Newsies is based on the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899. The New York newsies – boys and girls who sold newspapers on the street – went up against two newspaper publishers, Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal, to fight for the chance to earn a livable wage.
The Spanish-American War (April-August 1898) had sparked a boom in the newspaper business. Circulations exploded as customers snatched up papers as fast as they could, eager for news from the front. Newspapers did everything they could to outdo one another and spent exorbitant amounts of money on eye-catching front pages and eyewitness accounts. To make up some of the money, they raised the wholesale price for the newsies from 50 to 60 cents per hundred. The newsies didn’t feel the pinch as much because they were enjoying a rise in their profits from the additional demand. But by the summer of 1899, the war had long ended and circulation declined. Almost all of the papers rolled their wholesale price back to 50 cents, except Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Hearst’s Journal; as the two largest publishers, Hearst and Pulitzer figured that they would be able to maintain their prices and that the newsies would continue to buy from them.
As the newsies sold fewer papers each week, the cost difference became harder to manage, and a strike commenced against these two papers beginning on July 20, 1899 and ending on August 2, 1899. During that time, the kids drew support from newsies all over the Northeast, as well as other young workers. Though the kids banded together, at times things became violent – scabs (people hired by the publishers to deliver papers despite the strike) were attacked on the streets, their papers ripped from their hands and destroyed to prevent their sale. The publishers did not take the strike seriously until advertisers started making requests to get their bills adjusted. The newsies eventually came to a compromise with the publishers: They would purchase their papers at the higher price, but the publishers would buy back any papers that the newsies couldn’t sell. This was more valuable to the newsies than a lower price would have been, as it allowed them to buy papers without the risk of losing money for any that went unsold.
After the successful resolution of the newsies’ strike nearly two weeks after it began, two other children’s strikes quickly followed in New York City: The shoe-shine boys wanted a wage increase, and messengers were opposed to the 50-cent “tax” they were being charged every week for their uniforms. An irreversible revolution of child laborers had begun.
(provided by MTI)
