Boston’s Newsboy Strike (episode 331)

Automatic Shownotes

Chapters

Transcript

Jake:
[0:03] Welcome to Hub History, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.

Welcome to Hub History

Jake:
[0:12] This is episode 331, Boston’s Own Newsies. Hi, I’m Jake. This week, I’m talking about the 1894 Boston Newsboys strike.

Jake:
[0:26] This week’s show was inspired by my niece, Sophie. She’s a teenager now, but a few years back, when she was a bit younger, she convinced me to watch the movie Newsies while she was staying with us for a week over summer vacation. The 1992 Disney live-action musical features an 18-year-old Christian Bale as a homeless New York City newsboy who organizes an unauthorized strike against the biggest newspapers in the city. The stories peppered through with real names, like Joseph Pulitzer and Teddy Roosevelt, so I was pretty sure that it was at least loosely based on a real story. And it made me wonder if Boston’s newsboys had ever gone on an equally adorable strike. I uncovered the story of a real-life newsboy strike in Boston in 1894, but it ended up not having that much in common with the movie. In the course of researching the 1894 strike, I learned a lot about newsboys and a lot about their role as an emblem of child labor in Boston during the Progressive Era, at a time when reformers thought that it would be better to provide protections to legitimize child labor rather than eliminating it.

Jake:
[1:38] But before we talk about Boston’s newsboy strike, I just want to pause and say a big thank you to our latest supporters on Patreon. Since the last time I said thank you, Tom N., John S., and William L. All came on board with generous monthly pledges.

Jake:
[1:57] Patreon allows listeners to become sponsors of Hub History by committing to kicking in as little as $2 or as much as $20 or more per month toward the cost of making the show. The stability of knowing that our sponsors will always cover the cost of podcast media hosting, transcription, audio processing, and our website hosting means that I don’t have to stress every month over how to pay for those services. And unlike some podcasts that offer extra bonus episodes, merch giveaways, and special access to the hosts, I don’t really offer our supporters much more than a Hub History sticker and my gratitude. That’s why the support of people like John, William, and Tom means so much to me, and why I couldn’t make the show without them. So to everybody who’s already supporting the show, thank you. And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, it’s easy. Just go to patreon.com slash hubhistory, or visit hubhistory.com and click on the Support Us link.

Supporters and Thanks

Jake:
[2:57] And thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

Main Topic Introduction

Jake:
[3:02] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Newsboy:
[3:06] Extra, extra, read all about it, gangster trail in Sacramento!

Jake:
[3:11] That sound, the sound of a pre-teen boy hawking evening papers on a street corner, or in a train station or ferry dock, or outside the theater or bar room, was ubiquitous in Boston in the late 19th century. Until that is July 13th, 1894. 131 years ago this week, those tiny voices fell silent as Boston’s newsboys went on strike. Newspapers around the country carried a brief wire service story about the strike the next day, which stated, The newsboys of the city resolved to boycott the Herald and Globe because they charged higher rates than the other two-cent papers. As a result, these papers were not handled last night. Boys seen with the Herald or Globe were promptly set upon, and their stock in trade torn to fragments.

Jake:
[4:04] I’ve seen estimates ranging from 200 to 800 strikers, and the July 14th Brooklyn Times Union went with the lower estimate. The Times Union also included more details about the cause behind this strike against the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe. Boston, July 14th. For a little while last evening, there was a considerable bustle in newspaper row, caused by a strike of some 200 newsboys.

Boston Newsboys Strike Begins

Jake:
[4:33] The nominal reason was that the boys had decided to boycott the Herald and Globe unless the managers of those papers reduced the price to them from one and a quarter cents to one cent.

Jake:
[4:45] At the time, most Boston papers sold for a penny apiece. The Globe and Herald were two-cent papers. When the papers were a penny each, the children who sold them were accustomed to buying a bundle of 100 papers for 50 cents, giving them a 50-cent profit on each bundle. Now that a couple of the local papers had doubled that cover price, the newsboys expected to buy a bundle of 100 for a dollar, giving them a dollar profit on each bundle. The Globe and Herald seem to have different ideas about that, however. A July 14th wire service story that was printed in newspapers around the country described how the strikers made their demands known. Beyond, that is, pummeling any scabs who dared to sell the offending papers with a flurry of tiny fists. A mass meeting of boys was held last night, and at its close, the boys marched to the Herald and Globe offices in a body and created a small riot. Which the police finally quelled.

Jake:
[5:46] Now, the worst of this so-called rioting took place inside the counting room of the Globe, at least according to the Brooklyn Times Union. The boys marched in a body into the Globe counting room, but the entrance of a policeman from the rear had the effect of quickly scattering the young breadwinners, and they rushed out into Washington Street yelling at the tops of their voices. After cutting up numerous boyish freaks, they were dispersed by two or three policemen. The counting room is where all the pennies and nickels that the Boston Globe took in from consumers every day were counted up, rolled up in paper, and prepared for deposit. Perhaps the young strikers thought that they could take the money they felt they were owed by force. Or maybe their entry into the counting room was just a convenient excuse for a little bit of strike-breaking on behalf of the Boston police.

Jake:
[6:41] We’ve all heard that cry of, extra, extra, read all about it, in movies and TV, but most of us have never stopped to consider what life would have been like for a child newspaper vendor. And why a newsboy might want to go on strike to make sure they got a fair cut of the cover price. Writing in a column called The Listener, only about a week after the Boston Newsboy strike, a Boston Evening Transcript correspondent described stumbling across a Boston police officer reprimanding a young newsboy in Spring Lane, just around the corner from Old South Meeting House, on July 21st, 1894. The policeman was evidently expostulating with the larger boy, who had one of those indeterminate faces. His eyes were large and brown, but not frank. His nose was large, too. Under his arm, he had some papers, and he held by the hand a very little boy with brown curly hair and brown eyes like his own, but a much more childlike and unconscious face.

Jake:
[7:42] The big policeman, who is as kind a man as there is on the force and is known to everybody on his beat to be as wise as a policeman can possibly be,

The Life of a Newsboy

Jake:
[7:51] was saying, This little fellow sell papers? Why, he ain’t big enough to sell papers. He ain’t half big enough to sell papers. The bigger boy shrunk away guiltily. Now you look out, said the policeman, or I’ll get the agent of the Humane Society after you. Now take him home, I say, said the policeman. And the bigger boy sneaked away, dragging the curly-haired little boy and furtively looking back over his shoulders with cowardly eyes. But when he got down as far as Cornhill, he gave the child a couple of papers and a small voice piped up, Evening, Harold. He might have been six years old. He was pretty. He was having his introduction evidently to the great world of commerce. There was certainly a good deal of éclat in that introduction, when you consider the crowd there was about him in the lane. Jay Gould and Cornelius Vanderbilt probably had much less fuss made about their first appearance. Who knows, but the omen was commercially auspicious, and that a future merchant prince will remember how the big policemen got together a great crowd in Spring Lane to see him try to sell his first papers.

Jake:
[9:04] A six-year-old newsboy sounds like a journalistic exaggeration. As we’ll see, that was too young to get a newsboy’s license, and it was young enough to stand out to columnist and police officer alike. But there is evidence of such tiny laborers in Boston’s streets.

Jake:
[9:24] Sociologist and photographer Louis Hine documented child labor in Boston on his many visits here, and his photographs taken in Boston in 1909 and 1915 are preserved in the Library of Congress. I’ll link to them in the show notes this week, but there are plenty of newsboys in those pictures who might well be as young as six, and more young child laborers who are in jobs that weren’t as visible to the public. In an 1879 book titled Child Toilers of Boston Streets, Emma E. Brown describes some of the newsboys whom you might have encountered on the streets of Boston in her time, most of whom were not much older.

Jake:
[10:08] Down by Snow Hill Street is a poor Italian family, consisting of father, mother, and if I remember rightly, five children. Two of the boys are licensed to sell newspapers, but at one time last winter, the elder brother was ill, and the father was sick in bed for months. During all this time, the whole burden came upon little Antonio, who was only 12 years old and so very slight that you would think him much younger. But the brave lad at once took in the situation, and by rising early and working late, he managed to earn enough each day from the sale of his papers to support them all till father and mother were able to work again. Then there’s little Joseph Dondaro, whose shrill voice you may have heard on the corner last evening as he shouted his, Harold, five o’clock. He’s a tiny boy with jet black eyes, hair to match, and a nut brown complexion. Joe is of Jewish parentage and a hard life the little fellow has had ever since he can remember. His mother died about a year ago, and the wretched drunkard he calls father is so cruel to Joe and his little sister that the children are only too glad when, some months since, he took his hand organ and, leaving the little ones to look after themselves, wandered off into the country. Nobody knew whither.

Jake:
[11:31] Since then, Joe, with all the dignity of ten years, has taken upon himself the entire responsibility and tried to fill the place of father and mother both to his little sister, who’s only six years old. Upon an average, he can earn by the sale of his papers $3 a week. Out of this sum, he pays for the rent of their one room on Endicott Street 75 cents per week, while the remainder, just think how small, must feed and clothe them. John Falvey, by name, is fourteen years of age and the oldest of four children. His father is scarcely ever in a condition to earn anything, and the mother, with her home cares, can do but little. So the support of the family comes upon John and his youngest brother, who have bravely taken up the burden together.

Jake:
[12:24] Fourteen is practically middle-aged compared to the youngest child laborers in Boston. The columnist behind the listener in the evening transcript spotted one of the youngest newsboys on Boston’s streets, writing, The day before last Christmas was a bitterly cold day in Boston. The wind whistled through the streets and little stinging particles of snow flew in the good people’s faces. It was terrible weather for the poor. On a cold corner on Tremont Street that afternoon, I met a little newsboy. He had no overcoat on, and his cap wouldn’t come down over his ears. His dirty little hands were tucked into the pockets of his ragged jacket, and with a thin bundle of papers under his arm, he was crying out in a pitiful, shivering voice, Evening papers. Herald. Globe. Transcript. Many of the newsboys whom Lewis Hine photographed and Emma Brown wrote about lived and worked in terrible circumstances. Some could barely afford to feed themselves or the family and younger siblings who relied on them, and others were essentially homeless. For most of them, though, the alternative was being sent to juvie, or possibly even worse.

Jake:
[13:43] According to an 1880 summary of commonwealth laws applicable to children, truant and stubborn children may be placed in an institution. Destitute children may be sent to an almshouse. Children under 10 are not to be sent to jail or a house of correction, except for non-payment of fines. And offenders under 16 may be sent to houses of reformation.

Jake:
[14:08] One might argue that newsboys weren’t necessarily truants or offenders, but that doesn’t mean they could escape the long arm of the law. Children like little 10-year-old Joe, who supported a 6-year-old sister, or 14-year-old John, who supported a family of 6 while his father got drunk, worked as newsboys because that was the only way that they could earn a living. Otherwise, they’d be considered paupers. And according to that same 1880s summary, the law provided that, Overseers in any city are required to place all pauper children in their charge over four years of age and some respectable family in the state or in some asylum therein to be supported by the city there according to the laws relating to the support of the poor until they can be otherwise cared for. Charitable institutions receiving from public authorities infants less than four years of age are subject to the same laws as such authorities. Such institutions may procure suitable persons in this state to take, under a written agreement until 14 years of age, children lawfully in their custody who have been willfully abandoned by their parents or natural guardians. So you can see why some of these very young workers would choose to bend or break Boston’s child labor laws in order to avoid falling afoul of Boston’s pauper laws and becoming wards of the state.

Jake:
[15:33] One might make an argument that Benjamin Franklin was the first-ever newsboy, but the trade really originated in New York. While the young Ben Franklin did assist in delivering his brother’s New England Courant to subscribers in Boston in 1721, the organized trade of the newsboy truly began in 1833 with the launch of the New York Sun. Publisher Benjamin Day, attempting to expand distribution beyond traditional methods like mail or office pickup, advertised for street vendors.

Jake:
[16:10] Instead of the unemployed adults that he expected, the ad attracted children, with 10-year-old Irish immigrant Bernard Flaherty becoming the first newsboy whose name is known to history. Newspaper hawkers, known almost universally as newsboys, were not employed by the publishers of the papers that they sold. Instead, they were independent contractors who bought the papers in bundles of 100 for 50 cents and sold them for a penny each. Making a half-cent profit per paper. And I used the term newsboys deliberately, because newspaper vendors were almost universally boys. Girls selling newspapers on the street were simply not socially acceptable at the time. But that doesn’t mean that girls were spared the hardships of the era.

Child Labor Beyond Newsboys

Jake:
[17:02] Newsboys and bootblacks were simply the most visible symbols of child labor because their work was done in public, accosting people in the streets of Boston and every city by the late 19th century. However, children did all sorts of jobs. Girls might work in textile mills or as seamstresses, or stitching fine embroidery and lacework on fancy curtains. They often sold flowers or fresh fruit from push carts in Boston’s narrow streets, or scrubbed stains in Boston’s commercial laundries.

Jake:
[17:36] Boys might scavenge for firewood to sell, where wooden crates were being discarded or old buildings were being demolished. Or they might hire themselves out as day laborers to push a wheelbarrow or a shovel. They could run messages for a telegraph office or shine shoes on a street corner. Both boys and girls could scrape out a living as ash sifters, who went through trash piles and ash barrels to see if there were any useful scraps that could be repaired or resold, and they could sell Christmas trees or roast chestnuts in the right season. But the newsboys were always there, and they were always in your face. The young newsboys shouting the most sensational headlines of the day, who typically earned about 30 cents a day, which is very roughly equivalent to about $11 today, were essential to making the newspaper business profitable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Jake:
[18:36] Morning newspaper editions were often delivered directly to the homes of subscribers, but the more popular and profitable afternoon editions were only available on the street. In her book, Child Toilers of Boston Streets, Emma Brown describes the chaos that descended on Newspaper Row when the newsboys came to pick up the evening editions to sell to rush hour commuters. The several editions are hardly out of press before our newsboys are on the spot, and the Herald, Journal, Globe, Advertiser, Traveler, Times, Transcript, and Post are sounded through the streets by 300 pairs of lungs, long before the ink is dry.

Jake:
[19:21] But if you want to see a genuine rush, look into Williams Court some afternoon between the hours of 3 and 4. Williams Court is now Pie Alley, connecting Washington Street to Court Square and downtown crossing. But at the turn of the 20th century, this claustrophobic alley was Boston’s newspaper row. Brown continues, for the five o’clock edition, as it’s called, though it’s really ready for distribution an hour or two earlier, is the most important issue of the day. And the hand-to-hand scramble, then, for the first sheets as they come from the printers, is an exciting scene well worth witnessing.

Jake:
[20:01] In the peculiar weird light of the narrow court, the little urchins rushing, tumbling, screaming, hurrying hither and thither, and reaching pell-mell one over the other, look more like little elves than actual children. But while you’re wondering where they have all come from so suddenly and why it is they do not get into some inextricable tangle, there comes an unexpected lull. In another instant, the courts deserted, and up and down Washington Street, on Tremont Row, at the depots, the ferries, the different street corners, the entrance to the theater, concert, and lecture rooms, on the horse cars, the common, the gardens, the various public squares, the evening trains. No matter where you turn, the newsboy’s shrill cry pierces your brain.

Jake:
[20:53] Brown’s description of newsboys descending on Boston’s newspaper row at press time sounds like pure chaos, but that belies the truth that these tiny entrepreneurs were already pretty well regulated by 1894. In a 2020 article titled, Extra Extra, Boston Regulates Child Labor in the Streets, 1880-1895, which ran in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, Dr. Julie DeChantal describes how Boston attempted to protect, legitimize, and regulate underage workers through a licensing program for newspaper vendors.

Jake:
[21:31] Licensees received a badge that identified that they were appropriately licensed by the city. They’re also required to follow a series of rules that govern proper behavior while vending, restricted sales territories, and established a list of products allowed to be sold. In the book, Child Labor in Greater Boston, 1880-1920, Heim Rosenberg and Linda Clare Reed describe what the proper behavior that licensed newsboys were supposed to adhere to actually looked like. The newsboys were not permitted to jump on moving streetcars or to sell without wearing their badge. Newsboys were forbidden to be on the streets before 6 a.m. and had to stop working by 8 in the morning in order to get to school. They were required to attend school during some portion of the day, or to attend the newsboys school at least two hours each day. By 1910, there were 5,000 licensed newsboys in Boston. Two newsboys schools were established with special hours, so the boys could sell the morning and evening editions of the papers.

Jake:
[22:41] Professor DeChantel’s article continues, Similar to the vending licenses offered to adults, these licenses required an extensive and somewhat expensive application process. The father of the child was required to fill out paperwork, pay the associated processing fee of 75 cents, and submit the complete packet to the license office at City Hall during business hours. A city clerk reviewed the paperwork and sent it to the Board of Aldermen for approval. The aldermen discussed the attribution of licenses during their regular weekly city business meetings and would approve, delay, or reject applications. Instead of using the licensing process to remove child labor from the public eye, the board of aldermen used it to legitimize the presence of working children in the street. Some critics have argued that while this system protected the sellers who could jump through the bureaucratic hoops required to get a shiny silver newsboy’s badge, it actually pushed some of Boston’s most vulnerable workers further into the margins. The requirement that a father specifically apply for the license excluded orphans and children of single mothers, and the $0.75 application fee was beyond the means of the most impoverished newsboys who might barely earn more than that in a week.

Jake:
[24:02] Similarly, requirements for school attendance and minimum age pushed some desperate youngsters to sell papers without an official license, risking incarceration or worse. The fee was later raised to a full dollar, but the requirement that a father apply for the license was modified to allow either parent to fill out the paperwork. For those who had the means to attain a license, Emma Brown describes how the silver badge protected both the seller and the buyer. The bright badge they wear upon their jackets with their number and licensed upon it is in itself a guarantee of good behavior. For before obtaining this from the city government, the boys are on probation a certain length of time. If they prove worthy and promise faithfully to comply with the terms and conditions of a minor’s license, application is made for them by some responsible person to the board of aldermen, and in due course of time, they receive their license papers. Each boy has his own number, and by the payment of one dollar, the silver badges are given them, which they promise to wear conspicuously in sight, and on no condition, transfer, exchange, borrower, lend. If at any time they wish to give up their licenses, these badges are returned, and their money is paid back to them.

Jake:
[25:25] Professor de Chantel’s article points out that newsboy licenses were just the most public aspect of the new, progressive push to regulate child labor. While the newsboy’s silver badge was visible to any citizen who wanted to purchase an evening paper, new laws regulated working hours and conditions for children in stores, factories, and other workplaces. Whereas most state governments sided with industrialists repressing disorder and guaranteeing owners the use of their property without interference from protesting workers, Massachusetts officials sought to protect the state’s workforce. In 1866, the legislature passed the Factory Inspection Act, which limited women’s and children’s daily work hours and prevented children under the age of 10 from working in manufacturers or industries.

Jake:
[26:16] In 1874, the state further limited minors under the age of 18 to a maximum of 10 hours a day and allowed the state to find factories, corporations, or even parents who willfully violated the law.

Regulating Child Labor

Jake:
[26:30] As reformers began to challenge the very concept of child labor in the 1870s and 1880s, Boston’s Board of Aldermen took a different path toward regulating youth’s work on the street by creating a legitimate space in which child labor could take place. Rather than restricting or eliminating child labor, the Ottoman encouraged young workers to become productive citizens and good neighbors who provided for their families.

Jake:
[26:59] These regulations were meant to encourage newsboys to become productive workers and to protect them from the dangers of Boston streets. But the law did little to protect these children from the publishers whose newspapers they sold.

Collective Action and Unions

Jake:
[27:12] For that, newsboys relied on collective action, though they were pretty loosely organized until unions were formalized in the early 1900s. In a 2021 article, Professor Christina Groger points out, Starting in the 1870s, newsboys routinely went on strike over wholesale newspaper price increases or reductions in retail prices. The boys were required to buy the papers up front before selling them on the street. They heckled strikebreakers who tried to sell papers in their place and boycotted presses. Unions also regulated entry through enforcing licenses or badge requirements, and sometimes by excluding members on the basis of age, sex, or race. While labor actions were often quickly crushed by powerful newspaper companies, many newsboy unions won recognition in price concessions from management.

Jake:
[28:11] A Library of Congress site dedicated to researching newsboys identifies a strike in Detroit in 1886, in New York in 1887, and in Dallas in 1888, all over publishers who raised the wholesale price that newsboys paid for their papers. When Boston newsboys started their strike in July of 1894, they were part of a national movement. That spring, the American Railway Union, led by future international workers of the world president Eugene Debs, was on strike against the Pullman Company in Chicago. By July, the strike had become a nationwide boycott against railroads that used Pullman cars.

Jake:
[28:54] Sympathetic unions all over the country held strikes in support of the railway workers, putting union organizing on the front page of papers from coast to coast.

National Context of the Strike

Jake:
[29:04] While newsboys weren’t yet a formal part of the labor movement, they took inspiration from these boycotts when publishers raised their prices. Or, as the Brooklyn Times-Union put it in describing the Boston strike, the strike was not exactly out of sympathy with the Chicago strikers, nor is it believed that it was in obedience to Grandmaster Workman Sovereign’s general order. Newsboy boycotts were announced in Chicago on July 10th, in the Twin Cities on July 13th, and in Cleveland on July 17th. As far as I can tell from the news coverage, they all followed a pattern similar to the Boston strike, with newsboys refusing to sell papers that weren’t priced fairly, and publishers giving in pretty quickly. The largest 19th century newsboy strike took place in 1899 in New York City, as portrayed in the 1992 musical film Newsies. The film tells the story of Jack Kelly, a charismatic but fictional newsboy played by Christian Bale who dreams of a better life out West.

Jake:
[30:12] Kelly and his fellow newsboys are portrayed as impish but enterprising urchins whose world is turned upside down when Robert Duvall’s publishing titan, Joseph Pulitzer, raises the wholesale price of his newspaper, effectively slashing the boy’s meager earnings. Rallying behind Jack and his brainy newsboy pal David Jacobs, the Newsies unite to form a union and launch a citywide strike against Pulitzer, gaining the attention of a sympathetic reporter from a competing paper played by Bill Pullman. Despite facing intimidation and arrest, the newsboys persevere, ultimately printing their own newspaper to expose the injustices they face and appealing directly to Governor Theodore Roosevelt. Their collective action forces Pulitzer to concede, leading to improved conditions and better pay for the newsboys and the release of their friends from juvenile detention, in an all-singing, all-dancing Hollywood happy ending.

Jake:
[31:14] There really was a newsboy strike in New York in 1899, but it did not involve as much singing and dancing as the movie would have you believe. When the Spanish-American War started in 1898, New York publishers raised the wholesale cost that newsboys paid for their penny papers from 50 cents a bundle to 60 cents, with the assumption that the newsboys would make up the difference in volume. This more or less worked as long as the reading public was snapping up newspapers as fast as they came off the presses. But when hostilities ended, demand fell back to where it was before the war. Most publishers dropped their wholesale prices back to 50 cents a bundle, but not Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, nor William Randolph Hearst of the Evening Journal. This means that the Newsboys were only earning 40 cents on the dollar rather than 50, which is a similar hit to the Globe and Herald raising their price to 1.25 cents on a 2-cent paper, leaving the Boston Newsboys with 37.5 cents on the dollar. Unlike in Boston, where the strike ended after basically a single day, the New York Newsboy strike dragged out for weeks, and it ended in a compromise.

Jake:
[32:34] Boston strike against the Globe and Herald, the New York strike was directed at two specific publishers who refused to price their papers at a rate that would allow the newsboys to make a decent living. In the movie, any violence is basically directed at the newsboys by hired strikebreakers. But in reality, scabs who insisted on selling the boycotted papers in either New York or Boston risked getting roughed up by striking children and having their newspaper stocks destroyed.

The Reality of the New York Strike

Jake:
[33:05] There was no Cowboy Jack Kelly, but the New York strike was led by the charismatic, one-eyed 18-year-old newsboy known as Kid Blink. So there’s enough substance for the movie to at least get tagged as inspired by true events.

Jake:
[33:23] In the movie, as in the real-life Boston strike, the happy ending comes when the wholesale price increase is rolled back. But the reality in New York in 1899 was a bit different.

Jake:
[33:39] Hurst and Pulitzer stood firm on their 60-cent-per-bundle wholesale price, but they announced that they would start buying back any papers that the newsboys weren’t able to sell, removing a different financial burden to offset the increase in wholesale pricing. Silver badges emblazoned with a license number weren’t the only reform to affect Boston’s newsboys in the Progressive Era. As I mentioned briefly when quoting Rosenberg and Reed, two special schools were founded during this period to meet the particular needs of newsboys. But they are also served by a dedicated library, a newsboy club, and eventually a specialized court system. An 1880 Directory of the Charitable and Beneficient Organizations of Boston, published by the Associated Charities of Boston, gives a brief description of the Library for Newsboys, which was located nearly across the street from the Granary Burying Ground and just around the corner from Newspaper Row. Reading Room for Newsboys and Boot Blacks, Incorporated 1879 35 Bromfield Street, Ward 10 Open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. A resort where books, papers, games, regular entertainments, practical talks, drawing class, etc. will be furnished. Improvement and cleanliness are encouraged and inducements offered to save.

The Newsboy Reading Room

Jake:
[35:07] For the 30 years between its founding and the creation of the Boston Newsboys Club, this reading room became the epicenter of Boston Newsboy life. Keep in mind that some of these kids were homeless. Most of them were from families on the absolute margins of society, living in abject poverty with few options to participate in the wider culture. Having a refuge with books, enrichment classes, and a peer group was a godsend for many of them. Among the enrichment activities available through the Reading Room, according to the July 13, 1894 Boston Post, was an outing to the theater the very night before the Newsboys went on strike. The small army of Boston Newsboys will be made happy tonight by a visit to Davy Jones at the museum as the guests of the management. Superintendent Reed of the Newsboys’ reading room is kindly undertaken to collect the forces in Pie Alley in the early evening. There, they will get their credentials in the shape of a cap bearing the mystic words, Davy Jones.

Jake:
[36:15] The Boston Globe of the next day adds a colorful description of the outing to the Boston Museum that was arranged through the Newsboys’ reading room. Pie Alley was in a state of the wildest excitement for about an hour yesterday evening. Scores of newsboys with Davy Jones white caps jostled each other, and scores of other newsboys made a wild rush to get the caps. We’s going to the theater, said a little urchin as he clutched the cap, which was the ticket of admission. Yes, said another, and we’s going to see Davy Jones.

Jake:
[36:52] At 7.30, there was a long line of newsboys, clean and dirty, large and small, gathered in Pie Alley, ready for the march to the Boston Museum. Bunzo, a big youth in blue clothes with a white cap, headed the procession, and little DeSassa brought up the rear. It was a motley group, and the boys pushed and squeezed to get to the front. After some persuasion and a little bit of rough talk, the frisky young urchins were got into something like order, when they gave three lusty cheers for Davy Jones and marched out of the alley. When they got to the theater, they halted and gave some ringing cheers for Superintendent Reed and for the theater. Crowds gathered round the door to see the pranks of the bright youngsters who sell the papers on the streets. Mr. Reed stood on the steps, and the boys called out their numbers and were told to slip in lively. They lost no time and were up the steps in an instant. The gallery of the theater was soon filled, and the boys broke out into lively cheering as the curtain went up.

Jake:
[37:59] Judging from that description of one of their outings, the Newsboy Reading Room had to be the most boisterous library in Boston during those years.

Formation of the Boston Newsboys Club

Jake:
[38:07] That would change, at least somewhat, starting in 1909, when the social aspects of the Reading Room were split from its actual function as a library. In their book, Child Labor in Greater Boston, 1880-1920, Rosenberg and Reed outline how Frederick Gray Frothingham bequeathed $30,000, and in 1909, the old children’s mission was purchased and renovated as the Boston Newsboys Club.

Jake:
[38:37] Soon, the club had 3,000 Newsboy members. After buying their building at 277 Tremont Street across the street from today’s Wang Theater, the Boston Newsboy Club had a budget of $19,482 in their first year. When their stated mission was to befriend in every possible way the newsboys and other boys of the city of Boston, without distinction as to race, color, or creed. Their annual report says they served 600 youth in 1910, with five paid employees. Reed and Rosenberg note, After selling newspapers, the boys came to their club to relax over games and play pool. The Newsboys Club was heated against winter cold and supervised by adult staff. Most of the boys came from poor and crowded tenement homes and welcomed the comforts of their club.

Jake:
[39:36] Decade after Boston newsboys forced the Globe and Herald to reinstate their penny-per-paper wholesale costs, things came full circle. Back in 1894, they went on a wildcat strike with no authorization for their union leadership and, in fact, no union leadership at all. The 1894 strike was an organic reaction to the price hikes, organized at the grassroots by the young workers themselves. By the turn of the century, Boston’s newsboys were getting organized for real, with the 2021 article by Professor Groger outlining how they won recognition from the American Federation of Labor, one of the fastest-growing union groups in the country. Newsboys organized mutual benefit societies in unions in dozens of cities, serving as founding members of the Juvenile Knights of Labor in 1886.

Jake:
[40:31] Side note, the Knights of Labor were a predecessor and competitor to the AF of L, and the Juvenile Knights focused on workers 15 to 20 years old. Boston was one of the first cities where they became active, though growth was slow for decades.

Rise of the Newsboys Protective Union

Jake:
[40:49] Dr. Groger continues, Boston’s Newsboys Protective Union, one of the most successful Newsboy unions, founded in 1902 and affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, campaigned to lift the municipal curfew and end police harassment of its members, and also offered Newsboys respectability through its sponsored balls, educational programming, and ban on gambling.

Jake:
[41:16] Newsboys continued to be essential to the business model of Boston newspapers well into the 20th century, and their social standing and power expanded as their numbers grew. Soon after gaining recognition from the AF of L, the Boston Newsboys Protective Union got serious about organizing. While they had been seen as proto-entrepreneurs through much of the 19th century, the dawn of the 20th saw them shaking this Horatio Alger image of the self-made businessman, becoming icons of organized labor instead. It’s ironic, then, that Professor Carol Nackenoff’s article about the formation of the governing body of this child union ran in a 2012 edition of the official journal of the Horatio Alger Society. She writes, On Bunker Hill Day, 1908, approximately 3,000 Newsies met and ratified their founding and governing document. This new government for newsboys raised the minimum age for newsboys from 10 to 11 and set an 8 p.m. Curfew. It had been 10 p.m. They apparently also had the power to regulate the minimum age for boot blacks and to police other street trades plied by the young. This governing body was known at first as the Boston Newsboys Republic, and on Bunker Hill Day in 1910, they proposed an expansion of their power.

Jake:
[42:46] Since the beginning, Boston Newsboys have been under constant threat of becoming wards of the state or even prisoners when disputes arose over territory or pricing, or just over whether their licenses were properly displayed. They believed that beat cops and the municipal court system unfairly targeted teen and pre-teen newsboys who had no choice but to work in Boston’s streets, So the concession they won in 1910 was seen as a major victory for working children, The September 1910 edition of the New England Journal of Education reported on a new system of justice in Boston, The school committee tentatively adopted a plan for a trial board of newsboys to investigate and punish violations of licenses held by newsboys who attend the public schools. And the matter was referred to the superintendent and other school officials for study and recommendations.

Jake:
[43:43] The plan was submitted by Alexander Peckham, E.L. Curran, president of the Boston Newsboys Club, and Mitchell Freeman of the West End House. The scheme provides for the appointment of two adult citizens by the board, who will be associated with three Boston Newsboys attending the public schools, elected by the Newsboys scholars. The trial boards will meet at the Newsboys Club, and the Newsboy members will be paid 50 cents each for each meeting attended. The supervisor of licensed minors will bring complaints against newsboys before the trial board, instead of in the juvenile court as at present.

Jake:
[44:23] Dr. Nakhinov’s article continues with a description of this compromised solution struck between the union, the schools, and the courts. The court would deal with all first offenses against the rules and regulations governing the trade. The newsboys’ court handled these complaints in lieu of the juvenile court, which was established in Boston by statute in 1906, and police officers were instructed to bring complaints against newsboys to the newsboys court. I simply can’t imagine modern Boston, or any city for that matter, turning the civil and criminal justice system for children over to the children themselves. But that is exactly what happened a little over a century ago. After the newsboys court had been in existence for a bit over a year, Lewis E. Palmer reported on it in the December 2, 1911 edition of the magazine The Survey.

Jake:
[45:19] The Boston Newsboys Republic consists of all newsboys between the ages of 11 and 14, licensed by the school committee. The Republic has some citizens over 14 who attend school and agree not to smoke, gamble, shortchange, or do anything whatever unbecoming a young citizen. It has been in existence for about four years and is a self-governing scheme applied to the needs of the trade. It is made up of 3,000 licensed newsboys, 100 additional captains and lieutenants elected annually by the boys according to school districts, a chief captain, a general secretary, and seven district captains. The newsboys’ trial court, established about a year ago, is the Republic’s Department of Justice. The court consists of three newsboy judges elected from the ranks of the captains, a clerk, and two adult judges appointed by the school committee. The court deals with all violations of license regulations and minor troubles which before had clogged the juvenile court. A year’s trial has proved the newsboy’s court a success.

Jake:
[46:32] At first, the Newsboys’ Protective Union was organized within the American Federation of Labor on a probationary basis. But within a few years, they won more formal recognition. Even before the Newsboys’ court was formed, Professor DeCentel’s article describes how the trial run in Boston inspired a permanent national union of youth newspaper vendors across the country. On the eighth day of the 1906 convention of the AFL, one of the union leaders proposed that the Newsboys Union be made permanent, adding to the legitimacy of the newspaper boys as workers. The representative acknowledged that the union had been of a great benefit to the Newsboys, both in bettering the conditions in their vocation and in the education of their members, thereby gaining the respect to the labor movement and the general public in their vicinity. That year, the AFL resolved to make the Boston Union permanent and to help newspaper boys organize across the country, despite their young age.

Legacy of Child Labor Regulations

Jake:
[47:36] With the formation of the Newsboys Protective Union, the Progressive-era goal of legitimizing child labor and protecting child workers from harm and overwork was achieved. At least, that is, among these most visible symbols of child labor on the streets of Boston. The campaign to bring child labor to an end and create the modern childhood as we know it would have to wait a few more decades, until the era of the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Resources and Further Reading

Jake:
[48:05] To learn more about Boston’s newsboy strike, check out this week’s show notes at hubhistory.com slash 331. I’ll have a ton of links and resources for you this week, starting with the photographs taken by Lewis Hine. I’ll include a few of his photos of Boston newsboys in the show notes this week, like the iconic shot of newsboys playing pool at the newsboy club on Tremont Street, and young newsies lined up outside the offices of the Boston Globe. But I’ll also link to galleries of his photos from Boston that show child workers in other industries who didn’t enjoy the regulatory and union protections that the newsboys did. I’ll link to news articles covering the 1894 Newsboys strike in Boston, as well as sympathetic strikes around the country. Plus, contemporary articles about the Newsboys club and a Newsboys scholarship, and that 1880 summary of child labor laws in Massachusetts. I’ll link to the scholarly articles I quoted from at length, from Professors Julie DeCentel, Carol Nackenoff, and Christina Groger. I’ll also link to journal articles from 1910 and 1911 reporting on the formation of the unique Newsboys Court in Boston and to Emma Brown’s 1879 book Child Toilers of Boston Streets.

Jake:
[49:30] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hubhistory.com. If you’re on social media, you can reach out to me through the profiles for Hub History on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. But if you want to see more about what I’m doing and hear my opinions, check me out on Blue Sky, where you can find my profile by searching for hubhistory.com. If Mastodon’s your preferred poison, you can find me over there as at hubhistoryatbetter.boston. The very simplest way to get in touch with me is to go to hubhistory.com and click on the Contact Us link. While you’re on the site, hit the Subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode. If you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, please consider reviewing the show. If you write something nice about it, drop me a line and I’ll send you a Hub History sticker as a token of appreciation. That’s all for now Stay safe out there, listeners.