You're Wrong About - The Newsboys' Strike of 1899 (Part 1)

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Sarah tells Mike about media history, labor organizing, century-old moral panics — and the unlikely Disney musical that introduced her to all three. Digressions include Sting, "The Princess Bride" and 19th century graphic design. Both co-hosts recount their extremely millennial work histories.Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere else to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

I feel like there's not enough attention paid in media to teen girls wanting to get into locker rooms and this movie really expresses that. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that stares into the past and sometimes into the future. I love that. Yes, I have actually changed topics on you, but that tagline is still relevant for the topic I've landed on. Don't worry, you have seen into the future. Wait, we're not doing the psychics episode? Well, we will soon, but yeah, not at the second. We're doing something perhaps even better. I am Michael Hobbs. I am a reporter for The Huffington Post who has no idea what's going on. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the safe panic panic. I kind of know

what's going on sometimes. And if you'd like to support the show, we're on patreon at patreon.com slash you're wrong about and you can find us in other places and I'm rushing through this because I want to know what we're talking about today. Yay! Okay, so here's what happened with today's topic. I told you we were doing police psychics. Yes. And I was researching that and then I was like, you know, if I'm doing this, it really makes sense to just start from the beginning and tell the story of the police. Well, it is time that we talked about sting on this podcast. And then I thought, well, that will be a really fun and harrowing journey. But before we do that, I would like us to do something on the cozier side. Okay. Because it's November and very little in this

world is making me happy right now. But you know, it does make me happy. Plants? That's true. But also newsies. Oh, I want to start with some newsies background. And then we're going to do the news boys strike. Okay, now my tagline is way off. No, I think your tagline is great. And you will see how apropos it is hopefully by the end of this episode. And then we'll discuss its aproponist further in our second episode. Fabulous. Mike, what is the movie newsies? I know nothing. I haven't seen it. All I know is what you have told me on various bonus episodes, which is that I guess it's about little boys who sell newspapers, and they sing, and they go on strike at some point. That's very true, except for the descriptor little boys,

because while there are some little children in this movie, quite a lot of it is about strapping teen boys, including future Batman, Christian Bale. Oh, I thought they were like five. Okay. When I was a 15 year old girl, I found this news very intriguing, which is why I first sat up and watched newsies. And my fascination with newsies in a nutshell is that Disney somehow produced a very pro union pro labor rights pro beating up scabs movie in 1992, Disney. And it's also this unique example in 90s media of something that had something positive to say about unions and about labor rights. I mean, I think I'm speaking about my household, but I'm also speaking about sort of the American white middle class and the

propaganda. There was this idea that like unions had gone too far. Yeah. And they were just corrupt and like Jimmy Hoffa, etc. That's absolutely the information that I grew up with that unions were like this okay idea, but the auto unions had gotten way too radical. And the teachers unions, you couldn't fire anybody. Right. The public transit unions would go on strike in completely cripple cities. I mean, this was completely the rhetorical waters that I grew up in. And then coming into adulthood as a millennial in a workforce that is very different from the workforce, you know, that I was raised by much like the characters in newsies, you're like, wouldn't it be nice if we had a union to protect us? And I feel as if there's something about

the millennial experience of being a content worker that the people who made newsies could not have anticipated would resonate so deeply with with the children that they made this movie for because the I mean, Mike, what does it mean to be in the business of creating content as a member of the millennial workforce? You're like a gig worker, you do jobs for magazines and newspapers and you agree on a price and then you write an article and then they publish the article and then you harass them to pay you and it takes I waited 18 months once to get paid for an article. And then, you know, you don't get health insurance, you don't get retirement benefits, you don't get disability. If you get the flu for two weeks,

you don't get money for two weeks. I mean, it's just complete precarity. You know, another example is academia. The majority of university courses in the United States are taught by non-tenure track faculty. Being an adjunct is essentially being a contractor at a university. Adjuncts in academia usually don't know if they're going to have a course the following semester, even if they're teaching courses now. And it's also common to be teaching at multiple institutions. When I was adjuncting at my alma mater Portland State, I and all the other adjuncts were kept at 0.49 FTE, which meant that we were slightly below the half time that we would have to be at to get health insurance. It's so dark. This is so common when I used to

be a contractor for Microsoft, they had a deal with the U.S. Justice Department over exactly these practices, basically using contractors as if they were full-time employees. And what they had to do is every year, they would fire you and they would wait a hundred days and then hire you back. That was what the Justice Department said that if somebody is employed for more than a year, then you have to start treating them as an employee. And so instead of treating these people as employees, Microsoft was like, no, no, we're just going to create this baroque clockwork weird system where we fire people for the minimum amount possible and then rehire them back over and over again. And I had colleagues who had done this for like eight years in a row.

It's just that you're never really fully there. There are a huge number of gig workers in today's economy. There's also a huge class of workers that are not gig workers but still exist in the same precarity. The example you always hear is that a company like GM, they have these massive factories, they have these huge operations with all these ancillary services. And so there was a time when all of the cafeteria workers and people who did laundry at GM, those all would have been GM employees. So they would have had similar pay scales. They would have been on the ladder to get promotions elsewhere into the company and they could have worked themselves up into more corporate style jobs. Whereas now, most large companies, everything is outsourced. So all of

the cafeteria workers at Apple's main campus in California, they're not Apple employees. They're employees of like food services, international LTD or whatever. A lot of those people are making very low wages and they don't really have a ladder into these more stable forms of employment. There's no promotion. If you're somebody who cleans office buildings at night or hotels at night, you can't get promoted to like western hotels corporate because you're just on a completely different ladder. Yeah. And I feel as if people who run companies aren't always as stupid as they look. And I think they know what kind of conditions breed solidarity between workers and what kind of conditions make it much harder and make organizing harder. It's funny. I was just reading

a policy PDF on this the other day and in the back in the recommendations, one of the bullet points was what needs to change. There need to be a series of strapping young teenage boys who are singing and dancing and talking about these conditions. I think that that's often what we're missing. And so this movie did very poorly when it was released. It was in theaters for either weeks or days. I actually remember it coming out. Really? I remember as a kid wanting to see it and by the time I sort of got up the gumption to actually make moves to go see it, it was gone. That's the story of Newsies. Like three days later, everyone was like, whatever happened to Newsies? Yeah. And my understanding of the Newsies story is that that's what happened when it was released

theatrically. And then it was released on video. And like a lot of movies in the 90s, including The Princess Bride, slowly became a classic on the rental market. And tween and teen girls, such as myself, and you know, non girls, but boy, a heck of a lot of girls were drawn to this movie because it was about boys. And they danced and they sang and they had feelings. And then also, because of that, we were drawn into the story of workers' rights and how you must violently defend them if necessary. I for a long time thought that that's the most wonderful thing that's ever happened. And so I recently started researching the actual News Boy strike because for a long time I've had these ideas of like, it would be fun to do an episode on the News Boy strike,

it would be fun to do an episode on the Titanic, like the historical Titanic, because put them off because like, because they sound fun and I'm not allowed to do fun things. So yeah, we're doing the News Boy strike now. Wait, why are you allowed to do fun things? I have a Puritan ancestor named Lancelot Granger. There's not a lot of fun coursing through these veins. So where do we start on this News Boy strike? Okay. Or maybe News People. I don't know what the situation was.

This actually reminds, your question reminds me of a great interview that I found on C-Span Vincent D'Gerallimo who wrote a book that I am relying on for quite a lot of my research on this topic called Crying the News, which is about news boys. And so the interviewer asks him, who are the News Boys? And he's like, well, they're boys and girls and old women and all kinds of people. Basically, being a News Boy means that you sell the news and the majority of those workers were children and youths, basically. The majority of them were male, but there were a lot of girls, there were adults doing it. But in answer to the question of who are the Newsies, I want to bring up an article that I actually read in my first ever grad

school lit class with Mod Hines at PSU, which is by an author named Karen Sanchez Epler, who's an American studies professor at Amherst. It's very interesting to look at the way that child workers and children who are existing in this interesting complex gray area because on the one hand, they're child laborers and we understand that the forces of capital are exploiting them and that this is one of the problems with the society that we have. And yet also, we see people feeling not just concerned for the Newsies, but anxious about the Newsies because Newsies have power. Newsies have an unusual amount of agency for child laborers because they actually do make enough money that they can have something aside from the bare bones to spend on themselves and

they can purchase amusements and they can purchase, you know, this is the exact same scripts for Carover Time. So there's a lot of concern over the Newsies spending too much money on fine food and cigars to advance themselves. And it's like, they are teenage boys, like they have put in their hours, let them, I mean, I'm not a fan of children smoking, but like it was 1899, everyone just, babies smoked, you know, so it's not about health, is it? So candy was the 1890s equivalent of Fortnite? I feel like it's that same policing that we see as a way to distract people from sort of the inexorability of class status in the United States, this idea that if poor people would only save their money and be responsible, then they would be able to climb the ladder. And it's

like, no, you basically end up where you were born in this country, if not a few rungs below that. And you might as well just get comfortable on the rung you're on, like it's not illogical for people to behave that way. And it's gaslighting to imply that it's possible to escape a sinkhole that everyone knows is inescapable. And also the idea that guilty pleasures or any pleasures really are something you have to earn. If you're not sort of an upstanding member of society, whatever that means, that you don't get to have things like treats or you don't get to watch entertainment that is diverting, it's like, no, no, you should be doing something intellectually diligent, even though that's not a standard that we apply to rich people.

It's weird, right? It's like you get to a certain point and then you can do whatever you want. And then before that, like if you buy like some nice yogurt for yourself, then there's going to be some off bad column that's being like, you'll never pay off your student loans if you buy the nice yogurt. And it's like, I mean, it's funny too, because I think, you know, my problem with the sort of Disney ethos is that it, you know, the moral of Disney is believe in yourself and your dreams will come true, which is kind of the American aphorism or whatever. And it's perfect for us because it's vague enough that like, if you're a fascist, and your dream is to be a fascist, then like, sure, whatever, that's great, because it's a very value neutral sentiment. It's like, you

know, no matter what your dreams are, like they're equally valid because of their dreams. And so somehow a dream of socialism really slipped right through the nuts. So that could have been the best thing that happened in the 90s, you know, I'm on the fence about it. But this is from the second annual report of the Children's Aid Society by Charles Loring Brace, is quoted in Karen Sanchez Epler's article, which is called Playing at Class. And Brace writes, the class of news boys were then apparently the most wild and vicious set of lads in the city. Many of them had no home and slept under steps in boxes or in corners of the printing house stairways. I'm laughing because I guess it feels like there's describing stray cats. Their money, which was

easily earned, was more quickly spent in gambling theaters and low pleasures for which, though children, they had a man's aptitude. I feel like this is like getting into some of your sweet spots actually, because we're taking like workers rights, working conditions, and, and child labor, and homelessness and youths as concepts that society fails to understand. And this nuts together all of them and then just takes us back in time 100 years. Well, I do think there's something interesting about the sort of societal conception of child labor, that that's something that we had to invent in some ways, because for a really long time, child labor just meant kids working on farms and kids helping out their parents. So the discourse for a very long time was like, I don't

think we need this label child labor, because children do labor all the time. Like that's the nature of childhood in America is a lot of labor. So it took a really long time for us to sort of drive in that distinction between sort of exploitative, capitalistic labor, like the kind that we're talking about with the newsies or factory work or in mines, and the kind of family labor. Like we still have trouble with that line today. I don't know where we were on that spectrum in 1890s, but the idea of children working was not like inherently offensive to humans for a very long time. Oh, yeah. Part of the paradigm shift that had to happen for people was conceiving of children as human beings, right? Because we talked in our Stranger Danger episode about how the concept

of child abuse didn't exist until such a time as it became necessary to come up with a charge that you could use to remove a child from an unsafe situation. And the closest thing was animal abuse. Animal abuse existed before child abuse did as something that was legally defined. But so how did these kids end up homeless? Like whose kids were these the newsies? One of the interesting years wrong about about newsies is that most of them weren't homeless. Oh, yeah. I'm talking about huge swaths of time. This is like over a century's worth of history here. But at the time of the news boys strike, I mean, I think one of the things that the movie Newsies actually fails to represent accurately is that a large number of these boys had families

that they went home to, had schools that they went to and then would sell an early edition before school and sell the afternoon edition after they got out of school. And then a lot of them also were living in the news boys' lodging houses. But these were kids who also had families that they were going to and bringing their wages to and that they were expected to help. And they were doing this partly as their way of contributing to the family. So the idea here that we're getting with this idea of like this news boy as stray cats sleeping in boxes under the stairs is that the news boys' lodging house are these important institutions through which we can reach and shape these young impressionable boys. And the rhetoric that we see a lot of at the time is that it is

up to the adults and to their economic patrons, basically, to ensure that they don't go down the path to criminality, to stop them from wasting their money, gambling. And I don't know, it seems like managing a boy band, basically. So Sanchez Eppler writes, Frederick Starr explains that at the Philadelphia News Boys' Lodging House, pains is taken gradually to refine their tastes by entertaining lectures, readings, dramatic or otherwise, and innocent games. Yet the Lodging House game he describes with greatest detail does not appear very likely to refine its players. And Starr says, A certain game, admitting of no other euphemism in its suggested title, has possession of the floor. This is no other than the pile of maggots. The rule is for all to

quote, pile in, the best fellow keeping on top without injuring his competitors. Of course, the party who supposes himself uppermost has but brief time for exultation, soon finding himself at the bottom of the heap. The struggle is generally of short duration, for as the fun grows fast and furious, the smaller boy is shouting, Ouch, get off of me, fellers. The superintendent taps a bell and all is quiescent, instant, her. I just feel that it's important to contextualize the newsies as these young adults, many of them just children, who adult reformers are interested in and trying to shape and to mold. And at the end of the day, they are teenagers who want to jump in a big pile. And I think that this all is part of why

the strike was successful, because this was a strike that feels like it had the energy and the character of the young in it. So how did this job work? You stand on the corner and you say, I've got the Herald five cents or whatever, and people buy it and then you, do you get paid on commission or do you get paid hourly? It's just so funny to me that you haven't seen newsies. I'm just like, Mike, every school girl knows that the way being a news boy in the 19th century works is that you buy your papes from the distributor. So in newsies, the prices that they're dealing with are half a cent per paper, and then they sell them for a penny. And so if you buy 100 papers, you spend 50 cents, you sell them all for a dollar total, you get a 50 cent profit.

Okay. So you're in control of the profit margin. You are actually an independent worker. But it also means that if you have a slow day and you don't sell all 100 papers that you bought from the distributor, it's you that suffers, not the distributor or the newspaper because they've already sold it to the middleman. Hence the lyrics in the opening song of newsies, I got to find an angle. I got to sell more papes. So the news boys strike comes about in 1899 when basically Hearst and Pulitzer decide to raise the price of the papers for the newsies. So if I'm a newsie and I'm buying 100 papers a day, then I have a 50 cent turnaround. The proposed raise in the price that I'm going to pay to get my papers is from five cents for 10 papers or

half a cent per paper to six cents for 10 papers, which means I'm now spending 60 cents for my papers and making a 40 cent profit. Which is a huge, huge cut in your profits. Yes. And interestingly, all of this happens partly because of the Spanish-American War. So this is from David Nassau's Children of the City, which inspired newsies. The event that was to lead to the newsies strike of 1899 was the wholesale price increase that Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World had instituted in 1898 at the height of the Spanish-American War circulation boom. The publishers, especially Hearst and Pulitzer, had been spending far more money competing with one another in extra editions, splashy front pages, and eyewitness reports than they could hope to

recoup in advertising and sales. By raising prices to newsies from five cents to six cents for 10 papers, they expected to reduce their losses to manageable levels. The boys, as long as they were making money hawking extra editions with horror story front pages, did not protest the price increase. And so the news boys can cope with this price increase for as long as the war is still happening and as long as they have the splashy headlines, but then the war ends. And then they're still making 40 cents for every hundred papers they sell, but maybe you can't sell 100 papers when there isn't a war happening. Right. That makes sense. So once public interest deflates the industry sort of as a whole, they realize what has just happened. And I actually have prepared

for you. So the news boys strike begins in July of 1899. I'm going to send you a couple of front pages right before the strike. And I want us to play a game where you can imagine that you're a news boy and that you have to sell this paper. Oh, God. This is a front page of the New York Times from June 30th, 1899. And we'll have a link to this in show notes. For fuck's sake, the graphic design. Jesus. There's just like a million columns. And the headlines are like barely larger than the actual text. We've all been wondering when there was a time when nothing was happening. And it turns out it's June 1899. Yeah. How do you know what I'm looking at here? There's like 50 stories on the front page. And none of them seem to be more important than the others. I know. My little

millennial brain needs some sort of prioritization of information. I know. I know we talk about clickbait, but it turns out that like it is passionate list of everything that happened today is not actually better. Like the front page of a newspaper shouldn't give you a bunch of headlines that just make you go, Oh, yeah. Okay. The biggest headline just says Harvard's Day of Triumph, victorious in all three boat races with the ale. Like that's actually the biggest headline. Yeah, that's really appealing to the Simpsons writers demographic. I get the sense that the New York Times has always struggled with the concept of relevancy. Page five, then our recent steamer, Krim, which arrived here from Cuba yesterday,

had a case of yellow fever on board. Also, a lot of the stories seem kind of low key, not news. Like one of them just says death leads to marriage in Chicago. That could just be a tourism slogan for Chicago. Yeah. Welcome to Chicago where death leads to marriage. So it says Chicago, June 29th. Peter W. Hansen and someone, someone whose name is ripped off, both of Racine, Wisconsin were married here today. The bride was the widow of the Reverend J. Tope, a Baptist minister of Racine, who died suddenly some time ago from overexertion in riding a bicycle. Oh, Mr. Hansen, who was an ex policeman, was called to sit on the corner's jury, which investigated the death. He soon became interested in the young woman,

and she in turn found him attractive. The outcome of this romantic attachment was the procuring of the marriage license in Chicago. X-tree, X-tree, lady gets married. So this is what the news boys had to sort of sex up to get people to buy on the street corners, basically. So one of the practices for which news boys are notorious is spinning a story into something bigger and more interesting to try and get people to purchase their paper. So if I were a news boy, I would say, X-tree, X-tree, yellow fever outbreak. Yeah. The one about the lady marrying the guy, you could pretend that the dude killed the guy on the bike. Or you could say, X-tree, X-tree, man murdered by invention. I'm showing you all this to impress upon you, just to me, the sense

of dismay that would perhaps come over you as you sit down to look at the headlines and to try and sell this fucking thing. Yeah. And to do it 100 times today. So the news boys just all got together and decided we're not going to go pick up the papers from the warehouse today? Well, let me answer you with another quote. So Nassau writes, it is difficult to say where or precisely how the strike began. The first reported actions took place in Long Island City, where the newsies discovered that the journal delivery man had been cheating them. On July 18th, they took the revenge by tipping over his wagon, running off with his papers and chasing him out of town. And then word of this travels to the Manhattan newsies, who on July 19th, the following

day, hold an assembly at City Hall Park and announce their intentions to strike the following day. They say, give us back our original prices, our pre-war prices, 50 cents for 100 papers. And if you don't, then we're striking. They're essentially holding their labor hostage, which I guess is what a strike is. But I just felt the need to say that, I guess. So what appears to have happened is that there was a relatively small action on Long Island City. Word travels to newsies closer to the distribution points that they need to take out and closer to the bosses that they need to communicate with. I feel like this is how we see protests happen today. There's smaller events that precipitate the larger and more decisive ones, and also that there are often

parallel evolutions happening in different neighborhoods or different parts of the country. Yeah, it's interesting that when conservative politicians talk about a thousand points of light or the big society, they don't mean trade union strikes. They don't mean direct action. Anyway, let's watch a number from newsies. This is an historic moment. I feel in a way that all my life has been leading up to this, but I say that whenever I show newsies to someone for the first time. So this is the scene where we are learning through the language of musicals, they've decided to go on strike. The way that the creators of newsies have compressed the disparate opening story where it starts in Long Island City and Manhattan takes notice, etc., is to just have

two characters who are the Moses and Aaron combo. Through the dialogue between these two characters, we get a series of skits on what a union is and how to make it, and then express all that through song. Hell yeah. Three, two, one, go. We're union just by saying so. Stop someone else from selling our paper. What's up with them? Some of them don't hear so good. We're them musokos.

No, we can't be upkitting the street or give us a bad name. Can't get any rights. What's it gonna take to stop the wagons? Are we ready? Yeah. No. What's it gonna take to stop the scabbers? Can we do it?

Yeah. We'll do what we gotta do until we break the wheel of mighty Phil and Joe. And the world will know and the journal too. There's the horse and pole and so have we got those for you. Now the world will hear what we've got to say. We can hawk in headlines but we're making up today. And our rights will grow and we'll kick the rear. And the world will know that we've been here.

That's right. That's what the thing is anyway. Impressions. It was poifect. No, I'm realizing, okay, I'm realizing why I have not seen this as an adult. No offense to anyone involved in this film or anyone who likes this film. Oh, boy. Two of the things that induce involuntary shuttering cringe responses for me are A,

singing, and B, child actors. Yeah. It's like physically difficult for me to watch this. Any singing? Basically. Really? Especially people looking at the camera and singing. You can't watch any Abba videos.

I know. But yeah, 90% of this movie is kids singing. I know. It is worth talking about why this movie is what it is, right? Because I feel like it's a weird thing for Disney to have decided to do. It wasn't going to be a musical. And then they're like, let's make it a musical. And then maybe that will make it less weird.

And then they're like, cool. We're going to get some kids who can sing and some kids who can do gymnastics and some kids who can act. And almost none of them will be the same kids. It's funny Christian Bale's never sung since this. He did not know it was going to be a musical when he agreed to do it. And I still feel sad for that betrayal happening to him. What was that conversation like?

Christian, quick thing. But the lyrics are, I mean, they are very labor rightsy. Like Pulitzer may own the world, but he don't own us. And then in another song, one of the lyrics is, nothing can break us. No one can make us give our rights away. Which is like this very radical core concept that you as a child worker intrinsically have rights, that you have workers rights and that you have this sovereign power as an individual.

There's also, I mean, I think it was something along the lines of we're in a union when we say we're in a union. It's something that exists because a large group of people say it exists and take it seriously. Which is also, I mean, that's basically what governments are. That's what currency is. That's what police forces are. I mean, a lot of the sort of core concepts of modern life are actually the same structure that if a bunch of people say that this thing exists, then it does meaningfully exist.

It's also kind of radical for people in positions like these to just be able to say it. Like, look, all it takes is for all of us to believe in this thing and then it will happen. I really love the irony of the fact that the newsies are this fixation of benevolent societies and there's this idea that they exist in this precarious space and they must be shaped into wholesome young adults. And really, it's like, I think the lack of shaping partly that makes them capable of grasping these ideas because if they were more shaped by the world than they have been, then they would have been adjusted maybe more fully to a world where it's obvious that they

don't have rights because workers don't really have rights and children definitely don't. Yeah, and they would have been playing checkers instead of blackjack. Instead of pile of maggots. Instead of pile of maggots. Yes, so what happens, what ends up happening with the strike? So July 19th, they rally in City Hall Park. They announce that they're going to go on strike unless the prices are rolled back to 50 cents per 100 papers.

And then they go about doing the business of starting a union. So this is another Nassau quote. Officers were elected a committee on discipline chosen, a strategy debated, and delegates sent out to spread the word to the Newsies at 59th Street and in Harlem, Brooklyn, Long Island City and Jersey. Wow, and all before the subway. I know, and they're traveling on foot. Yes, like I'm sure there's there's fairies and I don't know.

You can like Marty McFly on to like a slow moving cart or something like that. A city bike system. The Newsies acted swiftly not because they were children but because the moment was fortuitous. The Brooklyn Street car 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. Nice. They're being strategic about it too.

And they understand that there just isn't going to be enough adult authority to intervene in the kind of wall that they're going to put up between the newspapers and their customers. So it's basically the dancing montage from the breakfast club, except it's like an entire sector of the economy. So they demand that their prices be rolled back. They've strategized that the police will be otherwise occupied and all that is left is for Hearst and Pulitzer to meet their demands, which obviously they don't because it's a bunch of kids who cares what they say.

Yes. So this is the way the sun reported on the first day of the strike. 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 wagon started, there was a great howl and a shower of missiles which made the driver's jobs uncomfortable. The police came on the run and the boys scattered hastily. For an order 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 were in their headgear placards denouncing the scab extras and calling on the public to boycott them. Yo. So they try to stop the wagons from coming out. They do end up scattering because the strike leaders themselves have decided that they're not going to assault the police. And then the delivery drivers go out and then are met at their individual distribution points around the city by the newsies.

So again, here's another sun quote about a group estimated at 400 or 500 news boys who were at the 59th Street distribution point. They had decorated the newsstands and lamp posts with banners inscribed, please don't buy the world or journal. Help the news boys. Our cause is just we will fight for our rights and other pregnant sentiments. Okay. 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 sweaped 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. This is also a time in American history when people really did resolve arguments with brawling. Quite a bit more than we have now.

Let's keep this point because I know we love to act as if the world is getting more violent and yet statistics say that it isn't. Yeah. I guess that the fact that, you know, everyone was dehydrated the whole time until 1960. So the Sun reports on an incident where a young news boy, they don't say the age, but like a kid, a child, is getting his papers from a distribution point and is being guarded by a police officer. And so the news boys strategize how to deal with this and one of them named Mosh Myers,

who, which is the name used for character in newsies, young Mosh suggests that he will snatch some of the kid's papers and run and get the cop to chase after him. And then the other newsies can go after the kid, which is what happens. They go after the kid, they attack him and then he joins up with them and is spotted working for the newsies like an hour later. And the Sun, who's reporting on this, this is my favorite thing, calls the policemen who are trying to interfere with the news boy's strike, blue-coated servants of capital.

Nice. You do not get that in a mainstream newspaper these days. Soldiers of enforcing segregation, yes. So here again is a quote from Children of the City, and this is a description of how quickly the strike escalates. Joseph Pulitzer, nearly blind, so sensitive to sound he exploded when the silverware was rattled, managed his newspapers in absentia for the last 20 years of his life. Nearly every day, he received memos from the New York World Office,

providing him with the information he required. In July of 1899, a new subject appeared in the memos. The news boy's strike has grown into a menacing affair. It is proving a serious problem. Practically all the boys in New York and adjacent towns have quit selling. By the 24th, panic had set in. The advertisers have abandoned the papers and the sale has been cut down fully two-fifths. It is really a very extraordinary demonstration.

And so the turning point comes on July 24th, when basically the papers have been so compromised and their ability to distribute that advertisers decide to pull their money. Ah, so this is very capitalistic. Yeah, exactly. And that's what happens because apparently this is when Pulitzer and Hearst start to take it seriously. And this is when they start seeing the news boys as a real threat and she played dirty back against them. And so this is the cliffhanger I'm going to leave us at for now.

Oh, to be continued. I mean, thank you, Mike, for joining me on this weird loopy journey because I feel like this is kind of an odd, this is kind of a weird one. This is fun. I just feel like something that I love this deeply and that depresses me so little can't possibly be good for me. I think this is right and good and wonderful. I think it is important to find shiny objects in the past

to distract ourselves with like jingling keys in front of a baby. But yeah, this is because this is something that makes me happy. This is a movie that has meant a lot to me for a long time. I look back on it now as really the only reason that I grew up hearing anything about workers' rights and about labor unions and labor organizing that reflects the reality that is now very obviously all around us. Right. And I don't know.

This is a story where people try really hard to do something together and it works out. And I wanted to do one of those. I wholeheartedly approve. I think at least five or six percent of our episodes shouldn't be horrifically depressing. So this is a quote from Spot Conlin who is described in this book as district master workboy of the Brooklyn Union and is familiar to anyone who is a fan of Newsy's for his appearance.

There. So in Children of the City we hear Spot Conlin attired and pink suspenders walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with greetings and promises of support. We have tied up the scab sheet so tight that you can't buy one for a dollar in the street. Hold out, my gallant kids. And tomorrow I myself at the head of 3,000 Noble Hearts from Brooklyn will be over here to help you win your noble scrap for freedom and fair play. Hell yeah, kids.

See Spot Strike. So the question now is, now that the adults are taking the strike seriously, what are they going to do? How is it going to resolve? Can these papers be distributed without Newsy's? And what happens to the strike and what happens to the Newsy's after it? And after all this is the train union still going to wake.