Children of the City

by David Nasaw

  City Hall Park, New York City, late 1890s. Two bootblacks in City Hall Park, where in 1899 the newsboys would organize their union and their strike. (Alice Austin Collection, Staten Island Historical Society)

  The newsies acted swiftly not because they were children, but because the moment was fortuitous. The Brooklyn streetcar operators were already on strike, and though they would ultimately be defeated they were, for the latter part of July, tying up the police so tight there were few left on the downtown Manhattan streets. As Boots McAleenan, aged eleven, explained to a reporter from the Sun, “We’re doin’ it now because de cops is all busy, an’ we can do any scab newsboy dat shows his face widout police interference. We’re here fer our rights an’ we will die defendin’ ’em. At de rates dey give us now we can’t make on’y four cents on ten pape’s, an’ dat ain’t enough to pay fer swipes.”7*

  On the first afternoons of the strike, the downtown boys gathered in front of the newspaper offices on Park Row to physically prevent the delivery wagons from leaving with papers for uptown and the suburbs. As the Sun reported on July 22, “Fully a hundred boys were gathered in Park Row at the hour when the first editions of the ‘yellows’ usually come out, and as soon as the wagons started there was a great howl and a shower of missiles which made the drivers’ jobs uncomfortable. The police came on the run and the boys scattered hastily, for an order [from the Committee on Discipline which was running the strike] had gone out, it is said, that the police are not to be injured. All the boys were armed with clubs and most of them wore in their headgear placards denouncing the scab extras and calling on the public to boycott them.”8

  Though they did their best, the downtown boys were soon “scattered by the advance of the constabulary.” The trucks—with their newspapers—rolled out to the distribution points uptown and out of town. The drivers who delivered to Columbus Circle were the first to discover what the newsies had in store for them. A crowd of four to five hundred boys had gathered at Fifty-ninth Street to await their arrival. “They had decorated the newsstands and lampposts with banners inscribed, ‘Please Don’t Buy the World or Journal,’ ‘Help the Newsboys,’ ‘Our Cause is Just’, ‘We Will Fight for Our Rights,’ and other pregnant sentiments. As soon as the wagons came up the boys pressed forward and began to hoot and howl.… Though pushed back [by the policemen], they did not scatter. They formed a circle, and as fast as any man got his bundle of papers and tried to get away with them they sweeped down upon him with yells of ‘Kill the scab!’ mauled him until he dropped his papers and ran, then tore the sheets into small bits and trampled them in the mud.”9

  At other distribution points, the same scenario was played out. In Brooklyn the boys “appointed committees to meet the delivery wagons and every driver who dared defy the newsboys was bombarded with a choice collection of stones, with which the pockets of the rebellious youngsters bulged.”10 The Jersey City boys met the wagons at the ferry and tore up the papers as they were thrown down.11 The Yonkers group sent delegations to the incoming trains to capture the papers as they arrived.12

  The boys were in constant communication. The strike committee, elected by the downtown boys, sent representatives to the outlying regions; the outer suburbs elected delegates to travel downtown to Park Row. The Sun, glorying in this successful strike against its two major competitors, reported in full the visit of Spot Conlon, District Master Workboy of the Brooklyn Union, who, attired in pink suspenders, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with “greetings an’ promises of support.… ‘We have tied up de scab sheets so tight dat y’ can’t buy one fer a dollar in de street. Hold out, my gallant kids, an’ to-morrer I meself, at de head of t’ree tousand noble hearts from Brooklyn will be over here t’ help youse win yer noble scrap fer freedom an’ fair play.’ ”13

  The Journal and World did not, at first, take the strike very seriously. Their opponents were after all only children, too small, inexperienced, and irresponsible to win a contest with adults. It was not until the advertisers began requesting “allowance on their bills on account of the strike” that the publishers realized the gravity of the situation. The newsboys were not only on the way to shutting down street circulation; they had won a public relations battle for the sympathy of the public. “The people,” Seitz reported to Pulitzer on July 24, “seem to be against us; they are encouraging the boys and tipping them and where they are not doing this, they are refraining from buying the papers for fear of having them snatched from their hands.”14

  The strike closed down distribution of the papers in Manhattan and, within days, spread uptown to Fifty-ninth Street and Harlem and across the rivers to Long Island City, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Newark, where according to Seitz “the paper was completely obliterated.”15 In Mount Vernon, Staten Island, Yonkers, Troy, and Rochester, New York; Plainfield, Trenton, Elizabeth, Paterson, and Asbury Park, New Jersey; New Haven, Connecticut; Fall River, Massachusetts; and Providence, Rhode Island, local newsies joined the strike.16

  Though it is not possible to do an ethnic census of the strikers, the names reported in the papers provide evidence that boys of all backgrounds participated in all aspects of the strike. Among those arrested were Abe Greenhouse, Ike Miller, Joe Mulligan, Frank Giasso, Donato Carolucci, ‘Grin’ Boyle, Albert Smith, Edward Rowland, Mikki Fishier, and William Reese and John Falk (the latter two identified by the Sun as “Negroes”). The elected strike committee included Barney Peters, Jim Galty, Crutchy Morris, Abe Newman, and Dave Simons.17

  The boys, all of them, were in dead earnest about their strike. The fact that the publishers refused to take them seriously just spurred them on. Every day, they met the delivery wagons at the distribution points, pelted them with stones and rotten fruit, captured as many bundles as they could, and then paraded up and down the streets with banners, leaflets, songs, and cheers, proud of their accomplishment but on the constant lookout for any scab papers that might have gotten through.

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

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

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

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

  A second policeman rescued the boy, who retreated to Frankfort Street; there he was met by the strikers, who “invited him to join them, which he did in a hurry. A half hour later he was leading an attack on a boy who was trying to smuggle some Worlds and Journals over to Brooklyn.”18

  The “bluecoated servants of capital,” as the Sun referred to the policemen, did their best but were overwhelmed by the persistence and sheer numbers of the strikers. They managed to arrest a boy here and there but were powerless against the huge crowds that gathered at the distribution centers and marched down the main streets on the lookout for scab papers.

  The newspapers, now frightened by the recognition that the strike was for real, called in their favors from politici
ans and police captains. As Seitz reported to Pulitzer on July 24, “I have been up to headquarters, arranging to break up certain strike points, with the help of the police, to-morrow.” The Journal, which had been running editorials condemning the police for their actions in other strikes, quickly reversed itself: offending editorials were “suppressed,” including a full-page diatribe against the police as “friends of monopoly.” With its editorial policy now favorable to the department, the Journal’s editor made his way “to see Mayor Van Wyck in the matter of better police protection.” According to Seitz, the “Mayor had expressed his friendly purpose towards us; very friendly purpose I judge from what Los [Journal’s editor] said.”19

  The publishers needed police protection for the army of scabs, thugs, and assorted toughs they had hired to get the papers on the streets. When their supply of available adults was exhausted, they sent their agents to the Bowery lodging houses with the offer of two dollars a day plus commission for any man who would sell Worlds or Journals. The boys followed the agents into the flophouses to explain their case. According to a story in the Sun on July 23, the bums agreed to support the boys: “I’m a Bowery bum … and one of about a hundred that’s signed to take out Worlds and Journals to-morrow. But say, we ain’t a-going to do it. It’s all a bluff. We told them scouts that we’d do it when they offered $2 a day, but everyone of us has decided to stick by the newsboys and we won’t sell no papers.”20

  Those few who appeared at the newspaper offices the next day did so only because they had found a way to make their two dollars without breaking the strike. As they left the offices with their bundles, they dumped their papers in the streets; then, after a short while, returned to the publishers, demanding their money. “ ‘Say, dis is easy,’ said one of them: it’s a reg’lar cinch. But don’t give it away. I wouldn’t be doin’ it but I needs de money.’ ”21

  The only trouble the boys had was with the women who owned their own stands. Though Annie and “Mrs. Cry Baby, the only name by which they [had] ever known the eccentric German newspaper woman who is a familiar figure at the [Brooklyn] bridge entrance” were with them, other “newswomen around the bridge entrance,” while pretending to support the boys had “been caught selling the boycotted papers, hauling them out from under their shawls when they [were] called for by customers. This base deceit … angered the boys very much, but they [were] at a loss to find a remedy.”

  “ ‘A feller don’t soak a lady,’ said Kid Blink, ‘and yer can’t get at them women’s scab pape’s without soakin’ them.’ ” The best they could do was to threaten the women and try to coax their customers away from them.22

  The boys were well aware of the value of public support. To publicize their cause they took up a collection, and, with the eleven dollars they secured, printed up thousands of circulars to stuff in the nonstruck papers and hand out in the streets and at the bridges, train stations, and ferries. They organized parades and street demonstrations, and, whenever the opportunity presented itself, made their case to the reporters from the nonstruck dailies.

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

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

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

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

  The boys sat or, rather, stood and cheered through speech after speech. Crazy Aborn told how the circulation managers had tried to bribe him; Newspaper Annie shouted her encouragement; Dave Simons, president of the union, presented the assembly with a set of resolutions to vote on; Warhorse Brennan, the oldest newsie, and Jack from Park Row saluted the boys. Racetrack Higgins reported that the Brooklyn boys had hired a band to lead them over the bridge to Irving Hall but were prevented from “parading” by the police commissioner, who denied them a permit. The last scheduled speaker of the evening was “Hungry Joe Kernan, the newsboy mascot [who] sang a pathetic song about a one-legged newsboy.” With a few brief remarks by a few more newsies, the meeting came to a halt, the boys reinvigorated and ready to carry their strike to its conclusion.23

  The boys held together for the rest of that week and the next. Though there were rumors of scandal and a hasty trial and removal from office of two of the strike leaders, the boys continued to keep the World and Journal off the streets. Seitz, summarizing the effects of the strike for Pulitzer, admitted that “the loss in circulation … has been colossal.” The press run had been reduced from over three hundred sixty thousand to one hundred twenty-five thousand, while returns more than doubled from the customary 15 or 16 percent to an average of 35 percent. “It is really remarkable the success these boys have had; our policy of putting men out [adult scabs] was not helpful, yet it was the only thing that could be done. We had to have representation and the absolute disappearance of the paper was appalling.”24

  The publishers conceded defeat in the second week of the strike by offering the boys an advantageous compromise. The price would remain where it was, but the World and Journal would henceforth take back all unsold papers at 100 percent refund. The boys agreed to the offer and on the second of August returned to the streets.25 (Frank Luther Mott claims that the “strike … was eventually successful” in forcing the papers to rescind their price increase. I have not found any evidence to support his claim.26)

  The newsboys’ union did not survive long enough to take credit for the victory. Toward the end, all that remained were the leaders and their statements to the press. The union had done yeoman work in getting the strike started, arranging the mass meeting, and spreading the word to the boys and the public. Once the boycott took hold, however, its days were numbered. The strike was so decentralized that the citywide organization had little to do. Each group of newsies policed its own district: the Harlem boys patrolled theirs, the Jersey City boys theirs. Though each group considered itself part of the larger whole, none felt obligated to accept decisions arrived at outside the local district.

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

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

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

  The New York newsie strike of 1899 left no organization behind it,† but it did not recede into the past without leaving its mark up and down the East Coast and as far west as Cincinnati. Children everywhere learned about the New York City strike from their local papers. In Lexington, Kentucky, the newsies followed the New York boys’ example and called a strike against the city’s major afternoon paper. In Rochester and Syracuse, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Boston and Cincinnati, the messengers went out on strike. As the papers reported, with less and less levity as it spread, a “strike epidemic” had broken out.27

  The children, it appeared, felt some sort of generational pull to go out on strike in support of one another. From Providence, Rhode Island, to South Jersey, children who sold the Journal and World went out in support of the New York boys. In Cincinnati, the newsies went out in support of the messengers.28 And in New York City, still the hub of activity, the messengers and bootblacks joined the newsies in what nearly became a children’s general strike.29

  Although, unlike the newsies, most of the messengers and shineboys had left school and worked full-time, they too belonged to the children’s community of the streets. Like the part-time street traders, they lived at home and were expected to turn in their wages to their parents. Like them, also, they held back part of their earnings to spend on their own good times.