Newspaper boy

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Newspaper boys, also called newsboys or newsies, were common in the late 1800s to the early 1900s in the United States of America, as the main distributors of newspapers to the general public. They first appeared in the mid-1800s with the rise of mass circulation newspapers, and tended to be among the poorest classes of society, often seen sleeping on the streets. They typically earned around 30 cents a day and often worked until very late at night.

In 1899, a large number of New York City newsboys refused to distribute the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, after the cost of distributing papers was raised 10 cents. Their union efforts were later called The Newsboys Strike. Strike leader Kid Blink was popular with competing newspapers such as the New York Tribune, who often patronizingly quoted Blink with his dialect intact, attributing to him such sayings as "Me men is nobul" and "Dis is de time when we'se got to stick together like glue." The impact of the ten-cent cost hike on the newsboys' families and living situations were rarely, if ever, reported.

The strike ended upon the newspapers' agreement to buy back all the papers the boys had refused to sell, and the union disbanded. Some decades later, the introduction of urban child-welfare practices led to improvements in the newsboys' quality of life.

The events of the 1899 strike later inspired a Disney film (Newsies).

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=166

http://www.booksbybrown.com/blinkpage.html

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/