Newsboy Strike (1899)

Thu Jul 20, 1899

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Image: Newsboys and newsgirl getting afternoon papers in New York City, 1910 [Wikipedia]

On this day in 1899, thousands of New York City “newsies”, children who sold newspapers on city streets, went on strike to protest a ten cent increase in the cost of their papers, overturning distribution wagons and attacking scabs.

The newsboys collectively boycotted the New York Journal and the New York World, which had raised the cost of their newspapers from 50 cents to 60 cents, making the papers harder to sell. The boys organized under charismatic child leaders, meeting with the paper owners and holding meetings as large as 5,000 people.

The boys also rioted and used direct action: upon declaring the strike, they turned over a distribution wagon for the New York Journal, and any boy or adult caught hocking either paper would be attacked by a mob of striking children, who would seize and destroy the papers they were selling.

In the end, wholesale price remained at 60 cents, however the newspaper owners agreed to begin refunding boys for unsold papers.

“Ain’t that ten cents worth as much to us as it is to Hearst and Pulitzer who are millionaires? Well, I guess it is. If they can’t spare it, how can we?..I’m trying to figure out how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to newsboys, an’ I can’t see it.”

- Kid Blink, 1899