You're Wrong About - The Newsboys' Strike of 1899 (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

Sarah tells Mike about the thrilling conclusion to a children’s labor action and an overlooked Disney musical. Digressions include cronuts, carrier pigeons and Sylvester Graham’s crackers.  Both hosts agree that they love saying the word "papes."Most of the information in this episode comes from Sarah's two new favorite books, Vincent DiGirolamo’s “Crying the News” and David Nasaw’s “Children of the City.” And here's the link to the newsboy footage we watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gatfLuD-DoSupport 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

You give me Princess Diana, I give you the kid from one of the Robocop movies. Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast that tips over the delivery truck of history and sees what comes out the back. Oh, I love that. Hey. I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the Satanic Panic. I'm Michael Hobbs.

I'm a reporter for The Huffington Post. And if you want to support the show, we are on Patreon at Patreon.com slash You're Wrong About. And you can also find cute t-shirts and other ways to support us. Or you can just keep tuning in for our thrilling conclusion. We are talking about Disney today. Disney. So, uh, where are we?

I'm going to ask you that question because it is your job to learn about the newsies. And I'm curious about what you find to be salient about what we talked about last time. I think the newsies pronounce it, what did I loin? Yeah, what did you loin? So last week, we met the news boys who stand on street corners selling the newspapers. This is how the newspapers reached the mass public. And just after we met our news boys, we learned that Pilitzer and Hoist had increased the price

of the papes for them to sell. And all of a sudden, they sort of came out of the Spanish American war and were like, wait a minute, nobody's buying the papers as much because the war is over. And we just gave up 10% of our profits. And this sucks. So let's go on strike. Yeah. And, and we are talking about a real life strike.

And we are also talking about a Disney film that is very important to me and many other people, but not apparently to the Disney Company. One of the images that came into my head as I was researching this, because one of the words that comes up a lot in the story is circulation. Just imagine like think of New York City and the information flowing around New York City in 1899. And then think of the news boys striking. And it's like the flow of blood around this body has been disrupted. I imagine it's like putting a tourniquet on like all four limbs.

And instead of numbness, you have ignorance of world events. Yeah, which I mean, I guess we have now, even though there's like more blood in this body than ever before. But I don't know, that image came into my head and it means a lot to me in trying to understand what the strike was and why it was so effective. But like these child workers accurately recognize themselves as like absolutely essential to the welfare of society. Right.

It's not like they were selling donuts on the street and everyone just had to switch to cupcakes for a week. Like this was really the lifeblood of a democracy. Yeah. I just think that there is tremendous power in recognizing the essential nature of your labor. You need to know what your voice. Sorry, I'll stop now. I'll stop now.

I'm sorry. That's the last one, I promise. You can keep doing it because don't ruin all of my poignant moments. You can just do the sum of them. You used to be charging 50 cents for 100 poignant moments and now it's 60 cents for 100 poignant moments. So speaking of that price increase, I have a nice quote I want to read you. This is from the New Irving Hall mass meeting rally that happens midway through the strike. At this point, the strike has grown very rapidly from an initial action in Long Island City where

some news boys toppled a distributors cart and then turned the following day into a meeting of the news boys in Lower Manhattan where they agreed to announce to Hurston Pulitzer that if the price wasn't rolled back to its original price of 50 cents for 100 papers instead of 60, then they were going to go on strike and the newspapers didn't take them seriously and so they did and in a very short time were able to do exactly what they said they would. So this is from Nassau's book, Children of the City. 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 Broom Street. Some 5,000 boys from all over the city

showed up to shout their support. 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, these doze and use. Nice. Kid Blink, a strike organizer, urged the boys to stick like glue in a moment later like plaster. Ain't that 10 cents worth as much to us as it is to Hurston Pulitzer who are millionaires? Well, I guess it is. If they can't spare it, how can we? I'm trying to figure out how 10 cents on 100 papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to news boys and I can't see it. What do you think about that? I actually find this, I don't want to say emotional but I would say resonant, of reaching back to really the

same anger that these 16-year-olds had in 1899 is really, I mean word for word, the same anger as we have now. Yes. I'm trying to figure out how 10 cents on 100 papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to news boys and I can't see it. Yeah. To me, it's important to just let the voice of Kid Blink speak today. So we're going to take a little ride by pigeon, just like tribal at the start of an American tale. Yes. We're going back in time, back to the beginning of news boys. I just need to talk about carrier pigeons for a second. Okay, so we're going to talk about Daniel H. Craig, who is the pigeon innovator. And the best James Bond. As a young man, Craig apprenticed in a newspaper office. Rather than go to work as a reporter for any

paper, however, he saw that there was value in news as a commodity. He could collect news from other sources and sell it to those who bought and sold stocks and bonds and he needed to anticipate how events might affect the markets. In the late 1830s, he went to Baltimore, Maryland, where he became associated with Aaron S. Abel, the founder of the Baltimore Sun. Together, they experimented with using carrier pigeons to carry the news from Washington to Baltimore. Craig later took this technique north to sell news from Europe to Boston newspapers. The Cunard line speedy ship stopped first in Canada before sailing to Boston. The next day, when the steamers left for Boston, Daniel Craig would be on board carrying a basket of birds.

During the two day trip, he read all the European newspapers on board and printed the most important news on tiny pieces of tissue paper. He attached these reports to the legs of the carrier pigeons. When the Massachusetts coast came into view, he released his birds. They carried the news to Boston hours before the ship reached the city. When the birds returned home, Craig's wife, Helena, who we can picture looking like Helena Bonham Carter, why not, would distribute the news to their clients among the Boston papers and telegraph it to Wall Street brokers and New York papers, such as James Gordon Bennett's Herald. The intensely competitive Bennett paid Craig a $500 bonus for every hour that he received European news ahead of the other New York newspapers.

Amazing. When the other papers complained to the Cunard line about Craig's unfair advantage, one ship captain seized Craig's basket of pigeons. Anticipating such trouble, Craig had hidden one of the birds in his pocket. I went on the deck and flew the bird close to the captain's head, Craig later recalled. He darted into his state room and caught his rifle, but before he got a chance to shoot, the bird was a mile above him flying straight to his home in Boston a hundred miles away. Pigeons are lit. I didn't know pigeons could go a hundred miles. Pigeons are fascinating. From what I understand, they're trained to return to the same place. You don't tell them to go somewhere. You just take them to any location

and they can find their way home. It's like a little homing beacon. Pigeons carrying the news is wonderful to me. Also, the idea that this was such a cutthroat industry and people were so desperate to get an egg over each other. It was so important to get information from Europe an hour or two faster than the other guy and that people had section appetite and section need to know as soon as possible. I guess it's the original Twitter. Literally. It was the meep-meep Twitter of real actual birds. I guess they go coo-coo. It was coo. I think that humans are fascinating to study if you try to take the perspective of what about the things we do reveals what is important to us and this is

one of them. I think somebody should write a short story about using pigeons in war and call it military coup. How do the news boys come out of this news industry with the pigeons and everything? The steam press was invented in the 1830s and that's what makes it possible to produce newspapers on the scale that we associate with them today. Loaves of bread. Before that, they have much lower circulations. They're more expensive to make. They're more expensive to buy. The newspaper basically changes from something more like a magazine, like an issue of a vogue or something into an object with greater freedom of movement. It's worthless monetarily. It appeals to more people. We're also seeing, over time, more newspapers. You have all this choice as a consumer.

According to D. Giralma, we know the names of the first real news boys who were working without a wheelbarrow system because that's basically home delivery. They were hired in 1833 and some of their names are Bill Lovell, who is nine, Bernard Flaherty, who is 10, Henry Louis Gassert, who is 11. Those are young kids, dude. Nine to 11? Young kids. They respond to an ad that says, to the unemployed, a number of study men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy and sell again. They probably had a very good sense of the kinds of stories that sold, too. That seems like the

kind of instinct that you would hone through years of looking at one of those miserable front pages that we looked at last week and seeing like, oh, this is the one that I'm going to cry out on the street. Yeah. Newspapers, if they knew what they were doing, would listen to what Newsy said. I forget what paper this happened to, but D. Giralma talks about the fact that there was a paper that was running poetry and at some point, one or some of the news boys were like, he got to stop because nobody buys poetry. Yeah. They did. 13 boys, man. 13 boys, man. Yeah. We talked a little bit last time about the constant verge of moral panic feeling that a lot of the child welfare societies and advocates had toward

Newsy's in the 19th century, but also the idea that they had a troubling amount of agency because they could earn profits and they could buy stuff that they wanted to. Right. They could get their own cronuts. Yeah. And they, well, actually, I have a quote for that. Are you ready? You just prompted me. Seriously? Yeah. So this is about what kind of food are news boys eating in the mid to late 19th century and how are people feeling about it? Each city had its specialties. News boys in Philadelphia were notably fond of clam soup, cheesecake, and mint sticks. Ooh. Some skeptics felt that cravings for dainties, not real hunger, caused news boys to eat rather than save their earnings. Oh my God. Which like, fuck off, you guys. It's an early

glimpse of all of the moralizing around food that we would all become obsessed with about 100 years later. Yeah, exactly. Well, here, I'll read you a little more. Newspapers themselves offered dining options. The Tribune's basement was home to two eateries. The first, Buttercake Dicks, was famous not only for its cakes and coffee, but also for its easy credit. The proprietor, Dick Marshall, had a soft heart for busted boys, but little patience for rowdies. The menu included cold pork and beans, cold ham, boiled eggs, rice pudding, and Connecticut pies, most famously pumpkin. Marshall refused on principle to stock graham crackers, which were invented by anti masturbation campaigner Sylvester Graham, who condemned exciting foods such as sweets,

meats, and coffee. What? That exciting isn't quotes because the concept is that it literally excites your body. No. And Sylvester Graham would tell us that if we all ate bland foods that don't excite our bodies, then we can resell a bit. And that's the goal, I guess. Isn't that the old quote about puritanism, that it's the fear that someone somewhere is having fun? Yeah. I think puritanism was also about the freedom to execute people with impunity and stuff. But yeah, also that. We're going to do a little bit of art history now. So we're going to talk about two paintings that are featured in Crying the News and both are mid-19th century renderings of the news boy. So the first one is Buffalo News Boy by Thomas LeClaire. Oh, look at this little kid. So it's

a young man. He's wearing sort of a cowboy-ish hat. He's got a green jacket on and almost like ski boots, like big, thick, heavy boots. He's sitting on a crate of some kind and he's eating an apple with his left hand, a little southpaw in front of us. And the painter is going out of his way to tell us that this is a news boy. There's newspapers sort of on the wall behind him. There's a newspaper at his feet. It's just like a boy with a lot of news is basically what I'm seeing. I love that. A boy in his news. Yes. Yeah. And there's something about that that I find really resonant. And this feels like a really lovely wholesome scene. Yeah. And also he's eating an apple and not a cronut. So we've got all of our Puritan stuff about eating healthy in there too.

Right. He's not eating an exciting food. So we know he's not going to be masturbating later. Yes. Okay. And this is News Boy by Frederick R. Spencer. Oh, look at this kid. Don't fuck with this kid. I know. That kid ate a cronut for breakfast and he is not sorry. So this kid looks more sort of rough and tumble than the other kid. He's looking direct to camera with a sort of like, you looking at me type of vibe. Totally. He's like a stocky kid. He seems to be layering up quite well. Maybe he's in the Pacific Northwest. And again, we've got a bunch of newsprint on the wall behind him. It's a boy amidst the news. This makes me think of what happens to telephone poles now.

Yes. It's also, it's so interesting how our relationship with paintings is filtered through our relationship with cameras because it looks like this kid is having a photo taken of him sort of against his will or he's about to yell at the photographer like, hey, what are you doing? But that's impossible then because they didn't have cameras. You couldn't paint a painting that fast. It's a little bit of trivia from someone who's been to grad school. I feel as if these two images kind of depict the two sides of the news boy coin that people in the adult world are kind of wrestling with throughout the 19th century. At the time that news boys were omnipresent, like people could not stop complaining about how

annoyingly loud they were and how you could not make your way through a city without hearing the deafening call of the news boy. This is also before the invention of the only two things that make being in public bearable, earbuds and cigarose. You couldn't drown out the din of the news boys in the way that you could now. Yeah. And then news boys also come to bear the associations that people have with what news media is to become because they basically are the messengers and they get blamed for stuff. The theory I want to advance here is that any time the adult mass media, the very media being sold by newsies, is trying to take this attitude of concern about a group in society, then that

suggests a basic fear that they are amassing too much power for two legitimate reasons. Because something that I also find fascinating about news boys is that they had political power kind of throughout the century preceding the strike. Not a lot and not in any kind of a centralized way, but they mattered. They were important to the economy that they were working in. If they refused to distribute a certain paper that backed a candidate during an election season, then that candidate would suffer. And if they decided to effect an election, then they could. Like Facebook, only fewer genocides. So this is footage of actual newsies taken in May 1899.

I didn't even know they had cameras that early. Amazing. Yeah, just barely. Oh, no sound, though. So it's a New York City street. There's a horse drawn cart coming in. Oh, wow. That's the newspaper cart. And there's like all these boys around it. Do you see one just fell down?

Yeah, it just biffed like Maggie Simpson. That's the world. They're picking up their copies of the world. Wow, it's so disorganized. And it's like firefest. Yeah, they're like kind of pushing and shoving each other. Mm-hmm. Yeah, everyone wants to get in first. Yeah. Yep, that's it.

Wow. It's very funny to me to see footage of the 19th century. Yeah, it all has that weird sped up like Charlie Chaplin feel to it. Which of course is not how people moved back then. No, everyone just walked jerkily at the time. Yeah, but like in my head, the world back then was in black and white and everybody just like walked at this weird joggy frame rate. Yeah. And in the 50s, everything was in really intense colors.

Yeah. And then in the 70s, things were grainy. Yeah. So this is a song called The Boys and the Bowery Pit. This is a song written for and about the extremely newsboy dense audience for downtown entertainment in New York City in the late 19th century. Because newsboys, I mean, in a way, they're one of the first youth demographics. And they're able to be catered to because of how much power they have economically,

relatively speaking. There's a lot of media about newsboys in the 19th century because newsboys were consuming a lot of media and like to see stories about themselves. Like they read, they went to the theater. We didn't have the word teenager yet, but that's basically what they were. They're 16 or so and under and they have money to spend. They're as free as fishes, shorebeats, washing dishes, ain't in a fine life.

And their greatest risk to their morality is masturbation due to grownups. Apparently. So here's the song The Boys and the Bowery Pit, which was performed for the newsies and to great acclaim by the newsies, I think, because it was about them. I'm sitting in the Bowery Pit amongst the gallus boys. Gallus means like brazenly, adventurous. The gallus boys are wide awake. They know what's coming now.

Her J.R. Scott is coming on. And then there's such a row. Just at this time, a little boy climbs up upon his seat and one behind who cannot see soon knocks him off his feet. A cry of pass him round then is echoed through the pit and ground and lofty tumbling in no circumstance to it. Roses are red, newsboys drink ale. This will soon be a musical starring a young Christian bale.

Oh, that was so good. Oh my God. I think I fucked up some of the syllables. You get the idea. OK, Michelle. That's the cruelest thing you could possibly say to me about my rhymes. No, it's not. It's because you improvised poetry.

It's very hard to do. So this lovely poem slash song brings us back to what I think of when I'm told about Newsy's going to see Nightly Entertainment, which is the Newsy's strike rally at New Irving Hall on Broom Street, which is also featured in the movie Newsy's. Oh. Would you like to see it? God, I forgot that there was a movie based on all this stuff. I got lost in the history, Sarah.

I know. Isn't it great? 00:20:25,600 --> 00:20:30,720 I think we're selling ourselves short if we just think that it's wonderful enough that there's one movie all about newsboys. I think there should be a lot of movies about newsboys. It's funny. I was just thinking, man, somebody should make a movie about this.

And then I remembered what we're doing here today. So I'm going to show you a video called Spot Conlin Moments times three. The description says, sorry, it's kind of poor quality because the clips are from my phone, but there aren't many videos of Spot Conlin Moments. OK. So I'm giving you that authentic experience. I'm excited. I've chosen to be excited about it.

So I'm going to send this to you. I have no idea what I'm about to get into. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you for uploading this video seven years ago. Spot Conlin, you might recall, was the leader of the Brooklyn contingent for newsboys. Yeah, you haven't forgotten Spot Conlin. God, these fucking names. It's like newsboys and Twitch streamers have the most strict naming conventions.

This looks like shit. It's going to be great. This is what the situation is, Disney. Stop hiding your light under a bushel. OK, here we go. Three, two, one, go. Well, we started the strike, but we can't do it alone. So we've been talking other newsies all around the city.

Yeah. So they told me, what did they tell you? They're waiting to see what Spot Conlin is, that you're the king. That Spot Conlin is the most respected and famous newsie in all of New York, and probably everywhere else. And if Spot Conlin joins the strike, then they'll join, and we'll be unstoppable. So you gotta join the strike, but you gotta. Well, you're right, Jack.

Brains. But I got brains, too, and more than just half of them. I want to know you punks will run the first time some goon comes action with a clone. How do I know you know what it takes to win? Poor Christian Bale. He had to do this weird accent. He didn't even get to do anything weird with his body. Maybe it's I think it's good he didn't do that when he was a growing boy.

That's his dream. Not since good fellows have a bunch of New York accents had this much chemistry with each other. Seriously. Also, they've got Christian Bale with like that little hanky. He looks like a golden retriever. Oh, yeah, it has like a nice teen beat kind of feel. Everybody seems non-threatening. It's because they're wearing 1899 clothes.

That's true. This movie is so good. Oh, and they keep saying goon. Scabs. I can never believe this is a fucking Disney movie, and you're saying forward scabs to me. The 90s had some good stuff in there. Because seriously, okay, so let's rewind. We've just had a journey, Mike, you and I, because I showed you this video,

which is Spot Conlin Moments, compiled by a Newsy's fan and put on YouTube. And so what that means is that we open with the strike basically starting to get underway. And the lower Manhattan Newsy's venturing to Brooklyn to make a crucial alliance with Spot Conlin. And like, can you just tell us what that scene feels like? Because I feel like the appeal of Newsy's to me is very wrapped up in that scene individually. Well, it's hard to say because first of all, I couldn't hear a lot of the dialogue. Secondly, it wasn't totally clear to me what the context was. It seems like there were the sort of different gangs, I guess, of Newsy's,

and he didn't want to join up with them because they're like different or whatever. He sticks his neck out for no man. I think the feeling is just that if you're going to join a strike, you'd better be sure about it. I mean, it does actually make sense because on some level, because each of the news boys is an independent contractor, they're kind of in competition with each other. That if somebody else on a different corner sells all of his papes, those are papes that I'm not selling. I love how much you love to say papes because I really like to say papes.

But yeah, so there isn't an industry structured to breed solidarity, which means that the solidarity that they formed is even more impressive. Yeah. So back to the actual news boys strike. So we have the initial action in Long Island City. We have the meeting downtown in City Hall Park on July 19th, and the decision to strike at the price isn't rolled back to 50 cents per 100 papers. And the quote they get back from the world is, go ahead and strike. Wow.

They do. Yeah. And this is when they decide to organize themselves the way that regular adult unions are organized. They send delegates to different neighborhoods. They do the kind of stuff that we see represented in newsies where they're paying attention to the politicking and to setting up some kind of infrastructure for this movement.

And also developing alliances with other cities. Oh. There's strikes in Massachusetts. There's strikes in New Jersey. And news boys have also had other strikes in the 1890s and before. Like this is a very striking time. Right. So in real life, the primary leader sort of figurehead, apparently for the strike,

is not Christian Bale. What? It's Kid Blink. His real name is Louis Belletti. And Kid Blink is a real character in newsies, but he's a side guy who's just sort of mostly, you know, he's there. And a kid named Dave Simons, who I must presume, Arpal David from newsies, is based on.

And they're both 18 years old. A lot of the other newsies in leadership positions are in their mid-teens. The adult unions are paying attention. During the strike, the Socialist Labor Party has a candidate for governor who says, the capitalist class may well look to their defenses when five and 10-year-old boys go out on strike against their infernal system. So I feel like there's this feeling among adults watching this that, you know, maybe these boys that we feared are also capable of creating the society that we've

all been incapable of creating. We're not doing it. It's good marketing. Little kids fighting back against the system. I mean, it's a good story. But yeah, a lot of people were on the side of the kids. And I do feel like there is more is possible when people are really hit over the head by the sort of moral clarity present in a struggle that is standing for other struggles that are

maybe less advertisable. You know, the fact that there's so much reporting on the news boys strike in other newspapers at the time is also really interesting. Newsies also depicts accurately the fact that newspapers back off of this coverage after a time because the strike is starting to seem serious enough that it seems like it is threatening capital. Right. So on the 22nd, Hearst himself is spotted by the newsies attempting to buy a paper in

Harold Square. And basically they chase him away. And then a bunch of newsies also wait for Hearst in front of the journal building. Nice. And when Hearst pulls up, they send out apparently one of the cuter news boys who says, we're the strikers, Mr. Hearst. We want 100 papers for 50 cents. We get it from the other papers except the world.

And so he invites the newsies up to come discuss it with him. And so Kid Blink, Dave and a couple of other delegates come up and talk with him. So here's what Kid Blink says about the meeting when he describes it to the other newsies. He wanted to know what the world was going to do. I told him that we was dealing with the journal now and that if he cut, the world would cut quick enough. He says he had to talk it over with some other guys before he gives an answer. And I then asked him if he would arbitrate like his paper says.

He laughed and said he'd give us an answer Monday right here. And so on Monday, the journal and the world hire scabs and pay them $2 a day to sell newspapers. So that's their negotiation. Good job. That's their empire strike back move. It speaks to the idea that they're not taking these kids seriously. They're just pretending to and hoping that's enough and then deciding to crush them with scabs. So following this, they have their Irving Hall rally where they discuss what are they going

to agree on that they will and won't do, which includes Kid Blink telling everyone a fellow can't soak a lady. What does that mean? Soaking means beating someone up. Oh yeah, don't do that. And this is given after, according to one newspaper, an old lady has been selling newspapers and breaking the strike by doing so and are harassed by newsies and take off her blouse and skirt and then hoist them atop a flagpole and wave them around.

That's mean. Explain labor rights to her to use education. Yeah. And at the Irving Hall event where he says, ain't that 10 cents worth as much to us as it is to Hurston Pulitzer who are millionaires? Kid Blink wins Best Speech and he gets one of those flower horse shoes that they have at the racetrack, I guess. So it's like a Miss America situation?

People are getting awards? At least Kid Blink is, yeah. Funniest, best hair, most romantic. Yeah, the homecoming strike rally. Yeah. And in newsies, this scene is a real turning point because the sort of dramatic engine for Crisken Bale's character is that he escaped from the House of Refuge, which is a real place where, quote, juvenile delinquents were sent in New York City at the time and were basically,

you were given hard labor to do because selling newspapers is bad and doing hard labor in jail is good for children. Yes, then as now. Yeah, but it's in real life, the rally is this lovely occasion where obviously it's going on and there's a lot of controversy and, you know, it's hard to decide the soaking women issue perhaps for some, I imagine. But in the movie, this is where the police come and do a big raid and arrest everybody and put the vice on the news boys and take Jack Kelly back to the House of Refuge.

But does this happen in real life? Are they raided in real life? It does not happen in real life. And the fact about the news boys strike that I think the movie newsies had the hardest time digesting is that Hurston Pulitzer attempted to and appeared to have been successful in their attempt to buy out Kid Blink and David Simons. Oh, what, so they paid off the strike organizers? Yeah, so in real life, the rally goes great.

There's 5,000 news boys there. The strike is apparently growing stronger and Hurston Pulitzer pay $300 and $600 to Kid Blink and David Simons to get them to call a truce and call and get a do-over to stop the strike. And so on July 26, they go to talk to the other newsies about it and Kid Blink, according to Crying the News, sported a new suit of clothes complete with straw hat and russet shoes and unwisely flashed a roll of bills. The strike committee put the pair on trial for high treason and low bribery. Kid Blink eloquently maintained their innocence, both escaped conviction but were removed from

office. A mob of news boys chased Blink through the streets that night. He escaped only by getting himself arrested. Wow, that's a very sad ending to the story. This is not the end yet, don't worry. Oh, okay, that's a very sad act three twist to the story. And in the movie, we get the scenario where like his Jack Kelly, he's escaped the house of refuge, the stakes are really high. His dream is to get to Santa Fe, which is also a theme in the life of real news boys that they can reasonably save up a relatively small amount of money and

head west for a job in farming or by land eventually and set themselves up as farmers, which a fair number of news boys did over time. So the dream of going west is very real. And so he allows himself to be bought off for like one second. And then he turns back around and they do the banner together and they print the newsletter that's going to turn everything around and everything's great. And he doesn't get chased down the street. Right. That's the Disney version of this where he

flirts with temptation but ultimately doesn't give in. It is, yeah. And let me actually, I have a thing to say about newsies and money. So in 1875, Louisa May Alcott went to see the news boys' lodging house in New York City and she wrote a letter to her nephews about it. Wow. Can you tell from the way I'm saying this? This is the most exciting piece of literature I could imagine coming across in my entire life. Louisa May Alcott, news boys.

All you need is a serial killer in there and you're set. This tells us a little bit about the indoor cats of the news boys. The indoor, outdoor news boys were living at the time because a lot of news boys didn't stay in the lodging houses. I mean, really the majority did not. But it was an institution that was available for the latter half of the 19th century. I'll start us with her noticing one little chap, only six. He was trotting around as busy as a bee locking up his small shoes and ragged jacket as if they

were great treasures. I asked about little Pete and the man told us his brother, only nine, supported him and took care of him entirely and wouldn't let Pete be sent away to any home because he wished to have his family with him. How would it seem to be all alone in a big city with no mama to cuddle you, no two grandpa's houses to take you in, not a penny but what you earned and Donnie to take care of? Could you do it? Nine-year-old Patsy does it capitally, buys Pete's clothes, pays for his bed and supper,

and puts pennies in the savings bank. The savings bank was a great table, all full of slits, each one leading to a little place below and numbered outside, so each boy knew his own. One boy was putting in some pennies as we looked and I asked how much he had saved this month. $14, ma'am, says the 13-year-old, are proudly slipping in the last cent. A prize of $3 is offered to the lad who saves the most in a month. And they also offer interest. Nice.

So yeah, I think that that is very interesting, that like there is within this culture where the perennial fears is that they're buying sweets and exciting themselves with exciting foods and they're smoking cigars and they're seeing shows, but there's also this apparently pretty strong culture of saving that's actually encouraged by the institutions that they're a part of. So if that kid was saving $14 a month, then kid blanks $300 a month. It's like a shitload of money. $14 a month for 12 months, so like two years basically.

So no wonder they took it. Yeah. I mean, they're kids. When are they ever going to see $600? This actually reminds me of an area that I'd also wanted to touch on, which is the eternal question for me and others in the fandom. Were there girl newsies? And the answer that Vincent de Giralmo has in crying the news is yes, but everyone was scared

of them and terrorized them all the time. Wait, what? Why? Okay, so here's a quote from Grover Cleveland of all people. No pretext should be permitted to excuse allowing young girls to be on the streets at improper hours since the result must necessarily be their destruction. Oh, is it like a moral turpitude thing? Yes. Like they're going to get tempted by drugs and candy sweets?

I mean, basically the idea that people keep bringing up in this way that doesn't completely make sense is like if a girl is a newsie, then it's like that's a gateway drug to sex work, basically. Nice. Another quote, this is from a New York police captain, is girls who begin with selling newspapers usually end with selling themselves. Oh my God. Yeah, I mean, I guess like you said, it's independence.

It's they can do what they want with their time and with their physical selves and they can be in whatever part of the city they want to be in. And that's a slippery slope to sex work, I suppose. Newspapers, donuts, vise, basically. We all know that. I guess we need to associate newspapers with immorality again. I think that's another thing that would really help. The people who host the show already do, Sarah.

We're there. Yeah. And just I think the idea is that if you empower a girl to sell anything, then she is going to become scarily powerful. Yeah. So the day after Kid Blink and David are found not guilty of treason but booted from the union, the world and journal offer to make a compromise and sell it 55 cents per hundred. And the news boys union says no, but they're starting to lose steam.

And it's hard to say how significant the loss of their leader spokes boys was. But when the papers come back again, two days later, July 29th, and say we're going to stay at the current price, but you can return your unsold papers to us and we're going to refund you for them. That's great because that completely changes the risk calculus. It does. Yeah. I think it is a victory.

Yeah. And the strike ends on August 1st. So ultimately it was roughly two weeks. Yeah, a little less than two weeks. It's like a common. Yeah. It's like a baker's fortnight. I don't know what that means.

And after that, the news boys union goes on, but it becomes something with adult leadership. And it is basically no longer in the news boys hands and the way that it was. And actually, this kind of connects to my feelings of ambivalence about the ending of Newsy's. In the movie, as you and I both observed, all of these boys are having tons of chemistry with each other. And it's the kind of thing that if you like to ship couples as a teenage or watching media, there's a lot of material there. Yeah, this is a ship factory.

It ships coming off the conveyor belt. Is this movie made on the Great Lakes? Because it's a ship factory. Yeah. And of course, my ship, because I'm not that creative, is Jack and David. And at the end of the movie, they resolve this plot line where Jack kind of joins David's family the first day that David works as a Newsy and comes and meets David's parents and his sister, Sarah.

And Jack and Sarah have, quote, chemistry, but they don't because it's just she's the only girl in the movie. And it's a movie that is obsessed with the joyful chemistry of boys having a strike. And so at the end of the movie, the strike ends. They don't do the 60 cents and return paper thing. They're like, and then the papers decided that they would agree to the initial demand. And then the strike ended. And it was wonderful.

And then Jack kisses Sarah. The end. And Spock Hanlon rode off in Teddy Roosevelt's carriage. And Teddy Roosevelt is in it, by the way. There's a plot point where they call Teddy Roosevelt and he's like, this is terrible. We can't let children suffer this way, which crying the news points out is probably inaccurate because Teddy Roosevelt advocated shooting strikers. So that's the inglorious bastard.

It's killing Hitler. They just put in a wish in the middle of the movie. It's fine. Yeah. That's the most brazen and accuracy. Yeah. But yeah. And I think that ending is sort of weirdly bittersweet in the way that the actual ending of the

strike is where it's like there was this moment when the strike was going on where anything was possible and like maybe kid workers will rise together in solidarity and form their own kid workers union, like the IWW, but the kid workers of the world. And it won't be led by adults. And like what can happen when children are empowered to represent themselves? And what if the news boys have such power over these newspaper tycoons in such a shocking way that these tycoons fail to see coming at all? Like what if that kind of power can be on earth than other fields?

Never mind. It's over. Kiss a girl. I mean, it's like, I mean, I guess this happens a lot with these things that sort of reality comes bursting in like the Kool-Aid man. Ultimately, it's like, oh, the reality of it is just it's going to be a lot easier if we do it. This other thing that is like kind of less cool. Yeah.

Well, and I feel like this is sort of a growing up story too because like the dream that you have as a child is that you make your demand and then the newspaper company is like, yes, I will meet your demand. We've had a struggle for about an hour and a half. I don't think I'm going to win this one. You can have the exact thing you asked for. Right. And in real life, you know, it's a really good outcome for you to ask for something and not

get that specific thing, but get something else that functionally gives you more security. And maybe doesn't mean that you've won in the way that you might have hoped to win. And you've reached a compromise and you can move forward with your life. Where we get stuck sometimes is feeling like if you don't get exactly what you would have initially hoped for at your most idealistic, then it's just not worth it. Which I feel like is this kind of like 90s liberalism sense of residedness that we talked about growing up with and around in the previous episode of like unions don't work, kids. Kid Blink got bought out, give it up, party's over.

And it's like, I don't think that something being spectacularly effective for a brief period and then kind of crashing and burning means that all effective things crash and burn. It means that it takes practice to move a movement forward and that children representing themselves and, you know, anyone who represents the actual people whose conditions they're speaking about seem to do well and seem to generate solidarity, at least in this instance. There's nothing like solidarity and the fact that it is difficult and fleeting to cultivate doesn't mean that it's not worth it. Because like every pay-pew tear out of a scab's hands is worth something.

There's also the sort of overall context of the country in that there were a lot of desperately poor children who were willing to replace these laborers. I mean, this is one of the reasons why it's so difficult to get independent unions going in sweatshops because oftentimes they're in extremely poor countries where there really are a lot of desperate people who will work for low shitty wages because that's the only option that's available. Yeah. And also that they had this unusual situation where they were able to generate the kind of income that allowed them to strike, like that they weren't all living hand to mouth. A lot of them were, but some of them weren't. And that freedom within an industry to

perhaps get a little bit ahead, to get a little bit of a savings, even if you're living in a lodging house and considering yourself lucky to get a bath for free, you can still save up a little bit. Like if you are treated with a little bit of decency as a worker and are given some rights, then it makes it easier to demand more rights because like if you have the energy to organize, then like you will. Right. It's like how if one person learns a song and then another person learns it and then they learn the choreography and pretty soon everyone is dancing together. And then Mike watches Newsies all the way through if he wants to. Not that it's too awkward though, it's fine. That's what this was all leading up to, obviously. Yeah, maybe we can't, you know,

some dreams are out of bounds, but my dream of more people watching Newsies is possible. I have one last journey to take you on. Ooh, take me. Okay, so if this isn't too awkward for you, then nothing in Newsies will be, but we are going to watch Christian Bale's big song in this movie, which I think worked so hard to sing and to dance to and this show is about applauding people who do their best. So we're going to watch Santa Fe. All right. Three, two, one, go. This is very Disney. Yeah, it's the I Want song. Yeah, he's laying out his feelings. It's also unfortunate that I think behind the scenes they were like,

Christian, we have to get you looking as greasy as we can at all times. We want you sweaty and we want you greasy. He's real wet. He has the expression of a kid at sleepaway camp who wasn't told it was going to be for eight weeks. Yeah. He probably smells like Welsh cliffs. All this salt coming out of him. They're trying to get him to smell like cigarettes, but he just smells like a Welsh merman. Oh, God, I cannot believe they did this to him. Like adults all got in a room in the end of this and felt like, like, OK, going home to their families at the end of the day. I cannot believe he didn't know he was going to have to do this.

If only he had a union to protect him. I know. He does great though, right? Like, this is hard. He seems like a guy that puts his all into everything. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can tell, right? Because he's always gaining or losing 80 pounds. Yeah. People don't fight for the integrity of terminator salvation unless they take it really seriously. Yes. Now he's on a fucking horse. Yeah, he stole that horse because Newsy's are arephians, you know, they'll steal your horse

just so they can sing a song on it. The only time you ever see empty New York is in movies. Yeah, when New York is in Burbank. Yeah. That was great. So far, my main takeaway from this movie is the absolute nightmare scenario of getting a job and then being told that you still have to do the job, but you also have to sing. So, in conclusion, do your best and be proud of it. We love you, Christian Bale. And maybe the thing about Newsy's is that it's such a weird movie because it's trying to represent what should be an entire genre of media, but isn't yet.

Newsboy media? Yes, Newsboy media. There's a whole world out there for us to explore through all kinds of properties. But yeah, I mean, I guess I feel like there's a dark and a light way to look at this, right? And to me, the dark way is like, oh my God, like you've gone backwards and like this kind of worker solidarity seems harder to cultivate in America now than it did then, even though we're living in Tomorrowland. Like, ah, but on the other hand, like you give some teenage boys a place to sleep for six cents a night, a hot bath and a piggy bank, and they threaten to overturn capitalism. So I don't know, what would happen if you gave them two baths?

And some cronuts.