This little-known story from American history proves that kids can stand up for their rights—and win—when they’re being treated unfairly.
EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!
Back in the 1890s, there were about 10,000 homeless children living on the streets of New York City. At night, they slept in doorways, in alleys, under stairways, or anywhere else they could find shelter. In the daytime, they tried to find work. Many of them became newsies, kids who sold newspapers on the streets. They bought papers from the newspaper companies for one price and then sold them for a little bit more.
And the more they sold, the more they earned. So they stood on street corners and yelled out the headlines, urging people to buy their papers. On a good day, a newsie would make 30 cents, barely enough for food and not enough for clothing or shelter.
MILLIONAIRES WANT MORE!
William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were two of the richest and most powerful men in America. Each one owned a giant newspaper in New York City. They counted on the newsies to hit the streets and sell their papers. In early July 1899, sales were slow, so these two millionaires decided to make up for it by charging the newsies more money for their papers. They figured the newsies couldn’t do anything about it because, after all, they were just kids. They were wrong.
Surf’s down: The Aral Sea in central Asia has decreased 80% in volume since 1960.
Led by three boys called Kid Blink (he was blind in one eye), Racetrack Higgins, and Boots McAleenan, hundreds of newsies met in City Hall Park on July 18, 1899, and formed a union. Kid Blink took charge and spoke to the other kids:
“Friends and fellow workers, this is a time which tries the hearts of men. This is the time when we’ve got to stick together like glue. We know what we wants and we’ll get it, even if we is blind!”
The newsies refused to sell Hearst’s New York Journal or Pulitzer’s New York World until their buying price went back down.
HELP THE NEWSBOYS!
The newsies not only refused to sell the Journal or the World, they also were determined to make sure nobody else could, either.
• Sometimes hundreds of kids would surround the paper delivery wagons and threaten to beat up the drivers.
• Mobs of kids yanked papers out of people’s hands and tore them up.
• Angry boys hurled rocks at the men Hearst and Pulitzer had hired to replace them. (And even though the millionaires demanded protection, the newsies were fast and could usually outrun the cops.)
Youngest tennis champ in U.S. Open history: Tracy Austin, in 1979. (She was 16.)
Other newspapers gleefully made heroes of the striking kids, giving them front-page coverage. The public supported their cause and refused to buy Hearst’s and Pulitzer’s papers.
SPREAD THE WORD!
The newsies’ strike quickly spread to Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. The World and Journal were starting to lose money, but Hearst and Pulitzer still wouldn’t budge. Another rally was organized in lower Manhattan, and this time 5,000 kids showed up. When Kid Blink leaped onto the speaker’s platform, the cheers were deafening. Kid raised his hands for silence and then scratched his head, as if he were puzzled.
“I’m trying to figure out how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to us newsboys. And I can’t see it.”
The newsies vowed to keep striking until Hearst and Pulitzer begged them to stop. “It’s great,” Kid Blink told a newspaper reporter. “They can’t beat us. Me noble men is all loyal, and with such as these to oppose their nefarious schemes how can those blokes hope to win?”
VICTORY!
When sales dropped by two-thirds, both Hearst and Pulitzer finally gave up. In early August, they offered the newsies a deal that kept the prices the same, and even let the newsies return any unsold papers and get their money back. The newsies took the deal…and in the end, they made even more money than before.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans called bananas “Indian figs.”