out of there, my friend.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I'm pretty pretty bad at fighting.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Me too, because actually I don't know. I've never been
at a fight.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I can tell you firsthand that I'm not all right.
So that tipping point you said, which, by the way,
I don't think was a bad pun. I think it
was quite apt. Hey, thanks, that kind of like ignited
something in these newsies, like they were they had already
been bristling for a little while under that rate hike
that they knew was unfair, that they were really upset
at the world and the journal about and it was
(14:41):
enough to kind of like light a fire under a
few hundred of them at least, who gathered in City
Hall Park outside of City Hall, of all places, about
three hundred of them rallied and basically said, Journal World,
if you guys don't bring your your bundle price per
bundle back down to pre war, we're going to strike.
(15:01):
We're mad right now. There's enough of us who are
mad right now. We're gonna put a herding on you.
You better listen to us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And they also said, you know, we're smart enough to
know that they needed someone to kind of head this
thing up. They'd seen these unions and other strikes popping up,
and even with their little unformed brains, they knew that
they couldn't just be a bunch of aunts at this point.
They had to have some leadership and some organization, as
all great unions do. And they elected an eighteen year
(15:30):
old maybe twenty one. And this is where things get
interesting because contemporaneous accounts don't always get the names right,
so there's a lot of different versions of names and ages.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, but this kid was a Jewish boxer.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
His name was either Dave Simons or Simon or Simons
with a D or Simons with two m's and a D.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Right, but let's just call him Dave Simons.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, that's what most people call him. He was the
He was the lead dude, right the president. He was
the the second in command as far as I could tell.
And the one who actually is probably the most well
known out of all these guys was an eighteen year
old Italian American kid with red hair and a disabled eye.
He was either blind in the eye or it was
(16:14):
impaired in some way, shape or form, and as a result,
they called him Kid Blink. And his real name was
Lewis Biletti, Lewis Dalitt, Ballot, or Battel, depending on which
old timey newspaper you consult, But the one I've seen
most of all is Lewis Biletti. But everybody called him
Kid Blink. So those two were essentially in charge. And
then one other really important one who became increasingly important
(16:37):
as time went on, was a guy named race Car
Higgins from Brooklyn, and he's my hero. He's the one
I like the most.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, Livia just dug up some more fun names, which
is why we love Livia. Creutch Morris, not bad, no hunch, Maddox.
I can't imagine that kid had good posture, right, And
Muggsy McGee was another one. And I don't know if
you dug up and found anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
No, Muggsy McGee was the winner. I was like, there's
none that are better than that, So yeah, it's pretty good.
Keep it at Muggsy McGhee.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Would you mess with those kids.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
No, No, I wouldn't even be comfortable walking past them
under normal circumstances. When they're trying to sell me a paper,
I'd be like, just give me ten.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
So a couple of days later, this is July twentieth.
By this point, the newspapers had said, no, thank you,
We're going to keep our prices the same, and so
they sent their delegates out and told all the newsies
all over New York City stopped selling these two newspapers,
which is interesting. It wasn't like, hey, we're not going
(17:43):
to sell newspapers anymore. They were targeting these two in particular,
which is a little different than maybe your average strike.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah. They also said if you don't stop selling those newspapers,
you're going to get your face punched in, which was
a direct quote.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So these kids, these newsies stopped selling, and I get
the impression that they were, like you said, they were
selling other papers. But it seems like as the strike
kind of really started to settle in, like they were
basically striking most of the time, and they would kind
of patrol the streets of New York, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens
(18:20):
and where else? Uh Long Island maybe, Okay, where else?
What's the other one?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Give me one more queen up there in the North Harlem? Sure?
And what else?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Home of Yankee Stadium, Yankee Ville, the something the Bronx.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
There's a part named after it?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Is there? Really?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Oh the Bronx.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I never realized that was a fart. Always thought it
was another name for like a raspberry.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Uh No, I think you're right, but it sounds like
a fart.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Okay, all right, well you just changed it big time.
I think you improved it, frankly.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So all of these kids are walking around with from
what I saw, horseshoes, baseball bats, barrel staves, wheelspokes like
clubs essentially, and more like. If you if we catch
you selling the Journal of the Record other newsies, we're
going to beat you. We're going to give you a beating.
I don't care if you're an adult, I don't care
(19:18):
if you're a kid. Where you can't sell these anymore.
And a lot of people got beaten by these kids,
especially on day one and two.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Period.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, I realized it didn't sound like I was completing
that sentence, but that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's all right.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
There was a little little bit of police action at first,
but not much because the police had their hands full
with this trolley strike. But there were some contemporaneous accounts
in those or at least some newspapers back then, of
a handful of kids getting rounded up. Some went to
like a juvenile system I was called a juvenile asylum.
(19:57):
Others went to child protective agencies. But generally the cops
weren't like rounding up these boys right and left because
they had their hands bull already.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
But on the same day that a few of these
boys happened to be rounded up, which I guess was
probably the twenty eighth or twenty first, Yeah, Yeah, the
Evening Post said that a fourteen year old led a
crowd of boys marching through Manhattan. They're chanting like things
are escalating pretty fast around here. They were chanting, we
(20:25):
don't sell no worlds and journals. Hooray for to strike.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, there's a great anecdote. I love this so much.
On one of these marches. They went down Wall Street
and some of the brokerage employees leaned out of the
windows and through ticker tape. They gave them a ticker
tape parade.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And then even better, if it couldn't get any more
like old time in New York, one of the street cleaners,
who was like indubitably wearing a white suit with a
white pith helmet, turned on a fire hydrant to kind
of get rid of all the ticker tape and all
the little kids who are striking and beating people in
smoking cigarettes played in the fire hydrant.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, they probably had a coffee can to jangle that
that stream yep. That was such a a New York
movie thing. Like growing up in the suburbs of Georgia,
I always saw those movies. Was like, man, they really
got it made.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah. Yeah, playing in the fire.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Hydrant, oh absolutely, yeah, I've.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Never seen one. I've never been able to play in one.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Nah. We were country boys.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We had sprinklers, yeah exactly. And slipping slides.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, do you remember those. I used to get a.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Headache from slipping slide because you just hit the ground
so hard.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, it's because you were sliding on a napkin basically exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, okay, so I wasn't the only.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
One, No, no, no, they were very dangerous. In fact,
I'm not sure if they you can even still buy those?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh yeah, I wonder if you can or not.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
They would you know, with thet kids today, it would
have to be padded, right.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They worry about things like chronic traumatic encephaly and all
that s exactly. So where are we.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Chuck, Well, we're at the point where the strike is
getting bigger and like reaching all points of New York
and these kids are impressing everybody with the fact that
there were so many of them, that they were so
well organized. Like this thing started to spread to New
Jersey and Connecticut and Rhode Island, and they were like
(22:32):
lighting a fire under newsboys, you know in the northeast.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
And just like a couple of days, right, it would
spread far and wide out of New York City. Oh yeah,
So on Saturday, which was just a couple of days
after the strike started, there was more mob violence and
strike action. Another journal delivery wagon was tipped over. Anytime
they could get their hands on journal or world newspapers,
(22:58):
they would take them and destroy and something really significant
happened too at this Up to this point, it had
essentially just been the newsboys who were striking. Yeah, but
women who started who sold newspapers joined the strike too.
They joined them, and that was an enormous deal. That
(23:19):
was a big deal in a way, it kind of
legitimized it in the minds of other people.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
And you know, even though this is a couple of weeks,
it kind of went back and forth as far as
you know, public support, people getting on board and helping
out because as we'll see later, well let's just hold
on to that. Okay, some other people helped join the
strike too, but we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But in the meantime, the journal in the world were like,
this is actually starting to have an impact on our
bottom line already.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, big time. They were behind closed doors, very worried.
Advertising or advertisers were like, hey, no one's reading our paper,
so it's no one seeing our ads, Like I want
my money back. Yeah, And I think that was probably
the biggest problem right out of the gate, is not
only are they not selling papers, but now they're going
to be giving money. I don't know if they did,
(24:12):
but we're asked to give money back to advertisers.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, I can't give this hair cream away.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
And the public started to get behind it, and that
was the real danger was once in New York City
as like, no, no, no, these boys have a point.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, then I.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Don't care if you're Hurst or Pulitzer, you're kind of
sol Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
So there's a managing editor named Don Sites of the
World and he was one of Pulitzer's second in command,
and he said in a memo, the people seem to
be against us. They are encouraging the boys and tipping them.
So yeah, it kind of spread to just the rest
of New York like this this issue that was really
(24:51):
specific to this group of kids, Like people started to
sympathize with them and support them, and yeah, that's bad
news for the the management that's being struck against.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Absolutely one thing they tried, and there are all sorts
of little ways they tried to get their paper out there,
you know, over the course of this couple of weeks.
But they said, all right, well round up people that
don't have homes. These guys that are on the street
will get them to sell, you know, these adults to sell.
The paper had about one hundred men signed up to
scab and the next morning they didn't show up, so
(25:27):
they decided.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Not to I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I guess the newsboys got to them, but I don't
know if it was by threat or what, but they
decided not to do it.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Well. That was definitely like the two pronged approach that
the Strikers originally took in the first few days. It
was appealing to other, you know, people's general sense of
compassion and justice. And then also, I also have the
leg of an old dining room table in my other hand,
So which one do you want? You want the pamphlet
(25:56):
or you want the dining room table leg.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
That's right. Things really changed.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It was another turning point just a few days in
on the twenty fourth of July, when they were supposed
to meet with Hurst. The arbitration committee was all set
up and Hurst would not meet with them. So, you know,
that first rally was about three hundred kids. That night,
they had about two thousand at New Irving Hall, and
(26:21):
other accounts say it could have been five thousand and
eight thousand, just thousands of these young boys, which had
to be terrifying and had a one of the big guys,
the New York Times said he was one of the
larger boys. Nick Myers chaired that meeting. I guess as
some muscle, along with a couple of other muscles, right.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, Joe Bernstein and William Reese, also known as the
yellow barrel lemonade Man of Printing House Square.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
What does that even mean?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He sold lemonade out of a yellow barrel at Printing
House Square. Oh okay, that's why I sent you that
eBay of that lemonade.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Get it, cup, I get it now. Yeah, judhent me.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
If you grew up in the eighties, you, if you
saw this thing, a wave of nostalgia would wash over you.
But a lot of times at theme parks, yes, it
would sell lemonade in these yellow plastic barrels.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, and now I know why did you buy one?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
No? I just looked at it for a little while,
all right, But those guys William Reese and Joe Bernstein
a little while. Yeah, we're armed with what the New
York Times described as far reaching switches to keep everybody
in line during this meeting. And like you said, the
meeting was at New Irving Hall, near Union Square and
(27:38):
New Irving Hall, where this incredibly important Newsy strike meeting
was held. The one where they really kind of came
together and assembled is now Irving Plaza, owned by Live Nation,
and it's available for corporate events and it features an
upscale VIP lounge as well.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I went to a lot of great shows at Irving
Plaza back when I lived up there. Yeah, yeah, great menu.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
What'd you see?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Oh boy?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I saw a pavement there, I saw ween there, I
saw Colexico there. Okay, uh, those are the three that
come to mind.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That's good enough. You're three for three.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So yeah, Irving Plaza still there today.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And available for corporate events.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Race Track Higgins got up there, gave a great speech,
got everyone, you know, pretty pumped up.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Just stay strong, he said. This is another quote.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
He said, we can do it hands down and no
whipping if we keep our eyes skinned.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I guess that's our eyes peeled.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
That's what I'm taking it as.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, he had another quote too.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Do you want to read that one too?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Have I won the part of racetrack Higgins?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, because I've got another quote I want to say too.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
He also said the journal had offered two bucks a day,
which if they were making thirty cents a day, two
dollars a day. That's a huge, huge, paid increase at
the time.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
And uh he said that kid wouldn't take it because
the journal refused to contract and pay hospital expenses.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Because the kid was worried about getting beaten for selling
the papers.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I saw another. Well, it took me a minute. Actually
I read that three times before it sunk in what
he was saying.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No, I like it.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I didn't realize he was being facetious. Yes, I found
another quote in I think that Zin Education project like
the legacy of Howard Zinn. They had a great article
on this and they dug up a quote from a
kid who was talking to the Jersey City Evening Journal.
Did you see this one?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Mm hm?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He said, wee Zun's has got to stand by one
another in these times, cause if we don't, sure as hell,
we'll get it in the neck from them capitalists. I
love that kid. Can you imagine like an eight year
old saying that to a newspaper reporter. I love it.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
It's like that British complain about the ice cream prices.
Did you see her? No, it's a viral video going
around now. Very okay, She's outraged at the ice cream price.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
She said, ice cream prices are too damn high.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
No, you should watch it. It's pretty funny. Okay, Uh
did you ever watch that throat whistler yet?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Man, I even forward it to you again, you.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Guys, I know I appreciate it sitting in my inbox.
I've just been doing a lot. Man. I've done everything
from recycled old light fixtures to set up a drip
water system in the last like twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I'll know that you've watched it when you just call
me like crying with laughter.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So at this meeting, things are going good. They're getting
more organized than ever. But they also decided that they
needed to it was sort of being counterproductive. They thought
to go around town beating everybody senseless for selling papers.
So they said, all right, we need to stop this.
We're not going to beat up scabs anymore. Livia included
(31:02):
another quote sarcastic cause of oh sultanly and I love
how she spelled that. And they said, you know, this
is like you mentioned the flyers. This is when the
flyers really came out where we're going to take a
more above board approach. We're gonna put flyers in the
hands of the people of New York that say, hey,
just give us a chance to make a living, appeal
(31:24):
to their good nature and like you said, sense of justice,
and that seemed to really turn the tide of public
opinion on their side. Was when they were like, hey,
these poor kids, you know, they're trying to go about
this the right way.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Now.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, and there were scabs that were willing to step
up and do it, but they were kind of few
and far between, Like they had a really hard time
finding people who are willing to scab against these newsies.
They just kind of won the hearts and minds of
New Yorker, so they had all this support and not
just New York, I mean, like you said, it spread
throughout New Jersey, New England. There were other sympathetic strikes
(32:04):
that had inspired in Nashville, Tennessee, Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Like this all happened in just a few days time
at a time where there were there no one was
walking around with like a smartphone and had access to
social media. This was all spread generally by word of mouth,
and it spread so well that other kids from other
(32:28):
towns came to New York to coordinate with the leaders
of the New York City strike. That's what happened in
just a few days.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah, and also ironically being spread by other newspapers covering
the same Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's a really good point. You're right about that, because
I'm sure that's how a lot of them hurt the world.
And the Journal did not write a single.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Word about this, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, that was very strategic by William Hurst because as
we'll see, they the journal in the world were like
the everyday person's like champion, Like if you being screwed
over the world and the Journal were on your side,
and yet they wouldn't concede this this price reduction to
these striking newsboys, right, Yeah, so that was very strategic
(33:12):
not to say anything, whether in public or in articles.
But like you said, other papers around New York covered
it breathlessly.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah. Should we take a break, way you catch your breath?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 1 (33:26):
All right, we'll be right.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Back and we'll talk about sort of as this thing
goes along and then winds up in what happens right this.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
If you want to know, then you're in luck.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Just listen to SUFFUSI stuff. No, So, Chuck, I told
(33:59):
you that Racetrack Higgins was my favorite right out of
the top three Kid Blink, Dave Simon, and Racetrack Higgins.
The reason why he's my favorite is because out of
those three, he's the only one that wasn't a total
scale who accepted payoff to end their participation in leading
the strike by the two newspapers.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Uh yeah, is that the case?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
The only place, the only source that I saw that
didn't seem pretty much certain that these guys had both
been paid off, including contemporaneous quotes from Newsy's who believe
this was Livia.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Actually, all right, so what are we gonna do about Livia?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I think what she was doing was taking a really
like a cautious approach because it never has been proven,
but it does seem to be pretty much certain that
at the very least Kid Blink took a payoff.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So the idea is that Kid Blank and Dave Simon
were paid about four hundred bucks from those two companies
to end the strike.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
They denied it. Simon was like, go ahead, search.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Me, which you know that means nothing, just because he
has didn't have the money on him.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Right then he's like, Bill, never search my keyster, oh.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
God, and kid blank, you know, gave a pretty big
speech and it sounds like he was a pretty decent
public speaker, so they kind of he kind of convinced
everyone that it wasn't true in the moment. But yeah,
I think I agree with you. It seems like they
probably did, yeah pay off.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Because not only were their quotes from Newsy's later on
who one of them said, we would have gotten more,
but the leaders got bought off. I think there was
a quote from Don Sitz, the managing editor who at
right after this happened, said the backbone of the strike
has been broken, and they did it by targeting the leaders.
And then four hundred bucks that was a lot. Man,
(35:56):
That's like fifteen grand today to people who were like
making thirty cents a day at best.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's like forty plus years of work.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Right. It would have been really really tough to turn down.
The thing is is when you have like leaders who
are inspiring people and leading like people who are really
like coming from a just cause, you want them to
be untouchable, right, So I mean they're human, they were
kids still. I mean one of them was eighteen. The
other one was twenty one tops. If he wasn't eighteen.
(36:28):
This is more money than they probably ever would have
seen in one place in their life. I can't really
blame them for turning it down, but I'm still deeply
disappointed that they.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Didn't, because Kid blinked was your guy.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
He would have been, so race Car Higgins is my
guy because he didn't get bought off.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Right, Oh that's right. I forgot it was race Car Higgins.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So Simon, regardless of whether or not he took money,
even though we think he did, he resigned as president.
He said, I'm going to continue to support the strike.
Supposedly was elected treasurer, which would be a really weird
thing to do someone who just accepted a payout. But
this is the point where things, you know, paper started
(37:08):
reporting all kinds of different stuff about who was leading
at the time. The New York Times said it was
a kid named Morris Cohen. The son had two different
stories that contradicted one another. One said that they voted
two kids in to replace Simon and Kid blink name
yack Egg and Niny.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
If your kids hanging out with a kid named niney
or yack Egg, you need to move.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
You need to move very quickly. Yack egg. That's so weird.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
It is the same paper talked about a different meeting
on the same day on the twenty eight with a
kid named Young Monis as the chief that replaced Blink.
And then the time said, no, it's an executive committee
basically from the different delegates that are running it. And
we can tell is there wasn't a real firm leader
(38:03):
at this point, kind of like for what one reason
is what you talked about was they wanted someone that
was untouchable and they didn't know if they could trust anyone.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Right, and so this was I mean that don sits
quote about the backbone being broken turned out to be
pretty true. Like after those two left their positions of leadership,
the strike just kind of it just got a little
chaotic and disassembled for a couple of days at least.
It was just kind of chaotic, and yet they still
(38:31):
continued on. They just did it in a decentralized way.
And then I think on twenty seventh of July Thursday,
the thing's been going on for a week now, kid Blink,
after having talked his way out of like being beaten
within an inch of his life for accepting a payoff
from the journal. In the Wreck or the World, he
(38:54):
shows up on the street with a new suit and
flashing a bunch of bills. Yeah, and depending on the
account you read, he was either beaten or was about
to be beaten when the cops arrested him, potentially for
his own protection, and he was taken to jail. But
that's the like, Okay, maybe Dave Simon's did or didn't.
I think his behavior made it seem very fishy that, Yeah,
(39:16):
so I suspect him Kid Blink. It's like it's just
a given, you know, if that's true, that's the that's
the key. Like, it's entirely possible that that was rumor
they got printed in a newspaper that today we look
back and we're like, oh, it was in the newspaper,
so it must be true. It's possible that was just
totally a rumor or something like that. But I still
(39:37):
say kid Blink is guilty, guilty, guilty.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It was around the same time that there was a
compromise offered by the the newspapers. They went to the
union committee and said, hey, what if we go down
to fifty five cents? The union turned that down. This
is when they started to get the support I mentioned.
Some other people kind of joined in later, you know,
a whole week later, And these were the news stands.
(40:03):
The people who ran the newsstands said all right, we're
not gonna sell those papers anymore. Maybe we'll keep some
here out of you, and if you really really want one,
we'll quietly sell it to you. But they weren't pushing
the world in the journal at newsstands.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Right, which is almost as bad as just not carrying
it at all. Yeah, but that was a huge deal.
I mean, just getting like other strikers or other newspaper
sellers like on the street to join them was a
big deal. Getting the news stands to actually join was
an enormous coup. And under this new kind of like
(40:37):
larger strike, the newsboys organized. They reorganized, I guess I
should say, in a much more like uniform, coherent way,
under kind of the leadership of a couple of the
adults that own newsstands and apparently seemed to steer everything
in a very honest direction.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, there was a newstand owner name Abraham Lippmann who said,
all right, why don't you guys adult elect an adult. Here,
there are adult news newsies. And here's a guy. His
name's James Neil. He's fifty years old. I know, it
seems a little it seems a little.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Weird that he that he's still alive.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
But elect him as president you might get a little further.
They did racetrack Higgins, your boy became vice president, and
Neil said, you know, the adult in the room said,
all right, we need to get really organized. We need
to have badges, we need to get together with other
labor organizations. We need to district up and have delegates
(41:44):
and really get this thing going. But it was a
little too little, too late at this point because at
this point these kids needed the money. I mean they
were they were doing this because they were didn't have
much in the way of means, and so to be
out of work for a week in a row was
a big deal. And so their stamina sort of started
(42:05):
to wane.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, and for a while they had one kid said
that they ain't got no wife's or families, so they
could take the pressure. But you know, a week of
not making any money, when you're relying on thirty cents
a day, that's a big deal. So it makes sense
that the strike just kind of started to peter out
a little bit. But it does make you wonder how
(42:28):
far it would have gotten. Had they organized like that
from day one, that would have been amazing.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
And I imagine there was some parental pressure because I
think a lot of this a lot of times if
these kids weren't just on their own a lot. You know,
most of this money went back to the family, right,
and so you know mom and dad, you would think
at some point was like, hey, we need this thirty cents, right,
we need three cans of soup.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And fifty pounds of potatoes.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So on I guess Monday, July thirty first is it
was the death knell of the strike. One of the
groups of newstands said, this strike's a failure. They passed
a resolution just seems really mean, and they're like, we're
not supporting us any longer. That almost was a signal
(43:17):
to everybody else from what I can tell that it
was almost kind of okay to start selling the journal
in the world again. And on August first, the New
York strike officially was over.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, And the one big thing we didn't mention was
that they did accept an offer finally.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Had kind of an important point.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
They accepted the offer of sixty cents along with the
caveat that they could return unsold copies for a full refund,
And that seemed like you're dead on the money on
what you said at the beginning, like that was a
big deal. If they let's say, you sell one hundred
papers during wartime and you go out and you're like
a man, I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna
(43:59):
get another bundle, and you sell ten newspapers out of
that bundle of one hundred, then that'll bury you as
a business. So being able to return those they saw
it as a big win at least, or maybe they
just tried to make themselves feel better and say it
was a big win. But it seems to me like
being able to get refunds for unsold papers was a
(44:19):
pretty big deal.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
It seems like a big win to me for sure.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, And because yeah, you've got to sell those papers.
They are not any good tomorrow. It's literally yesterday's news.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
You know, that's right.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
If you hadn't figured that out right now, I wanted
to make sure it was spelled out so that union
though it might seem like wow, they unionized like two
days before the strike ended. What a waste. That's not
at all correct. This union continued on and grew more
and more powerful and more and more disciplined too, And
as other strikes kind of came up over the years,
(44:57):
they would support them, and they had some a decent
amount of cloud Actually.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, so good for them.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Wouldn't that be funny if we just ended the show
without mentioning Christian.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Bale, Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
People would lose their minds. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Of course, Disney made a movie about this. It was
a musical called Newsies nineteen ninety two, and young Christian
Bale played a fictional character inspired you know by real people,
but a fictional guy named Jack Kelly. But there is
a character named Blink and a character named Race, so they,
(45:33):
you know, they definitely took.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
It.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Took some real people, made them slightly fictionalized, and then
made them sing.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, And neither Christian Bale nor any of the other
stars had any acting or any singing and dancing experience.
And it read like oral history about the flop that
was Newsi's when it came out in theaters and one
of the one of the leads was like, Yeah, if
you watch closely for those dance numbers, they'll suddenly either
like zoom way out or pan in really closely, so
(46:03):
you can't actually see us dancing. We'll be like in
a crowd of other people, or else it'll be like
an extreme close up on us. Because they weren't any good,
and I think even whether they had been good or
not was a moot point. It was a weird gamble
that Disney took. Yeah, introducing live action musicals that were
not at all in fashion at the time and hadn't
(46:24):
been for a couple decades by then. Jeffrey Katzenberg was like,
we're bringing them back, and America said, no, you're not.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
And he said, and we're going to do it in
the form of a newspaper delivery boy strike exactly.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Christian Bill survived.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
He did, and you know, the movie ended up being
a pretty big cult hit. Yeah, I've never seen it,
of you, No, I didn't. I watch parts of it today.
But it was a Broadway show after that as well.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, and it won like two Tony's, so they in
its format as a Broadway show. They rewrote some of
the songs and stuff. It did very well. It just
was not meant to be a movie. Yeah, that's it
for newsies everybody, and the newsies strike in particular.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
If you want to know more about that kind of thing,
go watch newsies and see what you think. Or go
to Broadway and see newsies and see what you think,
and then let us know what you think. And in
the meantime, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
I'm going to call this critically email that just came in. Okay,
we like to read these from time to time.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Sure not just read emails and praise Hey, guys, listen
every day. There's nothing new. I listen to the archives.
I would like to ask you guys to refrain from laughing, chuckling, chortling, giggling,
and so on. It's very annoying you do this incessantly.
Just get serious about the subject. Are you guys comedians
or are you trying to inform the public?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Wow, I think this guy's new. It might not be
around for very long.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Well no, he said he listens every day.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
For like the last two days.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
I maybe it's a hate listen.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I don't know another thing. I'd like to call you
guys out on here. I was listening to the archives,
and the way you guys supported the Black Panther Party
was nothing less than treason. Those were communists, anarchists, Marxists
with guns. You guys should have explained the threat to
our democracy those criminals pose. Maybe they weren't as big
a threat as j Edgar Hoover thought, but they were
(48:22):
pretty darn close. You guys are way too liberal and
doing what you do. You shouldn't show your bias. Stop
the laughing, because you two are more often not funny.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
I love this guy.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Okay, it's probably for the best. Well, thanks a lot, Anonymous.
We do love to get criticized sometimes and it's a
legitimate bone you pick there, But I'm afraid we're probably
not going to change the way that we do the show.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
That's a very kind way of responding.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
If you want to be like Anonymous and get in
touch to this and be like stop doing this, so
we can be like, no, we're not going to stop
doing that. We love those. You can wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
should Know. Extra extra read all about it. Stuff you
Should Know. Release is an episode on the Newsy strike
of eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Oh boy, I knew you were going to say something
like that, by the way.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah I did too, but I didn't know what that's
what it turned out to be.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Yeah, that's the beauty of you. Thanks man, never know
what you're gonna get.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I appreciate you appreciating me. So apparently we're way, way,
way behind the curve because stuff you missed in history
class did an episode on this, like all the way
back in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Oh yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's time we did this, I guess one hundred something
years on from the actual strike. Yes, it needs to
be covered by us.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
Yeah, so we can. Are we copying them now if
it's fourteen years later or whatever?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah? Yeah, we just go on the stuff you missed
in history class site and figure out new topics.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Geez, who was the host back then?
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Who knows? It was such a rotating cast at that point.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Who yeah, I mean this was before Tracy and Holly.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, shout out Tracy and Holly keeping it on lockdown
a stuff you missed in history class for years now.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
That's right. They got the reins and they were like mine, Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
The horse is like, stop jerking me around.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
So you mentioned one hundred plus years or something, this
was a If you're wondering what a news he is,
it was a paper delivery person, usually a paper boy
or a newsboy, although we will see there were other
people delivering papers in New York City. Yeah, and they
went on strike in eighteen ninety nine. A bunch of boys,
(02:00):
generally boys got together. We're like, hey, we're tired of
making thirty cents a day. We want to make like
fifty cents a day.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, And thirty cents a day sounds like a very
small amount. It actually was about eleven dollars in today's money,
which is still a pretty small amount to survive in
New York City. And a lot of those newsboys, it
turns out, were just barely surviving. Like a lot of
them were pretty much every single one of them was
(02:29):
working class tops.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I don't think there was any middle class at the time,
and there certainly weren't any like aristocratic newsboys, so like
you were working class at best, if you even had
a home, if you were not an orphan, if you
were not living on the streets. Yeah, and almost all
of them were at the time, like very marginalized communities
(02:53):
like Irish kids, Jewish kids, Black kids like it. It
was a it was a neat kind of like cross
section of America that or New York at least at
the time that had been kind of thrown together, put
together at this job. And there was a lot of
them doing it to something like ten to fifteen thousand,
depending on who you asked at what decade. But from
(03:15):
what I saw, Olivia helped us with this, and I
think she said something like fifteen thousand at the time
of the strike we're talking about, which is eighteen ninety nine.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Yeah, And most of these kids were probably tweens and teens,
you know, some of them were as young as six
and seven years old. Of course, some of them were
late teenagers, even reports of some of them being like
twenty twenty one years old. When it came to sort
of leading these organization or leading these meetings in these
(03:46):
this strike. But they were generally teens and tweens. And
like I said, they weren't all boys. There were some girls,
there were some married women, there were some disabled adults.
Really mostly boys though, and these were all regardless of
who it was, these were all people that, like you said,
we're looking to you know, say, you know, I made
(04:07):
thirty cents today, I'll give twenty five cents to my family,
and I'll get a box of cookies for a nickel.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
And oh, you could buy a car for a nickel
back then.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I actually did some because spending powers different than you know,
just what would that be in today's dollars? And I
did look up in nineteen hundred what you could get
for some of this for like, you know, ten to
thirty cents.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Oh cool, Well, a box of cookies was a nickel.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Okay, so the car thing was wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Right, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
A box of cereal was a dime, can of Campbell's
soup was a dime. A package of Quaker oats was
a dime. Seven pounds of potatoes was a dime. Wow,
literally wow. And you could get a lot of steak too.
Meat Meat wasn't as expensive as you might think. So
it was kind of weird that way, But that just
kind of shows you a little bit of what thirty
(05:03):
cents a day would buy you. And you know, the
way these boys were doing it. They were basically free agents.
They didn't work for the newspaper or work for a company.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
They would go out.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
And hustle on their own, buy these bundles of newspapers,
like one hundred newspapers, and then sell them at a markup.
So generally, like, hey, what was the original price that
they were charging.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Fifty cents per bundle of one hundred is what the
papers charged the newsboys at first.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
Yeah, and they would sell them for generally a penny apiece,
but sometimes mark them up to two or three cents.
But none of that adds up to thirty cents, So
I'm trying to reckon with all that.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
I think that they didn't necessarily make it through the
entire bundle in a day h They might have some
left over and they had to eat that.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Cost totally makes sense, Josh, jeez.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
That's my take. That's what I got from it.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
No, I think you're right, because that that reckons with
a little thing here at the end as far as
what the newspapers offered them.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right exactly. And so these kids would work sun up
to sundown. They would be on the street shouting out
the headlines all day long selling papers. I read a
contemporary account who talked about how like when you walk
down the street, they run up to you and like
essentially make you buy their newspaper. And it was a
(06:28):
it was like a hardscrabble life. Like the impression that
we have of it is like these tough little kids
who all smoked cigarettes and cigars and like gambled and
and you know, playing craps and stuff like that. Like
that was real. It was even worse than that, like
we have almost a romanticized version of it. It was
that plus grittier. Is the life that these kids were living,
(06:50):
hustling on the street selling newspapers every day and in
different places around the country. Chok, they had like rules,
but New York was not one of those places.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
When you say contemporary contemporaneous, sire. Oh, I just wondered
if you've since it's a thing now with the.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Show, I've you just grabbed me by the ankle and
dragged me back, and I fell on my face as
I was pulled down. But other than that, it's good.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
What I was hoping you would say is like, no,
it was contempts, it was contemporary. It was contemporary. Jeez,
Now I'm confused. Like I read it in Vice last week,
it's about the news voice strike. Shut up, Chuck, Okay,
So what is it?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Contemporaneous would be what I meant to say in contemporaries today.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, I'm so sick of this. I am too dumb,
stupid words.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
I'm just gonna say I read an account from the
time that I'm speaking of.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Oh that's nice. You know there's a word for that. Yeah,
but I don't know what it is, all right, So
let's get into this.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You said other cities were a little more organ eyes
with rules and like, hey, you can only work so
many hours, and maybe you have to be a part
of an actual organization or something, and you got to
wear a uniform.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
New York was a wild West.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
This was a time when William Randolph Hurst and Joseph
Pulitzer were really running the show with their big time papers,
The New York World. Well, I guess I should read
it the opposite way. The New York Journal in the
New York World, respectively. And so the Spanish American War
comes along in April of eighteen ninety eight, and news
(08:34):
was hotter than ever. Everyone wanted to get their hands
on a newspaper. So they said, hey, this is a
good chance to raise the price on these newsies, on
these newsboys to sixty cents from fifty cents, because covering
wars is expensive.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
This will also help us cover this war.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yeah, it was a legitimate price increase in the World
and the Journal were not the only papers that that
to pay for their rather expensive coverage of the war.
And the newsboys at the time were like, this is fine.
It makes sense because we're selling so many more papers
than we normally do. We're actually probably a little better
(09:13):
off even at the sixty cent bundle price point.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Yeah, because we're selling out exactly.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
They were selling out, maybe selling multiple bundles in a day,
who knows. But the problem came when the Spanish American
War ended and other papers returned to their As the
circulation went down, the other papers went to their pre
war prices per bundle, but the Journal and the World
(09:41):
did not, and that really stuck under these little newsboys crawl.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
And this gets very colorful here pretty soon.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
So my god, some of these quotes are just amazing.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Sort of strap in, we also have to set up
sort of the time in which this took place. In
the late eighteen hundreds, there were it was just a strike,
heavy union heavy time. There was a trolley strike going
on in Brooklyn and Manhattan that even though the adults
were the trolley drivers, a lot of these Newsy's parents
maybe worked in that field or they were sympathetic. So
(10:15):
these kids got involved and they were you know, throwing
rocks at scab drivers and stuff like that, so you know,
they knew what striking was all about and sort of
the strong arm version of how to go about a strike.
And there were also other newsboy strikes before this, like
in the few years proceeding in Boston, Dallas, and Detroit.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So this strike of eighteen ninety nine, like if you
type in newsboy strike, all you're going to get back
on the internet is the strike of eighteen ninety nine. Yeah,
so significant, and the reason that it differentiated itself from
other strikes was in scope, in depth, in organization, like
in just a few days, as we'll see, like these
(10:58):
kids went from a bunch of ragtag, you know, rough
and tumble seven year olds to forming like a union
and like defending themselves in the face of being run
over by greedy fat cats essentially.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Yeah, I mean it's just a couple of weeks, really.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, the whole thing was less than fourteen days.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
And they also led Boston, Detroit, in Dallas and Nicknamery.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Yeah they did. Yeah. The kids in New York definitely
had the nicknames down.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
All Right, I think it's a pretty good setup.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
You know, Chuck, I've got to agree with you as
well on your take on the setup.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Okay, all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk
about the literal tipping point.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Right if you want to know, then you're in luck
just to suffuse.
Speaker 4 (11:51):
Stuffuge No, all right, we mentioned a literal tipping point,
and that's a bit of a stupid pun.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Because on July eighteenth of eighteen ninety nine, it was
a Tuesday. There were some newsboys in Queen's and Long
Island City that found out that one of the journal
delivery people that brought the bundles to these guys was
stealing papers from their bundles and shorting them on each bundle.
And they were like this is not going to stay
(12:29):
in my friend And they literally tipped over his wagon,
chased them off, and stole the papers. And this was
in screenwriting terms, this would be called the inciting incident.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Right, This is where the gun is introduced an act one.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Sure you've been going to that one a lot lately,
but it's the only one I know. I love it.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Think about it though, like a bunch of little kids
tipped over a wagon, chased away the adult driver, and
stole a bunch of papers. Like that was what they did.
And that's a really great indicator, or I guess example
of what a bunch of little kids can do if
you put enough of them together and tick them all
off at the same time. It's like ants, Like how
(13:11):
ants can just do all sorts of amazing things if
they collectively combine their strength. Same thing with seven to
fifteen year olds.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, other people have said it before me, but there
is no scarier group of humans on earth than a
group of young boys.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yes, and I imagine all of these kids too. All
of these boys are just like fifteen thousand Scott Farcas
and Grover Gills. That's who I imagine the two bad
kids from a Christmas story.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
Absolutely, and their brains aren't fully formed yet, so they're
not capable of making like rational decisions. And there's a
mob mentality. And I'm just telling you, if you're on
the streets and you see a group of like nine
teenage boys run in the other.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Direction, yeah, that's great, that's great advice.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
And Antoni, it's not me, it's well known fact.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Okay, I'm not disputing it at all.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
Yeah, especially you. You better get out of there, my friend.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I'm pretty pretty bad at fighting.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Me too, because actually I don't know. I've never been
at a fight.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I can tell you firsthand that I'm not all right.
So that tipping point you said, which, by the way,
I don't think was a bad pun. I think it
was quite apt. Hey, thanks, that kind of like ignited
something in these newsies, like they were they had already
been bristling for a little while under that rate hike
that they knew was unfair, that they were really upset
at the world and the journal about and it was
(14:41):
enough to kind of like light a fire under a
few hundred of them at least, who gathered in City
Hall Park outside of City Hall, of all places, about
three hundred of them rallied and basically said, Journal World,
if you guys don't bring your your bundle price per
bundle back down to pre war, we're going to strike.
(15:01):
We're mad right now. There's enough of us who are
mad right now. We're gonna put a herding on you.
You better listen to us.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
And they also said, you know, we're smart enough to
know that they needed someone to kind of head this
thing up. They'd seen these unions and other strikes popping up,
and even with their little unformed brains, they knew that
they couldn't just be a bunch of aunts at this point.
They had to have some leadership and some organization, as
all great unions do. And they elected an eighteen year
(15:30):
old maybe twenty one. And this is where things get
interesting because contemporaneous accounts don't always get the names right,
so there's a lot of different versions of names and ages.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, but this kid was a Jewish boxer.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
His name was either Dave Simons or Simon or Simons
with a D or Simons with two m's and a D.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Right, but let's just call him Dave Simons.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
Yeah, that's what most people call him. He was the
He was the lead dude, right the president. He was
the the second in command as far as I could tell.
And the one who actually is probably the most well
known out of all these guys was an eighteen year
old Italian American kid with red hair and a disabled eye.
He was either blind in the eye or it was
(16:14):
impaired in some way, shape or form, and as a result,
they called him Kid Blink. And his real name was
Lewis Biletti, Lewis Dalitt, Ballot, or Battel, depending on which
old timey newspaper you consult, But the one I've seen
most of all is Lewis Biletti. But everybody called him
Kid Blink. So those two were essentially in charge. And
then one other really important one who became increasingly important
(16:37):
as time went on, was a guy named race Car
Higgins from Brooklyn, and he's my hero. He's the one
I like the most.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah, Livia just dug up some more fun names, which
is why we love Livia. Creutch Morris, not bad, no hunch, Maddox.
I can't imagine that kid had good posture, right, And
Muggsy McGee was another one. And I don't know if
you dug up and found anymore.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
No, Muggsy McGee was the winner. I was like, there's
none that are better than that, So yeah, it's pretty good.
Keep it at Muggsy McGhee.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Would you mess with those kids.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
No, No, I wouldn't even be comfortable walking past them
under normal circumstances. When they're trying to sell me a paper,
I'd be like, just give me ten.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
So a couple of days later, this is July twentieth.
By this point, the newspapers had said, no, thank you,
We're going to keep our prices the same, and so
they sent their delegates out and told all the newsies
all over New York City stopped selling these two newspapers,
which is interesting. It wasn't like, hey, we're not going
(17:43):
to sell newspapers anymore. They were targeting these two in particular,
which is a little different than maybe your average strike.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah. They also said if you don't stop selling those newspapers,
you're going to get your face punched in, which was
a direct quote.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
So these kids, these newsies stopped selling, and I get
the impression that they were, like you said, they were
selling other papers. But it seems like as the strike
kind of really started to settle in, like they were
basically striking most of the time, and they would kind
of patrol the streets of New York, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens
(18:20):
and where else? Uh Long Island maybe, Okay, where else?
What's the other one?
Speaker 1 (18:26):
Give me one more queen up there in the North Harlem? Sure?
And what else?
Speaker 3 (18:31):
Home of Yankee Stadium, Yankee Ville, the something the Bronx.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
There's a part named after it?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Is there? Really?
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Oh the Bronx.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
I never realized that was a fart. Always thought it
was another name for like a raspberry.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Uh No, I think you're right, but it sounds like
a fart.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Okay, all right, well you just changed it big time.
I think you improved it, frankly.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
So all of these kids are walking around with from
what I saw, horseshoes, baseball bats, barrel staves, wheelspokes like
clubs essentially, and more like. If you if we catch
you selling the Journal of the Record other newsies, we're
going to beat you. We're going to give you a beating.
I don't care if you're an adult, I don't care
(19:18):
if you're a kid. Where you can't sell these anymore.
And a lot of people got beaten by these kids,
especially on day one and two.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Period.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, I realized it didn't sound like I was completing
that sentence, but that was it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
That's all right.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
There was a little little bit of police action at first,
but not much because the police had their hands full
with this trolley strike. But there were some contemporaneous accounts
in those or at least some newspapers back then, of
a handful of kids getting rounded up. Some went to
like a juvenile system I was called a juvenile asylum.
(19:57):
Others went to child protective agencies. But generally the cops
weren't like rounding up these boys right and left because
they had their hands bull already.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
But on the same day that a few of these
boys happened to be rounded up, which I guess was
probably the twenty eighth or twenty first, Yeah, Yeah, the
Evening Post said that a fourteen year old led a
crowd of boys marching through Manhattan. They're chanting like things
are escalating pretty fast around here. They were chanting, we
(20:25):
don't sell no worlds and journals. Hooray for to strike.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
Yeah, there's a great anecdote. I love this so much.
On one of these marches. They went down Wall Street
and some of the brokerage employees leaned out of the
windows and through ticker tape. They gave them a ticker
tape parade.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And then even better, if it couldn't get any more
like old time in New York, one of the street cleaners,
who was like indubitably wearing a white suit with a
white pith helmet, turned on a fire hydrant to kind
of get rid of all the ticker tape and all
the little kids who are striking and beating people in
smoking cigarettes played in the fire hydrant.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Yeah, they probably had a coffee can to jangle that
that stream yep. That was such a a New York
movie thing. Like growing up in the suburbs of Georgia,
I always saw those movies. Was like, man, they really
got it made.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Yeah. Yeah, playing in the fire.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Hydrant, oh absolutely, yeah, I've.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Never seen one. I've never been able to play in one.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Nah. We were country boys.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We had sprinklers, yeah exactly. And slipping slides.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah, do you remember those. I used to get a.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Headache from slipping slide because you just hit the ground
so hard.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, it's because you were sliding on a napkin basically exactly.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Yeah, okay, so I wasn't the only.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
One, No, no, no, they were very dangerous. In fact,
I'm not sure if they you can even still buy those?
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Oh yeah, I wonder if you can or not.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
They would you know, with thet kids today, it would
have to be padded, right.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
They worry about things like chronic traumatic encephaly and all
that s exactly. So where are we.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
Chuck, Well, we're at the point where the strike is
getting bigger and like reaching all points of New York
and these kids are impressing everybody with the fact that
there were so many of them, that they were so
well organized. Like this thing started to spread to New
Jersey and Connecticut and Rhode Island, and they were like
(22:32):
lighting a fire under newsboys, you know in the northeast.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
And just like a couple of days, right, it would
spread far and wide out of New York City. Oh yeah,
So on Saturday, which was just a couple of days
after the strike started, there was more mob violence and
strike action. Another journal delivery wagon was tipped over. Anytime
they could get their hands on journal or world newspapers,
(22:58):
they would take them and destroy and something really significant
happened too at this Up to this point, it had
essentially just been the newsboys who were striking. Yeah, but
women who started who sold newspapers joined the strike too.
They joined them, and that was an enormous deal. That
(23:19):
was a big deal in a way, it kind of
legitimized it in the minds of other people.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Oh absolutely.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
And you know, even though this is a couple of weeks,
it kind of went back and forth as far as
you know, public support, people getting on board and helping
out because as we'll see later, well let's just hold
on to that. Okay, some other people helped join the
strike too, but we'll get to that later.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But in the meantime, the journal in the world were like,
this is actually starting to have an impact on our
bottom line already.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, yeah, big time. They were behind closed doors, very worried.
Advertising or advertisers were like, hey, no one's reading our paper,
so it's no one seeing our ads, Like I want
my money back. Yeah, And I think that was probably
the biggest problem right out of the gate, is not
only are they not selling papers, but now they're going
to be giving money. I don't know if they did,
(24:12):
but we're asked to give money back to advertisers.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, I can't give this hair cream away.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
And the public started to get behind it, and that
was the real danger was once in New York City
as like, no, no, no, these boys have a point.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Yeah, then I.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
Don't care if you're Hurst or Pulitzer, you're kind of
sol Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
So there's a managing editor named Don Sites of the
World and he was one of Pulitzer's second in command,
and he said in a memo, the people seem to
be against us. They are encouraging the boys and tipping them.
So yeah, it kind of spread to just the rest
of New York like this this issue that was really
(24:51):
specific to this group of kids, Like people started to
sympathize with them and support them, and yeah, that's bad
news for the the management that's being struck against.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Absolutely one thing they tried, and there are all sorts
of little ways they tried to get their paper out there,
you know, over the course of this couple of weeks.
But they said, all right, well round up people that
don't have homes. These guys that are on the street
will get them to sell, you know, these adults to sell.
The paper had about one hundred men signed up to
scab and the next morning they didn't show up, so
(25:27):
they decided.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Not to I don't know.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
I guess the newsboys got to them, but I don't
know if it was by threat or what, but they
decided not to do it.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Well. That was definitely like the two pronged approach that
the Strikers originally took in the first few days. It
was appealing to other, you know, people's general sense of
compassion and justice. And then also, I also have the
leg of an old dining room table in my other hand,
So which one do you want? You want the pamphlet
(25:56):
or you want the dining room table leg.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
That's right. Things really changed.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It was another turning point just a few days in
on the twenty fourth of July, when they were supposed
to meet with Hurst. The arbitration committee was all set
up and Hurst would not meet with them. So, you know,
that first rally was about three hundred kids. That night,
they had about two thousand at New Irving Hall, and
(26:21):
other accounts say it could have been five thousand and
eight thousand, just thousands of these young boys, which had
to be terrifying and had a one of the big guys,
the New York Times said he was one of the
larger boys. Nick Myers chaired that meeting. I guess as
some muscle, along with a couple of other muscles, right.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, Joe Bernstein and William Reese, also known as the
yellow barrel lemonade Man of Printing House Square.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
What does that even mean?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
He sold lemonade out of a yellow barrel at Printing
House Square. Oh okay, that's why I sent you that
eBay of that lemonade.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Get it, cup, I get it now. Yeah, judhent me.
Speaker 3 (27:01):
If you grew up in the eighties, you, if you
saw this thing, a wave of nostalgia would wash over you.
But a lot of times at theme parks, yes, it
would sell lemonade in these yellow plastic barrels.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, and now I know why did you buy one?
Speaker 2 (27:17):
No? I just looked at it for a little while,
all right, But those guys William Reese and Joe Bernstein
a little while. Yeah, we're armed with what the New
York Times described as far reaching switches to keep everybody
in line during this meeting. And like you said, the
meeting was at New Irving Hall, near Union Square and
(27:38):
New Irving Hall, where this incredibly important Newsy strike meeting
was held. The one where they really kind of came
together and assembled is now Irving Plaza, owned by Live Nation,
and it's available for corporate events and it features an
upscale VIP lounge as well.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I went to a lot of great shows at Irving
Plaza back when I lived up there. Yeah, yeah, great menu.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
What'd you see?
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Oh boy?
Speaker 3 (28:05):
I saw a pavement there, I saw ween there, I
saw Colexico there. Okay, uh, those are the three that
come to mind.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
That's good enough. You're three for three.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
So yeah, Irving Plaza still there today.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
And available for corporate events.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Race Track Higgins got up there, gave a great speech,
got everyone, you know, pretty pumped up.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Just stay strong, he said. This is another quote.
Speaker 3 (28:32):
He said, we can do it hands down and no
whipping if we keep our eyes skinned.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
I guess that's our eyes peeled.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
That's what I'm taking it as.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
Yeah, he had another quote too.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Do you want to read that one too?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Have I won the part of racetrack Higgins?
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, because I've got another quote I want to say too.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
All right.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
He also said the journal had offered two bucks a day,
which if they were making thirty cents a day, two
dollars a day. That's a huge, huge, paid increase at
the time.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
And uh he said that kid wouldn't take it because
the journal refused to contract and pay hospital expenses.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Because the kid was worried about getting beaten for selling
the papers.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
I saw another. Well, it took me a minute. Actually
I read that three times before it sunk in what
he was saying.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
No, I like it.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
I didn't realize he was being facetious. Yes, I found
another quote in I think that Zin Education project like
the legacy of Howard Zinn. They had a great article
on this and they dug up a quote from a
kid who was talking to the Jersey City Evening Journal.
Did you see this one?
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Mm hm?
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He said, wee Zun's has got to stand by one
another in these times, cause if we don't, sure as hell,
we'll get it in the neck from them capitalists. I
love that kid. Can you imagine like an eight year
old saying that to a newspaper reporter. I love it.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
It's like that British complain about the ice cream prices.
Did you see her? No, it's a viral video going
around now. Very okay, She's outraged at the ice cream price.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
She said, ice cream prices are too damn high.
Speaker 1 (30:12):
No, you should watch it. It's pretty funny. Okay, Uh
did you ever watch that throat whistler yet?
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Man, I even forward it to you again, you.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Guys, I know I appreciate it sitting in my inbox.
I've just been doing a lot. Man. I've done everything
from recycled old light fixtures to set up a drip
water system in the last like twenty four hours.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
I'll know that you've watched it when you just call
me like crying with laughter.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
So at this meeting, things are going good. They're getting
more organized than ever. But they also decided that they
needed to it was sort of being counterproductive. They thought
to go around town beating everybody senseless for selling papers.
So they said, all right, we need to stop this.
We're not going to beat up scabs anymore. Livia included
(31:02):
another quote sarcastic cause of oh sultanly and I love
how she spelled that. And they said, you know, this
is like you mentioned the flyers. This is when the
flyers really came out where we're going to take a
more above board approach. We're gonna put flyers in the
hands of the people of New York that say, hey,
just give us a chance to make a living, appeal
(31:24):
to their good nature and like you said, sense of justice,
and that seemed to really turn the tide of public
opinion on their side. Was when they were like, hey,
these poor kids, you know, they're trying to go about
this the right way.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Now.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Yeah, and there were scabs that were willing to step
up and do it, but they were kind of few
and far between, Like they had a really hard time
finding people who are willing to scab against these newsies.
They just kind of won the hearts and minds of
New Yorker, so they had all this support and not
just New York, I mean, like you said, it spread
throughout New Jersey, New England. There were other sympathetic strikes
(32:04):
that had inspired in Nashville, Tennessee, Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio.
Like this all happened in just a few days time
at a time where there were there no one was
walking around with like a smartphone and had access to
social media. This was all spread generally by word of mouth,
and it spread so well that other kids from other
(32:28):
towns came to New York to coordinate with the leaders
of the New York City strike. That's what happened in
just a few days.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah, and also ironically being spread by other newspapers covering
the same Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
That's a really good point. You're right about that, because
I'm sure that's how a lot of them hurt the world.
And the Journal did not write a single.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Word about this, I imagine.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, that was very strategic by William Hurst because as
we'll see, they the journal in the world were like
the everyday person's like champion, Like if you being screwed
over the world and the Journal were on your side,
and yet they wouldn't concede this this price reduction to
these striking newsboys, right, Yeah, so that was very strategic
(33:12):
not to say anything, whether in public or in articles.
But like you said, other papers around New York covered
it breathlessly.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah. Should we take a break, way you catch your breath?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, thank you?
Speaker 1 (33:26):
All right, we'll be right.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Back and we'll talk about sort of as this thing
goes along and then winds up in what happens right this.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
If you want to know, then you're in luck.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Just listen to SUFFUSI stuff. No, So, Chuck, I told
(33:59):
you that Racetrack Higgins was my favorite right out of
the top three Kid Blink, Dave Simon, and Racetrack Higgins.
The reason why he's my favorite is because out of
those three, he's the only one that wasn't a total
scale who accepted payoff to end their participation in leading
the strike by the two newspapers.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Uh yeah, is that the case?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
The only place, the only source that I saw that
didn't seem pretty much certain that these guys had both
been paid off, including contemporaneous quotes from Newsy's who believe
this was Livia.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Actually, all right, so what are we gonna do about Livia?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
I think what she was doing was taking a really
like a cautious approach because it never has been proven,
but it does seem to be pretty much certain that
at the very least Kid Blink took a payoff.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
So the idea is that Kid Blank and Dave Simon
were paid about four hundred bucks from those two companies
to end the strike.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
They denied it. Simon was like, go ahead, search.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Me, which you know that means nothing, just because he
has didn't have the money on him.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Right then he's like, Bill, never search my keyster, oh.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
God, and kid blank, you know, gave a pretty big
speech and it sounds like he was a pretty decent
public speaker, so they kind of he kind of convinced
everyone that it wasn't true in the moment. But yeah,
I think I agree with you. It seems like they
probably did, yeah pay off.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Because not only were their quotes from Newsy's later on
who one of them said, we would have gotten more,
but the leaders got bought off. I think there was
a quote from Don Sitz, the managing editor who at
right after this happened, said the backbone of the strike
has been broken, and they did it by targeting the leaders.
And then four hundred bucks that was a lot. Man,
(35:56):
That's like fifteen grand today to people who were like
making thirty cents a day at best.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
It's like forty plus years of work.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
Right. It would have been really really tough to turn down.
The thing is is when you have like leaders who
are inspiring people and leading like people who are really
like coming from a just cause, you want them to
be untouchable, right, So I mean they're human, they were
kids still. I mean one of them was eighteen. The
other one was twenty one tops. If he wasn't eighteen.
(36:28):
This is more money than they probably ever would have
seen in one place in their life. I can't really
blame them for turning it down, but I'm still deeply
disappointed that they.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
Didn't, because Kid blinked was your guy.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
He would have been, so race Car Higgins is my
guy because he didn't get bought off.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Right, Oh that's right. I forgot it was race Car Higgins.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So Simon, regardless of whether or not he took money,
even though we think he did, he resigned as president.
He said, I'm going to continue to support the strike.
Supposedly was elected treasurer, which would be a really weird
thing to do someone who just accepted a payout. But
this is the point where things, you know, paper started
(37:08):
reporting all kinds of different stuff about who was leading
at the time. The New York Times said it was
a kid named Morris Cohen. The son had two different
stories that contradicted one another. One said that they voted
two kids in to replace Simon and Kid blink name
yack Egg and Niny.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
If your kids hanging out with a kid named niney
or yack Egg, you need to move.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
You need to move very quickly. Yack egg. That's so weird.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
It is the same paper talked about a different meeting
on the same day on the twenty eight with a
kid named Young Monis as the chief that replaced Blink.
And then the time said, no, it's an executive committee
basically from the different delegates that are running it. And
we can tell is there wasn't a real firm leader
(38:03):
at this point, kind of like for what one reason
is what you talked about was they wanted someone that
was untouchable and they didn't know if they could trust anyone.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Right, and so this was I mean that don sits
quote about the backbone being broken turned out to be
pretty true. Like after those two left their positions of leadership,
the strike just kind of it just got a little
chaotic and disassembled for a couple of days at least.
It was just kind of chaotic, and yet they still
(38:31):
continued on. They just did it in a decentralized way.
And then I think on twenty seventh of July Thursday,
the thing's been going on for a week now, kid Blink,
after having talked his way out of like being beaten
within an inch of his life for accepting a payoff
from the journal. In the Wreck or the World, he
(38:54):
shows up on the street with a new suit and
flashing a bunch of bills. Yeah, and depending on the
account you read, he was either beaten or was about
to be beaten when the cops arrested him, potentially for
his own protection, and he was taken to jail. But
that's the like, Okay, maybe Dave Simon's did or didn't.
I think his behavior made it seem very fishy that, Yeah,
(39:16):
so I suspect him Kid Blink. It's like it's just
a given, you know, if that's true, that's the that's
the key. Like, it's entirely possible that that was rumor
they got printed in a newspaper that today we look
back and we're like, oh, it was in the newspaper,
so it must be true. It's possible that was just
totally a rumor or something like that. But I still
(39:37):
say kid Blink is guilty, guilty, guilty.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
It was around the same time that there was a
compromise offered by the the newspapers. They went to the
union committee and said, hey, what if we go down
to fifty five cents? The union turned that down. This
is when they started to get the support I mentioned.
Some other people kind of joined in later, you know,
a whole week later, And these were the news stands.
(40:03):
The people who ran the newsstands said all right, we're
not gonna sell those papers anymore. Maybe we'll keep some
here out of you, and if you really really want one,
we'll quietly sell it to you. But they weren't pushing
the world in the journal at newsstands.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Right, which is almost as bad as just not carrying
it at all. Yeah, but that was a huge deal.
I mean, just getting like other strikers or other newspaper
sellers like on the street to join them was a
big deal. Getting the news stands to actually join was
an enormous coup. And under this new kind of like
(40:37):
larger strike, the newsboys organized. They reorganized, I guess I
should say, in a much more like uniform, coherent way,
under kind of the leadership of a couple of the
adults that own newsstands and apparently seemed to steer everything
in a very honest direction.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, there was a newstand owner name Abraham Lippmann who said,
all right, why don't you guys adult elect an adult. Here,
there are adult news newsies. And here's a guy. His
name's James Neil. He's fifty years old. I know, it
seems a little it seems a little.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
Weird that he that he's still alive.
Speaker 3 (41:20):
But elect him as president you might get a little further.
They did racetrack Higgins, your boy became vice president, and
Neil said, you know, the adult in the room said,
all right, we need to get really organized. We need
to have badges, we need to get together with other
labor organizations. We need to district up and have delegates
(41:44):
and really get this thing going. But it was a
little too little, too late at this point because at
this point these kids needed the money. I mean they
were they were doing this because they were didn't have
much in the way of means, and so to be
out of work for a week in a row was
a big deal. And so their stamina sort of started
(42:05):
to wane.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Yeah, and for a while they had one kid said
that they ain't got no wife's or families, so they
could take the pressure. But you know, a week of
not making any money, when you're relying on thirty cents
a day, that's a big deal. So it makes sense
that the strike just kind of started to peter out
a little bit. But it does make you wonder how
(42:28):
far it would have gotten. Had they organized like that
from day one, that would have been amazing.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
And I imagine there was some parental pressure because I
think a lot of this a lot of times if
these kids weren't just on their own a lot. You know,
most of this money went back to the family, right,
and so you know mom and dad, you would think
at some point was like, hey, we need this thirty cents, right,
we need three cans of soup.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
And fifty pounds of potatoes.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So on I guess Monday, July thirty first is it
was the death knell of the strike. One of the
groups of newstands said, this strike's a failure. They passed
a resolution just seems really mean, and they're like, we're
not supporting us any longer. That almost was a signal
(43:17):
to everybody else from what I can tell that it
was almost kind of okay to start selling the journal
in the world again. And on August first, the New
York strike officially was over.
Speaker 3 (43:29):
Yeah, And the one big thing we didn't mention was
that they did accept an offer finally.
Speaker 2 (43:36):
Had kind of an important point.
Speaker 3 (43:38):
They accepted the offer of sixty cents along with the
caveat that they could return unsold copies for a full refund,
And that seemed like you're dead on the money on
what you said at the beginning, like that was a
big deal. If they let's say, you sell one hundred
papers during wartime and you go out and you're like
a man, I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna
(43:59):
get another bundle, and you sell ten newspapers out of
that bundle of one hundred, then that'll bury you as
a business. So being able to return those they saw
it as a big win at least, or maybe they
just tried to make themselves feel better and say it
was a big win. But it seems to me like
being able to get refunds for unsold papers was a
(44:19):
pretty big deal.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
It seems like a big win to me for sure.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, And because yeah, you've got to sell those papers.
They are not any good tomorrow. It's literally yesterday's news.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
You know, that's right.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
If you hadn't figured that out right now, I wanted
to make sure it was spelled out so that union
though it might seem like wow, they unionized like two
days before the strike ended. What a waste. That's not
at all correct. This union continued on and grew more
and more powerful and more and more disciplined too, And
as other strikes kind of came up over the years,
(44:57):
they would support them, and they had some a decent
amount of cloud Actually.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, so good for them.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Wouldn't that be funny if we just ended the show
without mentioning Christian.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
Bale, Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 1 (45:10):
People would lose their minds. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
Of course, Disney made a movie about this. It was
a musical called Newsies nineteen ninety two, and young Christian
Bale played a fictional character inspired you know by real people,
but a fictional guy named Jack Kelly. But there is
a character named Blink and a character named Race, so they,
(45:33):
you know, they definitely took.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
It.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
Took some real people, made them slightly fictionalized, and then
made them sing.
Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, And neither Christian Bale nor any of the other
stars had any acting or any singing and dancing experience.
And it read like oral history about the flop that
was Newsi's when it came out in theaters and one
of the one of the leads was like, Yeah, if
you watch closely for those dance numbers, they'll suddenly either
like zoom way out or pan in really closely, so
(46:03):
you can't actually see us dancing. We'll be like in
a crowd of other people, or else it'll be like
an extreme close up on us. Because they weren't any good,
and I think even whether they had been good or
not was a moot point. It was a weird gamble
that Disney took. Yeah, introducing live action musicals that were
not at all in fashion at the time and hadn't
(46:24):
been for a couple decades by then. Jeffrey Katzenberg was like,
we're bringing them back, and America said, no, you're not.
Speaker 3 (46:32):
And he said, and we're going to do it in
the form of a newspaper delivery boy strike exactly.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Christian Bill survived.
Speaker 3 (46:39):
He did, and you know, the movie ended up being
a pretty big cult hit. Yeah, I've never seen it,
of you, No, I didn't. I watch parts of it today.
But it was a Broadway show after that as well.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Yeah, and it won like two Tony's, so they in
its format as a Broadway show. They rewrote some of
the songs and stuff. It did very well. It just
was not meant to be a movie. Yeah, that's it
for newsies everybody, and the newsies strike in particular.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
If you want to know more about that kind of thing,
go watch newsies and see what you think. Or go
to Broadway and see newsies and see what you think,
and then let us know what you think. And in
the meantime, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
I'm going to call this critically email that just came in. Okay,
we like to read these from time to time.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Sure not just read emails and praise Hey, guys, listen
every day. There's nothing new. I listen to the archives.
I would like to ask you guys to refrain from laughing, chuckling, chortling, giggling,
and so on. It's very annoying you do this incessantly.
Just get serious about the subject. Are you guys comedians
or are you trying to inform the public?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Wow, I think this guy's new. It might not be
around for very long.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Well no, he said he listens every day.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
For like the last two days.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
I maybe it's a hate listen.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I don't know another thing. I'd like to call you
guys out on here. I was listening to the archives,
and the way you guys supported the Black Panther Party
was nothing less than treason. Those were communists, anarchists, Marxists
with guns. You guys should have explained the threat to
our democracy those criminals pose. Maybe they weren't as big
a threat as j Edgar Hoover thought, but they were
(48:22):
pretty darn close. You guys are way too liberal and
doing what you do. You shouldn't show your bias. Stop
the laughing, because you two are more often not funny.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
I love this guy.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Okay, it's probably for the best. Well, thanks a lot, Anonymous.
We do love to get criticized sometimes and it's a
legitimate bone you pick there, But I'm afraid we're probably
not going to change the way that we do the show.
Speaker 3 (48:52):
That's a very kind way of responding.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
If you want to be like Anonymous and get in
touch to this and be like stop doing this, so
we can be like, no, we're not going to stop
doing that. We love those. You can wrap it up,
spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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