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EXTRA! EXTRA! The Newsboy Strike Episode! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: should Know. Extra extra read all about it. Stuff you
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Should Know. Release is an episode on the Newsy strike
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: of eighteen ninety nine.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, I knew you were going to say something
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: like that, by the way.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah I did too, but I didn't know what that's
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: what it turned out to be.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the beauty of you. Thanks man, never know
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: what you're gonna get.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I appreciate you appreciating me. So apparently we're way, way,
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: way behind the curve because stuff you missed in history
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: class did an episode on this, like all the way
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: back in two thousand and nine.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: It's time we did this, I guess one hundred something
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: years on from the actual strike. Yes, it needs to
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: be covered by us.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we can. Are we copying them now if
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: it's fourteen years later or whatever?
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, we just go on the stuff you missed
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: in history class site and figure out new topics.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Geez, who was the host back then?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Who knows? It was such a rotating cast at that point.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Who yeah, I mean this was before Tracy and Holly.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, shout out Tracy and Holly keeping it on lockdown
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: a stuff you missed in history class for years now.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: That's right. They got the reins and they were like mine, Yeah, and.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: The horse is like, stop jerking me around.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: So you mentioned one hundred plus years or something, this
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: was a If you're wondering what a news he is,
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: it was a paper delivery person, usually a paper boy
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: or a newsboy, although we will see there were other
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: people delivering papers in New York City. Yeah, and they
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: went on strike in eighteen ninety nine. A bunch of boys,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: generally boys got together. We're like, hey, we're tired of
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: making thirty cents a day. We want to make like
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: fifty cents a day.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And thirty cents a day sounds like a very
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: small amount. It actually was about eleven dollars in today's money,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: which is still a pretty small amount to survive in
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: New York City. And a lot of those newsboys, it
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: turns out, were just barely surviving. Like a lot of
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: them were pretty much every single one of them was
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: working class tops.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I don't think there was any middle class at the time,
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: and there certainly weren't any like aristocratic newsboys, so like
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: you were working class at best, if you even had
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: a home, if you were not an orphan, if you
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: were not living on the streets. Yeah, and almost all
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: of them were at the time, like very marginalized communities
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: like Irish kids, Jewish kids, Black kids like it. It
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: was a it was a neat kind of like cross
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: section of America that or New York at least at
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: the time that had been kind of thrown together, put
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: together at this job. And there was a lot of
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: them doing it to something like ten to fifteen thousand,
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: depending on who you asked at what decade. But from
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: what I saw, Olivia helped us with this, and I
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: think she said something like fifteen thousand at the time
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: of the strike we're talking about, which is eighteen ninety nine.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And most of these kids were probably tweens and teens,
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: you know, some of them were as young as six
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: and seven years old. Of course, some of them were
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: late teenagers, even reports of some of them being like
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty one years old. When it came to sort
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: of leading these organization or leading these meetings in these
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: this strike. But they were generally teens and tweens. And
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: like I said, they weren't all boys. There were some girls,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: there were some married women, there were some disabled adults.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Really mostly boys though, and these were all regardless of
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: who it was, these were all people that, like you said,
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: we're looking to you know, say, you know, I made
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: thirty cents today, I'll give twenty five cents to my family,
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: and I'll get a box of cookies for a nickel.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: And oh, you could buy a car for a nickel
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: back then.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: I actually did some because spending powers different than you know,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: just what would that be in today's dollars? And I
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: did look up in nineteen hundred what you could get
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: for some of this for like, you know, ten to
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: thirty cents.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Oh cool, Well, a box of cookies was a nickel.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Okay, so the car thing was wrong.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Right, I'm sorry to disappoint you.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: A box of cereal was a dime, can of Campbell's
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: soup was a dime. A package of Quaker oats was
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: a dime. Seven pounds of potatoes was a dime. Wow,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: literally wow. And you could get a lot of steak too.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: Meat Meat wasn't as expensive as you might think. So
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: it was kind of weird that way, But that just
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: kind of shows you a little bit of what thirty
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: cents a day would buy you. And you know, the
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: way these boys were doing it. They were basically free agents.
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: They didn't work for the newspaper or work for a company.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: They would go out.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: And hustle on their own, buy these bundles of newspapers,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: like one hundred newspapers, and then sell them at a markup.
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: So generally, like, hey, what was the original price that
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: they were charging.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: Fifty cents per bundle of one hundred is what the
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: papers charged the newsboys at first.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and they would sell them for generally a penny apiece,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: but sometimes mark them up to two or three cents.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: But none of that adds up to thirty cents, So
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to reckon with all that.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: I think that they didn't necessarily make it through the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: entire bundle in a day h They might have some
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: left over and they had to eat that.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Cost totally makes sense, Josh, jeez.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: That's my take. That's what I got from it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: No, I think you're right, because that that reckons with
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: a little thing here at the end as far as
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: what the newspapers offered them.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Right exactly. And so these kids would work sun up
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: to sundown. They would be on the street shouting out
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: the headlines all day long selling papers. I read a
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: contemporary account who talked about how like when you walk
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: down the street, they run up to you and like
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: essentially make you buy their newspaper. And it was a
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: it was like a hardscrabble life. Like the impression that
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: we have of it is like these tough little kids
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: who all smoked cigarettes and cigars and like gambled and
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: and you know, playing craps and stuff like that. Like
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: that was real. It was even worse than that, like
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: we have almost a romanticized version of it. It was
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: that plus grittier. Is the life that these kids were living,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: hustling on the street selling newspapers every day and in
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: different places around the country. Chok, they had like rules,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: but New York was not one of those places.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: When you say contemporary contemporaneous, sire. Oh, I just wondered
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: if you've since it's a thing now with the.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Show, I've you just grabbed me by the ankle and
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: dragged me back, and I fell on my face as
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: I was pulled down. But other than that, it's good.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: What I was hoping you would say is like, no,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: it was contempts, it was contemporary. It was contemporary. Jeez,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: Now I'm confused. Like I read it in Vice last week,
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: it's about the news voice strike. Shut up, Chuck, Okay,
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: So what is it?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Contemporaneous would be what I meant to say in contemporaries today.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so sick of this. I am too dumb,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: stupid words.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna say I read an account from the
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: time that I'm speaking of.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Oh that's nice. You know there's a word for that. Yeah,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: but I don't know what it is, all right, So
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: let's get into this.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: You said other cities were a little more organ eyes
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: with rules and like, hey, you can only work so
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: many hours, and maybe you have to be a part
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: of an actual organization or something, and you got to
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: wear a uniform.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: New York was a wild West.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: This was a time when William Randolph Hurst and Joseph
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Pulitzer were really running the show with their big time papers,
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: The New York World. Well, I guess I should read
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: it the opposite way. The New York Journal in the
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: New York World, respectively. And so the Spanish American War
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: comes along in April of eighteen ninety eight, and news
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: was hotter than ever. Everyone wanted to get their hands
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: on a newspaper. So they said, hey, this is a
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: good chance to raise the price on these newsies, on
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: these newsboys to sixty cents from fifty cents, because covering
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: wars is expensive.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: This will also help us cover this war.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a legitimate price increase in the World
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and the Journal were not the only papers that that
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: to pay for their rather expensive coverage of the war.
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: And the newsboys at the time were like, this is fine.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: It makes sense because we're selling so many more papers
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: than we normally do. We're actually probably a little better
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: off even at the sixty cent bundle price point.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we're selling out exactly.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: They were selling out, maybe selling multiple bundles in a day,
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: who knows. But the problem came when the Spanish American
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: War ended and other papers returned to their As the
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: circulation went down, the other papers went to their pre
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: war prices per bundle, but the Journal and the World
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: did not, and that really stuck under these little newsboys crawl.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And this gets very colorful here pretty soon.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: So my god, some of these quotes are just amazing.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: Sort of strap in, we also have to set up
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: sort of the time in which this took place. In
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: the late eighteen hundreds, there were it was just a strike,
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: heavy union heavy time. There was a trolley strike going
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: on in Brooklyn and Manhattan that even though the adults
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: were the trolley drivers, a lot of these Newsy's parents
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: maybe worked in that field or they were sympathetic. So
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: these kids got involved and they were you know, throwing
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: rocks at scab drivers and stuff like that, so you know,
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: they knew what striking was all about and sort of
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: the strong arm version of how to go about a strike.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: And there were also other newsboy strikes before this, like
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: in the few years proceeding in Boston, Dallas, and Detroit.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: So this strike of eighteen ninety nine, like if you
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: type in newsboy strike, all you're going to get back
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: on the internet is the strike of eighteen ninety nine. Yeah,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: so significant, and the reason that it differentiated itself from
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: other strikes was in scope, in depth, in organization, like
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: in just a few days, as we'll see, like these
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: kids went from a bunch of ragtag, you know, rough
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: and tumble seven year olds to forming like a union
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and like defending themselves in the face of being run
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: over by greedy fat cats essentially.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's just a couple of weeks, really.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole thing was less than fourteen days.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: And they also led Boston, Detroit, in Dallas and Nicknamery.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah they did. Yeah. The kids in New York definitely
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: had the nicknames down.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: All Right, I think it's a pretty good setup.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: You know, Chuck, I've got to agree with you as
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: well on your take on the setup.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Okay, all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: about the literal tipping point.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Right if you want to know, then you're in luck
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: just to suffuse.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Stuffuge No, all right, we mentioned a literal tipping point,
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: and that's a bit of a stupid pun.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Because on July eighteenth of eighteen ninety nine, it was
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: a Tuesday. There were some newsboys in Queen's and Long
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Island City that found out that one of the journal
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: delivery people that brought the bundles to these guys was
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: stealing papers from their bundles and shorting them on each bundle.
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: And they were like this is not going to stay
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: in my friend And they literally tipped over his wagon,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: chased them off, and stole the papers. And this was
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: in screenwriting terms, this would be called the inciting incident.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Right, This is where the gun is introduced an act one.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Sure you've been going to that one a lot lately,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: but it's the only one I know. I love it.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Think about it though, like a bunch of little kids
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: tipped over a wagon, chased away the adult driver, and
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: stole a bunch of papers. Like that was what they did.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And that's a really great indicator, or I guess example
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: of what a bunch of little kids can do if
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: you put enough of them together and tick them all
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: off at the same time. It's like ants, Like how
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: ants can just do all sorts of amazing things if
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: they collectively combine their strength. Same thing with seven to
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: fifteen year olds.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Well, other people have said it before me, but there
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: is no scarier group of humans on earth than a
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: group of young boys.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, and I imagine all of these kids too. All
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: of these boys are just like fifteen thousand Scott Farcas
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: and Grover Gills. That's who I imagine the two bad
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: kids from a Christmas story.
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and their brains aren't fully formed yet, so they're
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: not capable of making like rational decisions. And there's a
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: mob mentality. And I'm just telling you, if you're on
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: the streets and you see a group of like nine
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: teenage boys run in the other.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: Direction, yeah, that's great, that's great advice.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: And Antoni, it's not me, it's well known fact.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not disputing it at all.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, especially you. You better get out of there, my friend.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm pretty pretty bad at fighting.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Me too, because actually I don't know. I've never been
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: at a fight.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: I can tell you firsthand that I'm not all right.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: So that tipping point you said, which, by the way,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: I don't think was a bad pun. I think it
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: was quite apt. Hey, thanks, that kind of like ignited
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: something in these newsies, like they were they had already
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: been bristling for a little while under that rate hike
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: that they knew was unfair, that they were really upset
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: at the world and the journal about and it was
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: enough to kind of like light a fire under a
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: few hundred of them at least, who gathered in City
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Hall Park outside of City Hall, of all places, about
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: three hundred of them rallied and basically said, Journal World,
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: if you guys don't bring your your bundle price per
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: bundle back down to pre war, we're going to strike.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: We're mad right now. There's enough of us who are
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: mad right now. We're gonna put a herding on you.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You better listen to us.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: And they also said, you know, we're smart enough to
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: know that they needed someone to kind of head this
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: thing up. They'd seen these unions and other strikes popping up,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and even with their little unformed brains, they knew that
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: they couldn't just be a bunch of aunts at this point.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: They had to have some leadership and some organization, as
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: all great unions do. And they elected an eighteen year
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: old maybe twenty one. And this is where things get
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: interesting because contemporaneous accounts don't always get the names right,
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: so there's a lot of different versions of names and ages.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but this kid was a Jewish boxer.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: His name was either Dave Simons or Simon or Simons
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: with a D or Simons with two m's and a D.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Right, but let's just call him Dave Simons.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what most people call him. He was the
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: He was the lead dude, right the president. He was
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: the the second in command as far as I could tell.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: And the one who actually is probably the most well
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: known out of all these guys was an eighteen year
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: old Italian American kid with red hair and a disabled eye.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: He was either blind in the eye or it was
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: impaired in some way, shape or form, and as a result,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: they called him Kid Blink. And his real name was
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Lewis Biletti, Lewis Dalitt, Ballot, or Battel, depending on which
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: old timey newspaper you consult, But the one I've seen
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: most of all is Lewis Biletti. But everybody called him
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Kid Blink. So those two were essentially in charge. And
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: then one other really important one who became increasingly important
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: as time went on, was a guy named race Car
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Higgins from Brooklyn, and he's my hero. He's the one
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: I like the most.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Livia just dug up some more fun names, which
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: is why we love Livia. Creutch Morris, not bad, no hunch, Maddox.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: I can't imagine that kid had good posture, right, And
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: Muggsy McGee was another one. And I don't know if
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: you dug up and found anymore.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: No, Muggsy McGee was the winner. I was like, there's
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: none that are better than that, So yeah, it's pretty good.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: Keep it at Muggsy McGhee.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Would you mess with those kids.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: No, No, I wouldn't even be comfortable walking past them
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: under normal circumstances. When they're trying to sell me a paper,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I'd be like, just give me ten.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: So a couple of days later, this is July twentieth.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: By this point, the newspapers had said, no, thank you,
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: We're going to keep our prices the same, and so
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: they sent their delegates out and told all the newsies
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: all over New York City stopped selling these two newspapers,
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: which is interesting. It wasn't like, hey, we're not going
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: to sell newspapers anymore. They were targeting these two in particular,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: which is a little different than maybe your average strike.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They also said if you don't stop selling those newspapers,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: you're going to get your face punched in, which was
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: a direct quote.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: So these kids, these newsies stopped selling, and I get
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: the impression that they were, like you said, they were
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: selling other papers. But it seems like as the strike
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: kind of really started to settle in, like they were
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: basically striking most of the time, and they would kind
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: of patrol the streets of New York, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: and where else? Uh Long Island maybe, Okay, where else?
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: What's the other one?
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Give me one more queen up there in the North Harlem? Sure?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And what else?
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Home of Yankee Stadium, Yankee Ville, the something the Bronx.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: There's a part named after it?
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Is there? Really?
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Oh the Bronx.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: I never realized that was a fart. Always thought it
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: was another name for like a raspberry.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Uh No, I think you're right, but it sounds like
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a fart.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right, well you just changed it big time.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: I think you improved it, frankly.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: So all of these kids are walking around with from
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: what I saw, horseshoes, baseball bats, barrel staves, wheelspokes like
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: clubs essentially, and more like. If you if we catch
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: you selling the Journal of the Record other newsies, we're
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: going to beat you. We're going to give you a beating.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: I don't care if you're an adult, I don't care
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: if you're a kid. Where you can't sell these anymore.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And a lot of people got beaten by these kids,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: especially on day one and two.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Period.
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I realized it didn't sound like I was completing
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: that sentence, but that was it.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: That's all right.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: There was a little little bit of police action at first,
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: but not much because the police had their hands full
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: with this trolley strike. But there were some contemporaneous accounts
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: in those or at least some newspapers back then, of
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: a handful of kids getting rounded up. Some went to
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: like a juvenile system I was called a juvenile asylum.
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: Others went to child protective agencies. But generally the cops
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: weren't like rounding up these boys right and left because
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: they had their hands bull already.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: But on the same day that a few of these
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: boys happened to be rounded up, which I guess was
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: probably the twenty eighth or twenty first, Yeah, Yeah, the
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: Evening Post said that a fourteen year old led a
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: crowd of boys marching through Manhattan. They're chanting like things
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: are escalating pretty fast around here. They were chanting, we
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: don't sell no worlds and journals. Hooray for to strike.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a great anecdote. I love this so much.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: On one of these marches. They went down Wall Street
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: and some of the brokerage employees leaned out of the
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: windows and through ticker tape. They gave them a ticker
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: tape parade.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: And then even better, if it couldn't get any more
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: like old time in New York, one of the street cleaners,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: who was like indubitably wearing a white suit with a
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: white pith helmet, turned on a fire hydrant to kind
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: of get rid of all the ticker tape and all
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: the little kids who are striking and beating people in
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: smoking cigarettes played in the fire hydrant.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they probably had a coffee can to jangle that
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: that stream yep. That was such a a New York
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: movie thing. Like growing up in the suburbs of Georgia,
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: I always saw those movies. Was like, man, they really
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: got it made.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, playing in the fire.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Hydrant, oh absolutely, yeah, I've.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Never seen one. I've never been able to play in one.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Nah. We were country boys.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: We had sprinklers, yeah exactly. And slipping slides.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember those. I used to get a.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Headache from slipping slide because you just hit the ground
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: so hard.
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's because you were sliding on a napkin basically exactly.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so I wasn't the only.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: One, No, no, no, they were very dangerous. In fact,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure if they you can even still buy those?
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I wonder if you can or not.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: They would you know, with thet kids today, it would
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: have to be padded, right.
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: They worry about things like chronic traumatic encephaly and all
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: that s exactly. So where are we.
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Chuck, Well, we're at the point where the strike is
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: getting bigger and like reaching all points of New York
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: and these kids are impressing everybody with the fact that
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: there were so many of them, that they were so
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: well organized. Like this thing started to spread to New
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: Jersey and Connecticut and Rhode Island, and they were like
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: lighting a fire under newsboys, you know in the northeast.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: And just like a couple of days, right, it would
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: spread far and wide out of New York City. Oh yeah,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: So on Saturday, which was just a couple of days
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: after the strike started, there was more mob violence and
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: strike action. Another journal delivery wagon was tipped over. Anytime
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: they could get their hands on journal or world newspapers,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: they would take them and destroy and something really significant
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: happened too at this Up to this point, it had
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: essentially just been the newsboys who were striking. Yeah, but
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: women who started who sold newspapers joined the strike too.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: They joined them, and that was an enormous deal. That
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: was a big deal in a way, it kind of
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: legitimized it in the minds of other people.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: And you know, even though this is a couple of weeks,
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: it kind of went back and forth as far as
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: you know, public support, people getting on board and helping
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: out because as we'll see later, well let's just hold
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: on to that. Okay, some other people helped join the
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: strike too, but we'll get to that later.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: But in the meantime, the journal in the world were like,
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: this is actually starting to have an impact on our
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: bottom line already.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, big time. They were behind closed doors, very worried.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: Advertising or advertisers were like, hey, no one's reading our paper,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: so it's no one seeing our ads, Like I want
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: my money back. Yeah, And I think that was probably
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: the biggest problem right out of the gate, is not
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: only are they not selling papers, but now they're going
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: to be giving money. I don't know if they did,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: but we're asked to give money back to advertisers.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't give this hair cream away.
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: And the public started to get behind it, and that
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: was the real danger was once in New York City
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: as like, no, no, no, these boys have a point.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, then I.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Don't care if you're Hurst or Pulitzer, you're kind of
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: sol Yeah.
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: So there's a managing editor named Don Sites of the
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: World and he was one of Pulitzer's second in command,
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: and he said in a memo, the people seem to
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: be against us. They are encouraging the boys and tipping them.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: So yeah, it kind of spread to just the rest
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: of New York like this this issue that was really
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: specific to this group of kids, Like people started to
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: sympathize with them and support them, and yeah, that's bad
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: news for the the management that's being struck against.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Absolutely one thing they tried, and there are all sorts
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: of little ways they tried to get their paper out there,
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: you know, over the course of this couple of weeks.
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: But they said, all right, well round up people that
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: don't have homes. These guys that are on the street
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: will get them to sell, you know, these adults to sell.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: The paper had about one hundred men signed up to
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: scab and the next morning they didn't show up, so
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: they decided.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Not to I don't know.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: I guess the newsboys got to them, but I don't
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: know if it was by threat or what, but they
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: decided not to do it.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Well. That was definitely like the two pronged approach that
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: the Strikers originally took in the first few days. It
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: was appealing to other, you know, people's general sense of
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: compassion and justice. And then also, I also have the
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: leg of an old dining room table in my other hand,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: So which one do you want? You want the pamphlet
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: or you want the dining room table leg.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: That's right. Things really changed.
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: It was another turning point just a few days in
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: on the twenty fourth of July, when they were supposed
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: to meet with Hurst. The arbitration committee was all set
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: up and Hurst would not meet with them. So, you know,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: that first rally was about three hundred kids. That night,
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: they had about two thousand at New Irving Hall, and
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: other accounts say it could have been five thousand and
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: eight thousand, just thousands of these young boys, which had
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: to be terrifying and had a one of the big guys,
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: the New York Times said he was one of the
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: larger boys. Nick Myers chaired that meeting. I guess as
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: some muscle, along with a couple of other muscles, right.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Joe Bernstein and William Reese, also known as the
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: yellow barrel lemonade Man of Printing House Square.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: What does that even mean?
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: He sold lemonade out of a yellow barrel at Printing
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: House Square. Oh okay, that's why I sent you that
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: eBay of that lemonade.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Get it, cup, I get it now. Yeah, judhent me.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: If you grew up in the eighties, you, if you
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: saw this thing, a wave of nostalgia would wash over you.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: But a lot of times at theme parks, yes, it
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: would sell lemonade in these yellow plastic barrels.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and now I know why did you buy one?
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: No? I just looked at it for a little while,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: all right, But those guys William Reese and Joe Bernstein
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: a little while. Yeah, we're armed with what the New
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: York Times described as far reaching switches to keep everybody
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: in line during this meeting. And like you said, the
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: meeting was at New Irving Hall, near Union Square and
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: New Irving Hall, where this incredibly important Newsy strike meeting
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: was held. The one where they really kind of came
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: together and assembled is now Irving Plaza, owned by Live Nation,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: and it's available for corporate events and it features an
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: upscale VIP lounge as well.
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: I went to a lot of great shows at Irving
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: Plaza back when I lived up there. Yeah, yeah, great menu.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: What'd you see?
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Oh boy?
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: I saw a pavement there, I saw ween there, I
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: saw Colexico there. Okay, uh, those are the three that
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: come to mind.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: That's good enough. You're three for three.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: So yeah, Irving Plaza still there today.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: And available for corporate events.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: Race Track Higgins got up there, gave a great speech,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: got everyone, you know, pretty pumped up.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Just stay strong, he said. This is another quote.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: He said, we can do it hands down and no
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: whipping if we keep our eyes skinned.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I guess that's our eyes peeled.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm taking it as.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he had another quote too.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Do you want to read that one too?
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Have I won the part of racetrack Higgins?
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I've got another quote I want to say too.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: He also said the journal had offered two bucks a day,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: which if they were making thirty cents a day, two
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: dollars a day. That's a huge, huge, paid increase at
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: the time.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: And uh he said that kid wouldn't take it because
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: the journal refused to contract and pay hospital expenses.
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: Because the kid was worried about getting beaten for selling
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: the papers.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: I saw another. Well, it took me a minute. Actually
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: I read that three times before it sunk in what
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: he was saying.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: No, I like it.
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize he was being facetious. Yes, I found
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: another quote in I think that Zin Education project like
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: the legacy of Howard Zinn. They had a great article
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: on this and they dug up a quote from a
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: kid who was talking to the Jersey City Evening Journal.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Did you see this one?
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Mm hm?
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: He said, wee Zun's has got to stand by one
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: another in these times, cause if we don't, sure as hell,
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: we'll get it in the neck from them capitalists. I
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: love that kid. Can you imagine like an eight year
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: old saying that to a newspaper reporter. I love it.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: It's like that British complain about the ice cream prices.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: Did you see her? No, it's a viral video going
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: around now. Very okay, She's outraged at the ice cream price.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: She said, ice cream prices are too damn high.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: No, you should watch it. It's pretty funny. Okay, Uh
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: did you ever watch that throat whistler yet?
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: Man, I even forward it to you again, you.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Guys, I know I appreciate it sitting in my inbox.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I've just been doing a lot. Man. I've done everything
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: from recycled old light fixtures to set up a drip
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: water system in the last like twenty four hours.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: I'll know that you've watched it when you just call
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: me like crying with laughter.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: So at this meeting, things are going good. They're getting
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: more organized than ever. But they also decided that they
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: needed to it was sort of being counterproductive. They thought
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: to go around town beating everybody senseless for selling papers.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: So they said, all right, we need to stop this.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: We're not going to beat up scabs anymore. Livia included
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: another quote sarcastic cause of oh sultanly and I love
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: how she spelled that. And they said, you know, this
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: is like you mentioned the flyers. This is when the
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: flyers really came out where we're going to take a
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: more above board approach. We're gonna put flyers in the
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: hands of the people of New York that say, hey,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: just give us a chance to make a living, appeal
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: to their good nature and like you said, sense of justice,
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: and that seemed to really turn the tide of public
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: opinion on their side. Was when they were like, hey,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: these poor kids, you know, they're trying to go about
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: this the right way.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and there were scabs that were willing to step
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: up and do it, but they were kind of few
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: and far between, Like they had a really hard time
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: finding people who are willing to scab against these newsies.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: They just kind of won the hearts and minds of
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: New Yorker, so they had all this support and not
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: just New York, I mean, like you said, it spread
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: throughout New Jersey, New England. There were other sympathetic strikes
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: that had inspired in Nashville, Tennessee, Lexington, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Like this all happened in just a few days time
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: at a time where there were there no one was
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: walking around with like a smartphone and had access to
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: social media. This was all spread generally by word of mouth,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: and it spread so well that other kids from other
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: towns came to New York to coordinate with the leaders
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: of the New York City strike. That's what happened in
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: just a few days.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and also ironically being spread by other newspapers covering
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: the same Yeah.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: That's a really good point. You're right about that, because
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: I'm sure that's how a lot of them hurt the world.
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: And the Journal did not write a single.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Word about this, I imagine.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was very strategic by William Hurst because as
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: we'll see, they the journal in the world were like
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the everyday person's like champion, Like if you being screwed
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: over the world and the Journal were on your side,
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: and yet they wouldn't concede this this price reduction to
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: these striking newsboys, right, Yeah, so that was very strategic
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: not to say anything, whether in public or in articles.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: But like you said, other papers around New York covered
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: it breathlessly.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Should we take a break, way you catch your breath?
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you?
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right.
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: Back and we'll talk about sort of as this thing
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: goes along and then winds up in what happens right this.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: If you want to know, then you're in luck.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: Just listen to SUFFUSI stuff. No, So, Chuck, I told
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: you that Racetrack Higgins was my favorite right out of
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: the top three Kid Blink, Dave Simon, and Racetrack Higgins.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: The reason why he's my favorite is because out of
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: those three, he's the only one that wasn't a total
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: scale who accepted payoff to end their participation in leading
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: the strike by the two newspapers.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: Uh yeah, is that the case?
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: The only place, the only source that I saw that
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: didn't seem pretty much certain that these guys had both
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: been paid off, including contemporaneous quotes from Newsy's who believe
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: this was Livia.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Actually, all right, so what are we gonna do about Livia?
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I think what she was doing was taking a really
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: like a cautious approach because it never has been proven,
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: but it does seem to be pretty much certain that
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: at the very least Kid Blink took a payoff.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: So the idea is that Kid Blank and Dave Simon
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: were paid about four hundred bucks from those two companies
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: to end the strike.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: They denied it. Simon was like, go ahead, search.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: Me, which you know that means nothing, just because he
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: has didn't have the money on him.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Right then he's like, Bill, never search my keyster, oh.
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: God, and kid blank, you know, gave a pretty big
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: speech and it sounds like he was a pretty decent
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: public speaker, so they kind of he kind of convinced
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: everyone that it wasn't true in the moment. But yeah,
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: I think I agree with you. It seems like they
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: probably did, yeah pay off.
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: Because not only were their quotes from Newsy's later on
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: who one of them said, we would have gotten more,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: but the leaders got bought off. I think there was
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: a quote from Don Sitz, the managing editor who at
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: right after this happened, said the backbone of the strike
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: has been broken, and they did it by targeting the leaders.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: And then four hundred bucks that was a lot. Man,
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: That's like fifteen grand today to people who were like
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: making thirty cents a day at best.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: It's like forty plus years of work.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Right. It would have been really really tough to turn down.
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: The thing is is when you have like leaders who
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: are inspiring people and leading like people who are really
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: like coming from a just cause, you want them to
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: be untouchable, right, So I mean they're human, they were
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: kids still. I mean one of them was eighteen. The
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: other one was twenty one tops. If he wasn't eighteen.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: This is more money than they probably ever would have
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: seen in one place in their life. I can't really
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: blame them for turning it down, but I'm still deeply
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: disappointed that they.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Didn't, because Kid blinked was your guy.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: He would have been, so race Car Higgins is my
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: guy because he didn't get bought off.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Right, Oh that's right. I forgot it was race Car Higgins.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: So Simon, regardless of whether or not he took money,
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: even though we think he did, he resigned as president.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: He said, I'm going to continue to support the strike.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Supposedly was elected treasurer, which would be a really weird
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: thing to do someone who just accepted a payout. But
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: this is the point where things, you know, paper started
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: reporting all kinds of different stuff about who was leading
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: at the time. The New York Times said it was
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: a kid named Morris Cohen. The son had two different
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: stories that contradicted one another. One said that they voted
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: two kids in to replace Simon and Kid blink name
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: yack Egg and Niny.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: If your kids hanging out with a kid named niney
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: or yack Egg, you need to move.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: You need to move very quickly. Yack egg. That's so weird.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: It is the same paper talked about a different meeting
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: on the same day on the twenty eight with a
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: kid named Young Monis as the chief that replaced Blink.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: And then the time said, no, it's an executive committee
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: basically from the different delegates that are running it. And
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: we can tell is there wasn't a real firm leader
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: at this point, kind of like for what one reason
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: is what you talked about was they wanted someone that
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: was untouchable and they didn't know if they could trust anyone.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Right, and so this was I mean that don sits
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: quote about the backbone being broken turned out to be
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: pretty true. Like after those two left their positions of leadership,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: the strike just kind of it just got a little
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: chaotic and disassembled for a couple of days at least.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: It was just kind of chaotic, and yet they still
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: continued on. They just did it in a decentralized way.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: And then I think on twenty seventh of July Thursday,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the thing's been going on for a week now, kid Blink,
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: after having talked his way out of like being beaten
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: within an inch of his life for accepting a payoff
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: from the journal. In the Wreck or the World, he
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: shows up on the street with a new suit and
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: flashing a bunch of bills. Yeah, and depending on the
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: account you read, he was either beaten or was about
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: to be beaten when the cops arrested him, potentially for
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: his own protection, and he was taken to jail. But
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: that's the like, Okay, maybe Dave Simon's did or didn't.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: I think his behavior made it seem very fishy that, Yeah,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: so I suspect him Kid Blink. It's like it's just
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a given, you know, if that's true, that's the that's
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: the key. Like, it's entirely possible that that was rumor
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: they got printed in a newspaper that today we look
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: back and we're like, oh, it was in the newspaper,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: so it must be true. It's possible that was just
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: totally a rumor or something like that. But I still
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: say kid Blink is guilty, guilty, guilty.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: It was around the same time that there was a
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: compromise offered by the the newspapers. They went to the
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: union committee and said, hey, what if we go down
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: to fifty five cents? The union turned that down. This
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: is when they started to get the support I mentioned.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Some other people kind of joined in later, you know,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: a whole week later, And these were the news stands.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: The people who ran the newsstands said all right, we're
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: not gonna sell those papers anymore. Maybe we'll keep some
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: here out of you, and if you really really want one,
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: we'll quietly sell it to you. But they weren't pushing
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: the world in the journal at newsstands.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Right, which is almost as bad as just not carrying
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: it at all. Yeah, but that was a huge deal.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: I mean, just getting like other strikers or other newspaper
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: sellers like on the street to join them was a
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: big deal. Getting the news stands to actually join was
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: an enormous coup. And under this new kind of like
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: larger strike, the newsboys organized. They reorganized, I guess I
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: should say, in a much more like uniform, coherent way,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: under kind of the leadership of a couple of the
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: adults that own newsstands and apparently seemed to steer everything
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: in a very honest direction.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a newstand owner name Abraham Lippmann who said,
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: all right, why don't you guys adult elect an adult. Here,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: there are adult news newsies. And here's a guy. His
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: name's James Neil. He's fifty years old. I know, it
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: seems a little it seems a little.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Weird that he that he's still alive.
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: But elect him as president you might get a little further.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: They did racetrack Higgins, your boy became vice president, and
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: Neil said, you know, the adult in the room said,
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: all right, we need to get really organized. We need
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: to have badges, we need to get together with other
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: labor organizations. We need to district up and have delegates
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: and really get this thing going. But it was a
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: little too little, too late at this point because at
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: this point these kids needed the money. I mean they
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: were they were doing this because they were didn't have
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: much in the way of means, and so to be
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: out of work for a week in a row was
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: a big deal. And so their stamina sort of started
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: to wane.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and for a while they had one kid said
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: that they ain't got no wife's or families, so they
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: could take the pressure. But you know, a week of
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: not making any money, when you're relying on thirty cents
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: a day, that's a big deal. So it makes sense
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: that the strike just kind of started to peter out
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: a little bit. But it does make you wonder how
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: far it would have gotten. Had they organized like that
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: from day one, that would have been amazing.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: And I imagine there was some parental pressure because I
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: think a lot of this a lot of times if
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: these kids weren't just on their own a lot. You know,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: most of this money went back to the family, right,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: and so you know mom and dad, you would think
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: at some point was like, hey, we need this thirty cents, right,
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: we need three cans of soup.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: And fifty pounds of potatoes.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: So on I guess Monday, July thirty first is it
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: was the death knell of the strike. One of the
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: groups of newstands said, this strike's a failure. They passed
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: a resolution just seems really mean, and they're like, we're
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: not supporting us any longer. That almost was a signal
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: to everybody else from what I can tell that it
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: was almost kind of okay to start selling the journal
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: in the world again. And on August first, the New
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: York strike officially was over.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And the one big thing we didn't mention was
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: that they did accept an offer finally.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: Had kind of an important point.
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: They accepted the offer of sixty cents along with the
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: caveat that they could return unsold copies for a full refund,
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: And that seemed like you're dead on the money on
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: what you said at the beginning, like that was a
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: big deal. If they let's say, you sell one hundred
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: papers during wartime and you go out and you're like
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: a man, I think I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: get another bundle, and you sell ten newspapers out of
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: that bundle of one hundred, then that'll bury you as
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: a business. So being able to return those they saw
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: it as a big win at least, or maybe they
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: just tried to make themselves feel better and say it
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: was a big win. But it seems to me like
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: being able to get refunds for unsold papers was a
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: pretty big deal.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: It seems like a big win to me for sure.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And because yeah, you've got to sell those papers.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: They are not any good tomorrow. It's literally yesterday's news.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: You know, that's right.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: If you hadn't figured that out right now, I wanted
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: to make sure it was spelled out so that union
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: though it might seem like wow, they unionized like two
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: days before the strike ended. What a waste. That's not
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: at all correct. This union continued on and grew more
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: and more powerful and more and more disciplined too, And
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: as other strikes kind of came up over the years,
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: they would support them, and they had some a decent
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: amount of cloud Actually.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so good for them.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Wouldn't that be funny if we just ended the show
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: without mentioning Christian.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Bale, Yeah, that'd be awesome.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: People would lose their minds. Yeah.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Of course, Disney made a movie about this. It was
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: a musical called Newsies nineteen ninety two, and young Christian
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: Bale played a fictional character inspired you know by real people,
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: but a fictional guy named Jack Kelly. But there is
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: a character named Blink and a character named Race, so they,
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: you know, they definitely took.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: It.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Took some real people, made them slightly fictionalized, and then
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: made them sing.
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And neither Christian Bale nor any of the other
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: stars had any acting or any singing and dancing experience.
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: And it read like oral history about the flop that
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: was Newsi's when it came out in theaters and one
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: of the one of the leads was like, Yeah, if
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: you watch closely for those dance numbers, they'll suddenly either
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: like zoom way out or pan in really closely, so
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: you can't actually see us dancing. We'll be like in
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: a crowd of other people, or else it'll be like
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: an extreme close up on us. Because they weren't any good,
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: and I think even whether they had been good or
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: not was a moot point. It was a weird gamble
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: that Disney took. Yeah, introducing live action musicals that were
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: not at all in fashion at the time and hadn't
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: been for a couple decades by then. Jeffrey Katzenberg was like,
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: we're bringing them back, and America said, no, you're not.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: And he said, and we're going to do it in
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: the form of a newspaper delivery boy strike exactly.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Christian Bill survived.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: He did, and you know, the movie ended up being
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: a pretty big cult hit. Yeah, I've never seen it,
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: of you, No, I didn't. I watch parts of it today.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: But it was a Broadway show after that as well.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it won like two Tony's, so they in
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: its format as a Broadway show. They rewrote some of
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the songs and stuff. It did very well. It just
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: was not meant to be a movie. Yeah, that's it
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: for newsies everybody, and the newsies strike in particular.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: If you want to know more about that kind of thing,
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: go watch newsies and see what you think. Or go
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: to Broadway and see newsies and see what you think,
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: and then let us know what you think. And in
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: the meantime, it's time for a listener mail.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I'm going to call this critically email that just came in. Okay,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: we like to read these from time to time.
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: Sure not just read emails and praise Hey, guys, listen
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: every day. There's nothing new. I listen to the archives.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: I would like to ask you guys to refrain from laughing, chuckling, chortling, giggling,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: and so on. It's very annoying you do this incessantly.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: Just get serious about the subject. Are you guys comedians
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: or are you trying to inform the public?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Wow, I think this guy's new. It might not be
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: around for very long.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: Well no, he said he listens every day.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: For like the last two days.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: I maybe it's a hate listen.
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know another thing. I'd like to call you
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: guys out on here. I was listening to the archives,
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: and the way you guys supported the Black Panther Party
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: was nothing less than treason. Those were communists, anarchists, Marxists
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: with guns. You guys should have explained the threat to
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: our democracy those criminals pose. Maybe they weren't as big
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: a threat as j Edgar Hoover thought, but they were
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: pretty darn close. You guys are way too liberal and
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: doing what you do. You shouldn't show your bias. Stop
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: the laughing, because you two are more often not funny.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: I love this guy.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just gonna leave it Anonymous.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's probably for the best. Well, thanks a lot, Anonymous.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: We do love to get criticized sometimes and it's a
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: legitimate bone you pick there, But I'm afraid we're probably
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: not going to change the way that we do the show.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: That's a very kind way of responding.
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: If you want to be like Anonymous and get in
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: touch to this and be like stop doing this, so
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: we can be like, no, we're not going to stop
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: doing that. We love those. You can wrap it up,
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: spank it on the bottom, and send it off to
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.