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Guesswhat,Will? What'sthat,Mango?
I've been trying to write a promo for ourpodcast, Part TimeGenius.
But even though we've done over 250episodes, we don't really talk about murders orcults.
Imean, we did just cover the Illuminati ofcheese, so I feel like that makes us prettyedgy.
We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinesefood, and how do dollar stores makemoney.
And then ofcourse, can you game a dogshow?
So what you're saying is everyone should belistening.
Listen to Part Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get yourpodcasts.
Welcome to Stuff You ShouldKnow, a production ofiHeartRadio.
Hey and welcome to thepodcast.
I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's heretoo.
And this is Stuff You ShouldKnow, ExtraExtra.
Read all aboutit. Stuff You ShouldKnow.
At least there's an episode on the Newsy Strike of1899.
Ohboy. And you're gonna say something likethat, by theway.
Yeah, I didtoo, but I didn't knowwhat.
And that's what it turned out tobe.
Yeah, that's the beauty ofyou.
Thanksman. You never know what you're gonnaget.
I appreciate you appreciatingme.
So apparently we'reway,way, way behind thecurve, because Stuff You Must In History class did an episode on this like all the way back in2009.
Ohyeah?Yeah. So it's time we did this Iguess.
A hundred something years on from the actualstrike.
Yes. It needs to be covered byus.
Yeah, so are we copying themnow?
If it's 14 years later orwhatever?
Yeah.Yeah, we just go on the Stuff You Must In History class site and figure out newtopics.
Geez, he was the host backthen.
Whoknows? It was such a rotating cast at that point whoknows.
Yeah, Imean, this is before Tracy andHolly.
Yeah, shout out Tracy andHolly.
Keeping it unlocked down at Stuff You Must In History class for yearsnow.
That'sright. They got the reins and they werelike,mine.
Yeah. And the horse islike, stop jerking mearound.
Yeah, so you mentioned a hundred plus years orsomething.
This wasa, if you're wondering what a news heis, it was a paper deliveryperson, usually a paper boy or a newsboy.
Although we will see there were other people delivering papers in New YorkCity.
Yeah. And they went on strike in1899.
A bunch ofboys, generallyboys, gottogether.
We'relike,hey, we're tired of making 30 cents aday.
We want to make like 50 cents aday.
Yeah, and 30 cents a day sounds like a very smallamount.
It actually was about $11 in today'smoney, which is still a pretty small amount to survive in New YorkCity.
And a lot of those newsboys, it turnsout, were just barelysurviving.
Like a lot of them were pretty much every single one of them was working classtops.
Yeah. I don't think there was any middle class at thetime.
And there certainly weren't any like aristocratic newsboys.
So like you were working class atbest.
If you even had ahome, if you were not anorphan, if you were not living on thestreets.
Yeah. And almost all of them were at the time like very marginalizedcommunities.
Like Irishkids, Jewishkids, Blackkids.
Like it wasa, it was a neat kind of like cross section of America thathad, or New York at least at thetime, that had been kind of thrown together and put together at thisjob.
And there was a lot of them doing it to something like 10 to15,000, depending on who you asked at whatdecade.
But from what Isaw, Olivia helped us withthis.
And I think she said something like 15,000 at the time of the strike we're talkingabout, which is1899.
Yeah. And most of these kids were probably tweens andteens.
Youknow, some of them were as young as six and seven yearsold, ofcourse.
Some of them were lateteenagers, even reports of some of them being like 2021 yearsold, when it came to sort of leading theseorganizations, or leading these meetings inthese, thestrike.
But they were generally teens andtweens.
And like Isaid, they weren't allboys.
There were somegirls. There were some marriedwomen.
There were some disabledadults,really.
Mostly boysthough. And these wereall, like regardless of who itwas, these were all peoplethat, like yousaid, we're lookingto, youknow,say, youknow, I made 30 centstoday.
I'll give 25 cents to myfamily.
And I'll get a box of cookies for anickel.
Andthat's-Oh, you could buy a car for a nickel backthen.
I actually didsome, because spending power is differentthan, youknow, just what would that be in today'sdollars.
Allright. And I did look up in 1900 what you could get for some ofthis, forlike, youknow, 10 to 30cents.
Oh,cool.And- And laid onus.
Well, a box of cookies was anickel.
Okay, so the car thing waswrong.
Right. I'm sorry to disappointyou.
Okay. A box of cereal was adime.
A can of Campbell soup was adime.
A package of quaker oats was adime.
Seven pounds of potatoes was adime.
Wow.Literally. And you could get a lot of steaktoo.
Meat wasn't as expensive as you mightthink.
So it was kind of weird in thatway.
But that just kind of shows you a little bit of what 30 cents a day would buyyou.
And, youknow, the way these boys were doingit, they were basically freeagents.
They didn't work for the newspaper or work for acompany.
They would go out and hustle on their own by these bundles ofnewspapers, like 100newspapers, and then sell them at amarkup.
So-Right. Generallylike,hey, what was the original price that they werecharging?
50 cents per bundle of 100 is what the papers charged the newsboys atfirst.
Yeah, and they would sell them for generally opinionpiece, but sometimes mark them up to two or threecents.
But none of that adds up to 30cents.
So I'm trying to reckon with allthat.
I think that they didn't necessarily make it through the entire bundle in aday.
Like they might have some leftover and they had to eat thatcost.
Totally makessense,Josh.
That's mytake. That's what I got fromit.
No, I think you'reright, because that reckons with a little thing here at the end as far as what the newspapers offeredthem.
Right.Exactly. And so these kids wouldwork.
Sun up tosundown. They would be on the street shouting out the headlines all daylong, sellingpapers.
I read a contemporary account who talked about how like when you walk down thestreet, they run up to you and like essentially make you buy theirnewspaper.
And it was like a hard-scrabblelife.
Like the impression that we have of it is like these tough little kids who all smoked cigarettes and cigars and like gambled and and youknow, played craps and stuff likethat.
Like that wasreal. It was even worse thanthat.
Like we have almost a romanticized version ofit.
It was that plus grittier is the life that these kids wereliving, hustling on the street selling newspapers everyday.
And in different places around the countrytook, they had likerules, but New York was not one of thoseplaces.
When you saycontemporary.
Contemporaneous?Siri?
No, I just wondered if you've since it's a thing now with theshow.
I've been pissedoff. Since you've been pissedoff.
You just grabbed me by the ankle and dragged me back and I fell on my face as I was pulleddown.
But other thanthat, it'sgood.
What I was hoping you would say islike,no, it wascontemporary.
It wascontemporary.Geez, now I'mconfused.
Like I read it in Vice lastweek.
It's about the news voicestrike.
Shutup,Chuck.Okay, so what isit?
Contemporaneous would be what I meant tosay.
In contemporariestoday.
Yeah. I'm so sick ofthis.
I amtoo.Dumb, stupidwords.
I'm just going to say I read an account from the time that I'm speakingof.
Oh, that'snice. You know there's a word forthat.
Yeah, but I don't know what itis.
Allright, so let's get intothis.
You said other cities were a little more organized with rules andlike,hey, you can only work so many hours and maybe you have to be a part of an actual organization or something and you got to wear auniform.
New York was a WildWest.
This was a time when William Randolph Hurst and Joseph Pulitzer were really running the show with their big timepapers.
The New Yorkworld.Well, I guess I should readit.
The oppositeway. The New York Journal and the New Yorkworld,respectively.
Right.Yeah. And so the Spanish American work comes along in April of1898.
And news was hotter thanever.
Everyone wanted to get their hands on anewspaper.
So theysaid,hey, this is a good chance to raise the price on thesenewsies, on thesenewsboys, to 60 cents from 50 cents because covering words isexpensive.
This will also help us cover thiswar.
Yeah, it was a legitimate priceincrease.
The world and the journal were not the only papers that did that to pay for their rather expensive coverage of thewar.
And the newsboys at the time werelike, this isfine.
It makes sense because we're selling so many more papers than we normallydo.
We're actually probably a little better off even at the 60 cent perbundle, like pricepoint.
Yeah, because we're sellingout.
Exactly. They're sellingout.
Maybe selling multiple bundles in aday.
Whoknows? But the problem came when the Spanish American warended.
And other papers returned totheir, as the circulation wentdown, the other papers went to their pre-war prices perbundle.
Yeah. But the journal and the world didnot.
And that really stuck under these little newsboyscrawl.
That'sright. And this gets very colorful here prettysoon.
Oh mygod, some of these quotes are justamazing.
Sort of strapin. We also have to set up sort of the time in which this took place in the late1800s.
Therewere, it was just a strike heavy union heavytime.
Right. There was a trolley strike going on in Brooklyn in Manhattan that even though the adults were the trolleydrivers, a lot of thesenewsies, parents maybe worked in that field or they weresympathetic.
So these kids gotinvolved.
And they were throwing rocks at scab drivers and stuff likethat.
So they knew what striking was all about and sort of the strong arm version of how to go about astrike.
And there were also other newsboys strikes beforethis.
Like in the in the few years proceeding inBoston, Dallas andDetroit.
So this this strike of1899, like if you type in newsboysstrike, all you're going to get back on the internet is the strike of1899.
Yeah. Sosignificant. And the reason that it differentiated itself from other strikes was in scope indepth, inorganization.
Like in just a few days as we'llsee, like these kids went from a bunch of ragtag, youknow, rough and tumble seven year olds to forming like a union and like defending themselves in the face of being run over by greedy fat catsessentially.
Yeah. And it's just a couple of weeksreally.
Yeah, the whole thing was less than 14days.
Yeah. And they also ledBoston,Detroit, and Dallas and NickNamory.
Yeah, theydid.Yeah, the kids in New York definitely had the nicknamesdown.
Allright. I think it's a pretty goodsetup.
Youknow,Chuck, I've got to agree with you as well on your take on thesetup.
Okay. Allright. We'll take a break and we'll talk about the literal tipping point right afterthis.
If you want to know then you're inluck.
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That's a betteridea. So every week on Far TimeGenius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world's most importantquestions.
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Stuff you shouldknow. Stuff you shouldknow.
Allright, we mentioned a literal tippingpoint.
And that's a bit of a stupid pun because on July 18th of1899, it's aTuesday.
There were some newsboys in Queens and Long Island City that found out that one of the journal delivery people that brought the bundles to these guys was stealing papers from their bundles and shorting them on eachbundle.
And they werelike, this is not going to stayin, myfriend.
And they literally tipped over hiswagon, chased himoff, and stole thepapers.
And this was in screenwritingterms, this would be called the incitingincident.
Right, this is where the gun is introduced in Act1.
Sure. You've been going to that one a lotlately.
But it's the only one Iknow.
I loveit. Think about itthough, a bunch of little kids tipped over awagon, chased away the adultdriver, and stole a bunch ofpapers.
Like that was what theydid.
And that's a really great indicatoror, Iguess, example of what a bunch of little kids can do if you put enough of them together and tick them all off at the sametime.
It's likeants. Like how ants can just do all sorts of amazing things if they collectively combine theirstrength.
Same thing with seven to fifteen yearolds.
Well, other people have said it beforeme, but there is no scarier group of humans on earth than a group of youngboys.
Yes. And I imagine all of these kidstoo, all of these boys are just like 15,000 Scott Farkis and GroverGills.
That's who I imagine the two bad kids from a Christmasstory.
Absolutely. And their brains aren't fully fully formedyet.
So they're not capable of making like rationaldecisions.
And there's a mobmentality.
And I'm just tellingyou, if you're on the streets and you see a group of like nine teenage boys run in the otherdirection.
Yeah. That's a greatadvice.
And tell me it's notme. It's well knownfact.
Okay. I'm not disputing it atall.
Yeah, especially you better get out ofthere, myfriend.
Yeah. I'm pretty bad atfighting.
Metoo. Becauseactually, I don'tknow.
I've never been at afight.
I can tell you first hand that I'mnot.
Allright. So that tipping point yousaid, which by theway, I don't think was a badpun.
I think it was quiteapt.
Yeah,thanks. That kind of like ignited something in thesenewsies.
Like theywere, they had already been bristling for a little while under that rate hike that they knew was unfair that they were really upset at the world and the journalabout.
And it was enough to kind of like light a fire under a few hundred of them at least who gathered in city hall park outside of city hall of allplaces.
About 300 of them rallied and basically said journalworld.
If you guys don't bring your yourbundle, press for bundle back down to pre warlevels, we're going tostrike.
We're mad rightnow. There's enough of us who are mad rightnow.
We're going to put a hurting onyou.
You better listen tous.
That'sright. And they alsosaid, youknow, we're smart enough to know that they needed someone to kind of head this thingup.
They'd seen these unions and other strikes poppingup.
And even with their little unformedbrains, they knew that they couldn't just be a bunch of ants at thispoint.
They had to have some leadership and some organization as all great unionsdo.
And they elected an 18 yearold, maybe21.
And this is where things get interesting because contemporaneous accounts don't always get the namesright.
So there's a lot of different versions of names andages.
But this kid was a Jewishboxer.
His name was either Dave Simons or Simmons or Simmons with a D or Simmons with two M's and aD.
Right. But let's just call them DaveSimons.
Yeah, that's what most people callhim.
He was the he was the leaddude,right?
Thepresident. He was thepress.
The second in command as far as I couldtell, and the one who actually is probably the most well known out of all these guys was an 18 year old Italian American kid with red hair and a disabledeye.
He was either blind in the eye or it was impaired in someway,shape, orform.
And as aresult, they called him kidblink.
And his real name was LewisBeletti,Lewis,Dalette, ballot orbatel, depending on which old time he newspaper youconsult.
But the one I've seen most of all is LewisBeletti.
But everybody called him kidblink.
So those two were essentially incharge.
And then one other really important one who became increasingly important as time went on was a guy named race car Higgins fromBrooklyn.
And he's myhero. He's the one I like themost.
Yeah, Olivia just dug up some more funnames, which is why we loveOlivia.
CrutchMorris, notbad.
No. HunchMaddox. Can't imagine that kid had goodposture.
Right. And Muggsy McGee was anotherone.
I don't know if you dug up and found itanymore.
No, Muggsy McGee was thewinner.
I waslike, there's none that are better thanthat.
Soyeah, that's prettygood.
Just keep itup. MuggsyMcGee.
Would you mess with thosekids?
No.No, I wouldn't even be comfortable walking past some under normal circumstances when they were trying to sell me apaper.
I'd belike, just give me10.
Right. So a couple of dayslater, this is July 20th by thispoint.
The newspapers hadsaid,no, thankyou.
We're going to keep our prices thesame.
And so they sent their delegates out and told all the newsies all over New YorkCity, stop selling these twonewspapers, which isinteresting.
It wasn'tlike,hey, we're not going to sell newspapersanymore.
They were targeting these two inparticular, which is a little different than maybe your averagestrike.
Yeah. They alsosaid, if you don't stop selling thosenewspapers, you're going to get your face punchedin, which is a directquote.
Yeah. So thesekids, these newsies stoppedselling.
And I get the impression that they were like yousaid, they were selling otherpapers, but it seems like as the strike kind of really started to settlein, like they were basically striking most of thetime.
And they would kind of patrol the streets of NewYork,Manhattan,Brooklyn,Queens, andWales.
LongIsland,maybe.Okay.
Whereelse? What's the otherone?
Give me one more up there in theNorth.
Harlem?Sure. And whatelse?
Home of YankeeStadium.
Yankeeville? Thesomething.
TheBronx. There's a fart named afterit.
Is therereally?Oh, the Bronxcheer.
Yeah, Bronxcheer. I never realized that was afart.
I thought it was another name for like araspberry.
No, I think you'reright, but it sounds like afart.
Okay. Allright. I think you improvedit,frankly.
Yeah. So all of these kids are walking around with from what Isaw,horseshoes, baseballbats, barrelstaves, wheelspokes, like clubsessentially.
And we'relike, ifyou, if we catch you selling the journal of therecord, othernewsies, we're going to beatyou.
We're going to give you abeating.
I don't care if you're anadult.
I don't care if you're a kid whereyou, you can't sell theseanymore.
And a lot of people got beaten by thesekids, especially on day one andtwo.
Period.Yeah, I realized it didn't sound like I was completing thatsentence, but that wasit.
That's allright. There was a little bit of police action atfirst, but not much because the police had their hands full with this trolleystrike.
But there were some contemporaneous accounts inthose, or at least some newspapers back then of a handful of kids getting roundedup, somewhat to like a juvenilesystem.
I was called a juvenileasylum.
Others went to child protectiveagencies, but generally the cops weren't like rounding up these boys right and left because they had their hands fullalready.
But on the same day that a few of these boys happened to be roundedup, which I guess was probably the 20th or21st.
Yeah. The evening post said that a 14 year old led a crowd of boys marching throughManhattan.
They're chanting like things are escalating pretty fast aroundhere.
They were chanting we don't sell no worlds andjournals, hooray for astrike.
Yeah. There's a greatanecdote.
I love this somuch. On one of thesemarches, they went down Wall Street and some of the brokerage employees leaned out of the windows and threw tickertape.
They gave him a ticker tapeparade.
I loveit. And then evenbetter, if it couldn't get any more like Old Timey NewYork, one of the street cleaners who islike,like, indubitably wearing a white suit with a white pithhelmet, turned out in a fire hydrant to kind of get rid of all the ticker tape and all the little kids who are striking and beating people and smoking cigarettes played in the firehydrant.
Yeah. They probably had a coffeecan.
I can't go thatstream.Yeah.
That was such a New York moviething, like growing up in the suburbs ofGeorgia, always all those movieslike,man, they really got itmade.
Yeah.Yeah, playing in the firehydrant?
Oh,absolutely.Yeah. I've never seenone.
I've never been able to play inone.
No. We were countryboys.
We hadsprinklers.Yeah,exactly.
And slip andslides.Yeah.
Do you rememberthose? I used to get a headache from slip and slide because you just hit the ground sohard.
Yeah. Because you were sliding on anapkin,basically.
Exactly.Yeah.Okay. So I wasn't the onlyone.
No,no,no. They were verydangerous.
Infact, I'm not sure if they can even still buythose.
Oh,yeah. I wonder if you can ornot.
Theywould, youknow, with the soft kidstoday.
They would have to bepadded.
Yeah.Right. They worry about things like chronic traumatic encephaly and allthat.
Exactly.Exactly.So, where arewe,Chuck?
Well, we're at the point where the strike is getting bigger and like reaching all points of New York and these kids are impressing everybody with the fact that there were so many of them that they were so wellorganized.
Like this thing started to spread to New Jersey and Connecticut and Rhode Island and they were like lighting a fire undernewsboys, youknow, in theNortheast.
Yeah, and just like a couple ofdays,right?
It spread far and wide out of New YorkCity.
Oh,yeah. So onSaturday, which was just a couple of days after the strikestarted, there was more mob violence and strikeaction.
Another journal delivery wagon was tippedover.
Anytime they could get their hands on journal or worldnewspapers, they would take them and destroythem.
Andwhat, something really significanthappened,too.
But up to thispoint, it had essentially just been the newsboys who werestriking.
But women who sold newspapers joined thestrike,too.
