Hello, and welcome to Cool People. Did Cool Stuff, your weekly reminder that we can do good things instead of just always doing bad things, but not in an ontological moral way. Just to I'm your host, Margaret Kildre, and with me today is my guest Andrew T.
Andrew Hi good.
I was debating whether I had enough time to off off my sneak a little slice of orange.
But I don't worry listeners.
By the time this is done, I'll have eaten this full orange and you'll you'll either know or you won't.
You can always tell when somebody's like a seasoned podcast or by like, how well could I sneak this snack?
Yeah?
I just thought I had a little more intro time.
Oh no, I'm sorry. Usually I do, but I'm doing this thing where I'm lazier with my intros now it's sucking great.
Keep me on my on my orange toes. Okay, so I'm holding up for the zoom. You see, I have this much orange. This is going to be gone by the time okay, by the time we finish.
It's a good choice of podcast snack too, right. It's compared to like chips or something right where there's nothing Oh.
Yeah, yes, well, chips, you just gotta really lean lean far back and kind of like you gotta you close your mouth first and then close your teeth lips first, that teeth, which is pretty unnatural, but it kind of works.
Secrets of the podcasters, see, this is the only thing I bring to the table.
Literally.
Well, I've spent all my time trying to figure out what I can fidget with and what I can't fidget with while I'm recording. M I can fidget with the microphone sorry, the headphone cable that's twisty. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that one's good. I can't flick open and close a knife or a lighter. They make noise.
I gotta I got a USB dongle that I flip back and forth or yeah. I guess I just sort of worry it a little bit. It's probably really bad for it. I mean, I just realized, so I stole my friends. As I'm really I'm holding it.
It doesn't really matter if it's bad or not.
This is not the one I bought.
So speaking of being good dear friends, Yes, so Andrew, you know a bunch of people can collectively withhold their labor and it's called a strike.
Oh boy, I'm trying.
I'm finding out this is this is uh strike. Strikes are in the air, and I guess to the extent that I can be loving it, I guess I'm loving it.
Okay, Okay, Yeah, It's one of these things that like is like really cool after the fact, but I feel like during a strike. I've never been on strike for more than like five minutes. My boss immediately caved because though we were one hundred percent of his workforce, but it actually is probably really hard to be on strike, but they it sounds really cool later or from the outside.
Yeah, I uh, well, currently I am on strike. I am a Writer's Guild of America member. We are on strike. At the time of this recording. I think we're closing on fifty days. I have not kept track. Also, I had a very dark moment a couple of weeks ago, because you know, there's so many you know, so much of the history of the strike and the previous strikes is about like how many days it's been.
And I had a real dark moment where I.
Was like, were they counting weekdays or like work days or calendar days, because I was like, if it was fucking work days I'm going to lose it. But we are closing in on half the length of the previous strike, which, for boring business reasons, is I don't know how likely, but I would say most the people with the most experienced in this would say with medium confidence that it
is likely that we're going to be somewhere around there. Also, but there are so many more variables this time than last time, So who really knows?
Of course I certainly don't.
Yeah, but yeah, we're probably, you know, with like sixty percent confidence, closing in on about halfway done with this shit. And you know, I'm less tired that I thought, but more tired than I want to be.
It's just what the Writer's Guild of America is asking for is so unbelievably reasonable and fair that it's so embarrassing for these networks and streaming companies. It's like, you guys are so fucking greedy and disgusting.
Yeah, I would say, the well, and that that sort of alludes to if we want to talk about the actual any details of the registract, the thing that probably is the biggest variable for everyone, including themselves, is the prevalence of the streaming companies, who.
From what I understand what I'm seeing.
They don't want to have anyone, but they also have this real ethos of a tech company as opposed to a traditional traditional media company and traditional media companies, though they are, like any company, pretty anti union. You know, Disney's worked with the unions for quite a long time and they have a reasonable relationship. Whereas Netflix, well, you know, I guess in one way of looking at it, Netflix
has worked with unions its entire existence. But on the other way of looking at it, or sorry, Netflix Studios has not Netflix the original DVD Store probably did. But the other way of looking at it is the people that founded Netflix the DVD Store come from a culture that's virulently anti union in Silicon Valley. So so those folks really bring a different vibe. You know, there's entities like Amazon who Amazon on Studios.
You know, I don't know all the business.
I'm pretty sure in an unsourced way, I will just say with more confidence that I probably should that they're sort of a lost leader slash vanity project for Jeff Bezos. Another very anti union individual, Apple Studios, which is notorious for one of the business practices we're striking against. Of many rooms, you know, they they create television and movies at a loss leader for their little screens.
So does it matter to them?
It's unclear. So those are the things we don't know. What we do know is, you know, they can't make this ship without.
Writers and soon without actors.
Right, yeah, Well, SAG voted.
To strike, but they're not on strike yet, is that correct?
SAG voted.
The membership of SAG voted to authorize a strike against the WGA. I am sorry, against the AMPTP, the American Motion Picture Television Producers's too.
Many acronyms in every labor related sece. Yeah, this is one of the problems with labor unions and the things that they fight against.
Yeah, it's it's the problem with more than four people. Yeah, yeah, is you just you need a fucking acronym and then you start dividing yourselves up. But so they voted to they are still negotiating with these studios, and they have the membership has given their negotiating committee and leadership by an overwhelming margin, the right to call a striketh and I have no idea how their negotiations are going.
And really no one does.
That was one thing that kind of came out of the writer's negotiation. Is the rumors swirling around after the fact were laughable.
They were two to one completely false.
And yeah, I almost in fact the actual outcome of what apparently happened, or at least what was reported in negotiation. That was kind of the one rumor that wasn't really out there, which is that things it was not close and things like fell apart clearly and rapidly, like very very early s you yeah, so on strike? Yeah, yeah, on strike. Sorry, thanks for letting me know that is why. And been on strike either, thank you. Yes, I've never
been on strike before. I don't think this is This would be only the second union I've belonged to when I was a teenager as a grocery bagger. This is probably because it was Michigan.
Somehow.
We were organized under ua W, which seems must have simply been a regional thing because.
The unions wouldn't think what they can get sometimes.
Couldn't really seem a forgetting that you've in LA.
I was around for the last strike and it was long. It was long, and like most of not not my specific parents, but most of my friends' parents worked in the entertainment industry, whether that be writers themselves or crew or makeup and things like that.
And it was long. It was long.
Yeah, so yeah, it's long. I mean we'll see. Well that is the other thing. Yeah, as you mentioned, really, the the other thing that is new on our side this time is we have much stronger solidarity from especially the teamsters. Yeah, and from and yeah, well you know, without telling them how to do their jobs or their wink not jobs, they could certainly be doing some of those things a little more if they want. We would love it.
But is there anything up top that is there any call to action or anything that you have for listeners of our show?
Oh my gosh, you know what, No, there isn't anything.
The one thing I will say is you will know what to do.
The Writer's Guild is being much much more communicative than they were even in prior labor actions that weren't a strike, and I do commend them for that. That was the thing when I ran for the WJ board, I was like, you guys are very obtuse, and I would have to change that.
Actually for a bunch of writers, right, yeah.
And they did.
They have done a much much better job of communicating, so to that end. So, for instance, like I've seen people like independently on Twitter saying things like I'm going to cancel my Netflix in support, and that is not what anyone's asking for right now. And you'll know when and it will be more effective if you actually basically if we all do things together and coorporately.
So yeah, so no need to cancel on.
Netflix or anything like that yet, but you know, feel free to tweet at them and call them uh, weird weird dickheads on the street if you want.
Well, today we're going to talk about another strike that you already have exceeded in length, but we're going to talk about a strike that closed out the nineteenth century. It won important concessions from some of the most powerful men in the US. It changed the way that people in this country talk about child labor, and most importantly, speaking of Disney, it gave us a sick musical with kids an old time outfits, singing and dancing in the
streets of New York. Amazing, because today we're going to talk about the Newsboys Strike of eighteen ninety in New York City.
I can't wait.
Yeah cool, I will say this.
I have not seen the musicals but on the other day, we we've been doing sort of people have been organizing theme days at the strike and at Disney. The other day was Newsy's Day, and I was not aware that it was happening. So there, I was just like, you know, there's a lot of like cosplay Raga muffins around right now, and I just I wasn't sure what was happening.
And I was just like.
And then it was Newsy's Day, and I was like, Okay, this is fine. The Disney lot is huge. I could I could stand elsewhere if I don't want to be around it.
But I was.
It was more that I was just surprised by It's.
It's that thing where you just kind of like you're in a crowd and all of a sudden you're like, what the fuck is with all the.
Like fraid like overhauls.
Yeah, like a lot of a lot of grease, like grease paid on faces right now?
What the fuck is happening?
Well, we're going to talk about what an informal gang of fairly violent teenagers shut down the nation's biggest newspapers and won their rights. So let's talk about Newsy's. Let's talk about the people that you're going to cost play affs tomorrow amazingly.
Yeah, I'm ready. I mean, look, my vibe is already kind of like that.
So I was just like, I mean, I'm not like out of line, but I was like, this is aggressive.
Yeah, no, fair enough, especially once you have to learn all the singing and dancing, which, okay, we're going to get to it. The singing and dancing is historically accurate in terms of how they are represented. But all right, so you've got newspapers, right, and they used to be the main way that people got news. They go back to the seventeenth century. But I'm not going to do that to you, although I will say that China actually had something similar to newspapers in like the second and
third century. Obviously like well before the Western world. Yeah, Europe as usual is about a thousand years behind. Newspapers as we currently know them, or maybe remember them might be more accurate.
Yeah, we're at just another juncture.
Yeah, anything could happen that probably is a newspapers.
Yeah, totally. They started around the early sixteen hundreds in the Holy Roman Empire, and specifically it's no Germany and newsboys. The idea that children are the means of distribution goes back really far, at least as far as seventeen ninety nine, when horsemen were delivering the paper like house to house
in colonial America and post colonial America. That was when it was not colonial anymore, well different kind of colony, right, horsemen were delivering the paper, and then they were like, maybe we can make kids do this and then barely
pay them. So they did. And you have two methods of distribution of papers, right, You've got door to door delivery and then you've got like direct sales, usually on the street, and usually it's a kid coming up and being like, please miss the bomby lass pape, you know or whatever.
It's always mista yeah, yeah, that's the real vibe.
Yeah, I get it, I get it. And so this has been children for a very very long time. There was a brief period where the door to door was no longer children in the end of the nineteenth century, just the direct But then around the nineteen twenties or so, it got back to the like kind of classic Americana thing of the like boy on a bicycle riding around on his paper route or whatever, uh huh. And so
in the city kids sell the newspapers. They walk around the streets being like extracts or read all about it. Disgraced former president Donald Trump has been arrested, or whatever the news is that day. Maybe it'll be the onion headline that he's been executed. Most of these newsboys were kids or young teens from poor families. A lot of them were homeless, and a lot of them were orphans too, but not all of them, not even most of them.
Most boys started as young teenagers, but kids as young as six sold papers, and some kept selling into adulthood, but most didn't.
I don't know those.
Because they died or found better jobs or probably worse jobs, honestly, right, there were some girl newsies, especially from families without boys to send off to work. There was this whole stir when the twenty eighteen stage version of Newsies included girl newsies, and people were like, oh, you're making it woke or whatever. Yeah.
Yeah, they just like nothing's more woke than just like true, you know, true turn of the century desperation. I know, because you look yeah, yeah, of a greater equalizer than you think.
Yeah, actually we're gonna talk about some of that too. Yeah. So there were girls they and even the twenty eighteen news that they were like, well, we look back and here's here's all of these photos of girl newsies, and then you can actually find quotes that we'll get into later about even during the strike there were girl newsies, you know, predominantly boys and boys is the best I can kind of put together. Their ethnicity varied decade to decade,
in city to city. I've got the most information about New York City, so that's what I'm going to go into for a long time. For decades, ninety percent of the New York newsies were Irish, like either you know, directly from Ireland or children of immigrants. I think sometimes it was like literally like kids who smuggled themselves to America as children without parents. But most of the time you're talking about like the kids and grandkids of immigrant families.
By the time we're talking about today, it is more diverse. Eighty percent of the kids were from immigrant Irish, Italian and Jewish families, but not all of them were. There were black newsies, and by and large, Newsy life poverty being a great equalizer, was not segregated, right right, right. Sometimes various kids had nicknames that referred directly to their race. Sure, there's a lot of slurs age old tradition. Yeah, yeah,
I'm sure that doesn't happen anymore. Obviously, a twelve year old would never get named after some Oh god, two of the black Newsies. I found one of his named William Reese, and I'm not going to say his nickname on air. It's not the really bad one. It's just another one that I'm not going to say on air. And then another one of the black Newsies was named the Black Wonder. And there was an Indigenous Newsy named Bob the Indian, one of the presidents of the Newsboys
unions in eighteen ninety nine. We're gonna talk about this. He actually lays out the demographics and you'll be, you'll be. The way that this kid does demographics is interesting. It is two fifth Jews, one fifth Irish, one fifth Italian, and one fifth everyone else, including black kids, girls, disabled folks, people pretending to be disabled called fakers. Oh my god, because somehow both girl and disabled are ethnicities.
Yeah, I guess that's an organizing principle of sorts.
It's just other.
Yeah, yeah, oh god, fair enough, I suppose.
Yeah, you know, and like whatever, like they were you know, ahead.
Not dis alert to labor unions today. You take what you could. You know, there's got to be something, but by at large they're the right thing.
And overall this actually puts them leagues ahead of other contemporary unions. I didn't write this part into the script, but a bunch of different times I've had to do research into just how racist a lot of the late nineteenth century unions in the United States were not all of them, and there's some like particular standouts, but a lot of them more like this is for white people only.
Yeah, and.
But I mean that that is a real side of the labor movement. Even today, it is like there there is, you know more there is and there should be even more than there is lip service to to, you know, especially racial diversity. But it is still like it doesn't take long to dig into the like and find some of those class not race folks or you know which you're like, yeah, you know, in a country that had race based chattel slavery, you can't really disentangle those two things as much as you'd like.
And also when you look at the history of American labor unions, you'd be like, you know, if they had been class not race in the late nineteenth century, things would be a little better, like because they were like race, because they specifically excluded people constantly. It's like they were some of the perpetuators of this racism. And part of the reason that race needs to be included just as its own thing in the conversation, yeah, is because of the fucking work that they did of racism.
Right still on the ballance, Well, listen where you can't completely you can't make your perfect allies and you know they are they are the right ones.
Yeah, totally. Well, there's this thing going around right now where people are talking about like the people who know all of the right things to say are less likely to be your friends, like your actual allies in times of crisis than the person like as like a trans woman, like the kind of person who's gonna like be confused in misgender me but like still be like whatever, don't mess with her, you know, versus the people who will like very carefully say everything right but actually have like
more hate in their hearts. And I, yeah, that's my like vibe about the way that these children were handling race.
But I don't Yeah, I don't know. I I go back and forth.
I mean I think there are both yeahs of folks. Yeah, but you're right, yes, that all all four quadrants of those things do exist.
Yeah, totally. So you got these newsies and their job is that they buy newspapers and they sell them at a set markup. And this is like the main way newspapers get sold is they get sold to children. The markup always changes, but overall it would be like you're buying one cent papers for half a cent, two cent papers for one cent, three cent papers for two cents, and then you turn around and sell them for the the cover price. These kids are not employees. They are
independent contractors sort of. The bosses like officially they like avoiding hiring people, right because then you then you have to like provide them labor law stuff. There wasn't a ton of labor laws stuff, right, but it was still a nice way to skirt it. And they still wanted to limit the kid's autonomy. The cover price had to be the same. Some newspapers divvied up the territory that the kids could sell in. Others made more extreme demands,
like a newsy couldn't choose which papers to sell. They had to sell like all of If you want to sell this paper, you also have to sell like all of the boss's cronies newspapers too, you know. Being independent contractors made newsies hard to organize. So did the fact that they were literally children. Newspapers generally didn't buy back unsold copies of the paper. This is a big part of this whole thing. So a newsy was stuck quote
eating the remaining papers. And I really like this because the slang they always used the kids were like, oh, I got to eat me papes or whatever, right, And if you read articles, they're always like, wow, look at that inventive slang the kids have eating the papers. And it's just like funny now, because like eating the cost of something is a like I don't even see that
as like slang. That's just a way of describing a thing, you know, right right right anyway, So they they worked it late into the night to sell these papers to minimize their losses. Right, if you didn't sell all your papers, you're just out all fucking night. Some papers would offer discounts to kids who showed up early to pick up their papers, which led pressure to kids to drop out
of school in order to sell papers. By eighteen ninety nine, ten to fifteen thousand newsboys worked the street of New York City, screaming the headlines until late into the night, many of them sleeping on the streets. They made about twenty five to thirty cents a day, which is a completely meaningless number because you're talking about hundred years ago. That's twelve dollars a day in today's money. Jesus, Like
that sucks. Yeah, well, you know it. Yeah, it's a lot of money for a wee child, yeah, totally, is often the sole breadwinner of their family.
Yeah. God, that's fucking wild.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so they didn't make a lot of money doing this, and they they sold. Some of them sold their leftovers at a loss to the night boys, who had the even worst job of selling the like discount papers laid into the night right. A few of them became bosses sort of like these older newsies would hoard large stashes and then sub hire helpers to run out and sell,
like on street corners and stuff. This was probably the result of crewing up to hold onto prime territory and or just people perpetuating expectation.
Right, It makes sense.
I mean it's it's yeah, it's it's like that system immediately creates incentives to like just just do your little quasi crime empire on whatever block.
Yeah.
Yeah, and you know be like, hah, I'm rich. I get fifty cents a day. Yeah, you know, new Zy life was fucking hard. The conditions were bad, the pay was bad. The independent contractor thing left them in competition with each other over territory, and this was a fairly violent thing. You hold onto your pitch as long as you can physically defend it, and so they're a very feighty bunch. This will come out to be to their advantage.
Right, I mean, look, the tidy version of this is, yeah, like they're independent contractors because it was to the papers benefits to have them, you know, sub not like they have them just precarious at all times.
Yeah.
And I will say one tidy thing about this writer strike is that because we are also independent contractors, and the business practice lately has been more and more time off between shows if you're on a TV writer, or like doing free work for a long time if you're a movie writer. We are also very used to not working for a long time, Like that's a good point, that is, so, yeah, the thing that they have been using as a cudgel against us has actually helped us in this strike.
And yeah, again we're talking about very different things, I understand.
No, no, I mean a little example, I was like, I'm going to find a strike that feels like, I is a good way to talk about the writer's strike. That is how I picked this topic.
Yeah, I mean it's a it's a strike against a media empire. And yeah, specifically the independent contractor thing is like, like that is what we are as well.
Yeah. But one of the other things about how hard their lives was is that no one knew their lives were this hard because the newspapers, with the only source of information in the city, had a really strong incentive to paint an idyllic picture of newsboy life, about these plucky entrepreneurs who worked for themselves and were able to support their families with like plenty of like idle time
and joy or whatever in their lives, you know. And so this like newsy singing and dancing thing is there's a media construction from one hundred and twenty years ago at.
Least, oh right, oh my god, right, and nothing sanitizes the people. You're like subjugating quite like, yeah, controlling their story.
God, yeah, some of them, some of the homeless kids or some of the orphans lived in Newsboy House lodging houses. The first one opened in eighteen fifty four for homeless kids who didn't trust the existing infrastructure, because a lot of a lot of people don't trust shelter, the shelter system often in this case in eighteen fifty four, it would like funnel kids into jail, right, and so they're like, the hell with that, and so they're sleeping on the streets.
So some people set up lodging houses, and this actually seems good, like honestly pretty right. It was five or six cents a day. You got a bed and a bath and I think food. I've read different things that have implied different things about that. Kids. You could come and go whenever you wanted, as long as you were home by midnight. But it's like if you missed curfew, it's still come in the next day. You know, you just can't come in at midnight. The first one was
only for boys. I don't know that there are other ones that included girls or not, but they they were open to all religions and races and the fact that they weren't segregated is like actually a fairly big deal, right right, right, right, Although in researching this, I learned segregation for poor families got worse in America than the
twentieth century. In the nineteen thirties or so, it got more like some of the way that they did public housing in the nineteen thirties like made segregation more intense.
Yeah, I mean, but that that sort of just feels like, yeah, as things get worse, and you know, no offense to white folks, but like there is when when that rhetoric and that type of push gets amped up, you know, sort of regrettably and somewhat mysteriously, you know, poor white folks.
I would say, take the bait more off, but that I think they should.
Yeah about like blaming blaming racialized others for the problems.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like, you know, it's a surprisingly profitable playbook, I think for horrible people.
Yep. I think that is the history of that's like the main actual history of twentieth century, nineteenth century and twenty century labor in the America. And it's like not the way.
That I mean, it's enough arguably the main main cudgel for everything. I mean, you know, when when it's at points when I've been thinking, like you know, or or arguing with folks about like is my podcasts as racist?
Like what is the point?
And I to me, I've come to the conclusion that like, I mean racism, American racism might be the folk roum with which the world literally ends, or humanity literally ends. Like that is the gasoline. Yeah, that like has allowed all the other horrors to like exist potentially. Yeah, I don't know, We'll see, We'll see what the history books that don't get written say.
But if you want a history book that wait, hold on, how many to turn us into an ads? And yes, okay, wait, what else is a cudgel? Is cudgels from cudgel vendors, our sponsor sticks with which to hit scabs, scabs, sticks buy them?
Now, anything anything could be used to hit a scab. And you know what, it's very very twenty first century. But now, of course, for the writer's strike, just you know, Twitter is your cudgel to snitch on a scab.
Or And here's some other ads that may or may not also be for scab intimidating purposes and we are back. So uh, let's see. So you have these lodging houses and there's no smoking or cussing, and eventually later boys were required to attend either a morning or an evening class if they wanted to stay there. Because it's like a very like reformer vibe, right, and so all these people who are like, we're going to save these kids
or whatever, but again, like that often goes really bad. See, I don't know the Catholic church, but yeah, in this particular case, I'm not aware. I've only found positive representations. I don't know, that's but right. And boys there could learn trades, including sewing and cooking. Those were literally the only two trades that I saw mentioned. Every bed had a locker for their stuff, and over the course of forty years, a particular lodging house claimed that a quarter
of a million different kids stayed there. And you're paying, like you're sleeping in these like bunk beds in these like giant halls or whatever, right, but you're also like sleeping warm and not dying, and it's like a pretty good deal. And not all of the orphan newsies, probably not most of them were anywhere near so lucky as the kids who stayed in these houses. In eighteen sixty six, a man named Charles Loring Brace described the condition of
some of them. Quote, I remember one cold night seeing some ten or a dozen of the little homeless creatures piled together to keep each other warm beneath the stairway of the New York Sun Office. They used to be a mass of them at the Atlas Office, sleeping in lobbies until the printers drove them away by pouring water on them. Jesus, Yeah, could you imagine in that fucking asshole, who would do that?
Right?
I mean.
That, I mean obviously maybe not obviously, like I would have trouble I think doing that, but not you know, I know that I would have trouble doing that. However, I think the evidence is like, yeah, our alleged humanity is much easier to strip away.
That's true. Yeah, that's true. All of us have like we would never do things that. Clearly the large percentage of people do when yeah.
Right, the number of people that say I would not commit an atrocity does not comport with the number of people who when asked to commit atrocities.
So like totally something's up.
Yeah, totally, someone like wrong, pour water on these freezing children, or you lose your job, you know, yeah yeah, or even like I'm annoyed and I don't want to step up whatever. People are bad. Yeah, yeah, so most of them, most of the Newsies weren't homeless. Most of them were sent out by their parents to buy papers and sell
them and bring that money home. And one of my favorite facts I learned about newsy is a cultural thing about them is that, according to the superintendent of the boarding houses, newsies insist that they eat their pie first at dinner. If they couldn't get pie, they would riot, chanting pie, pie, pie and throwing food around. The boys demand their pie.
All right. Yeah, it's been a minute since I've loved pie that much.
But okay, I mean, you know, I don't know in nineteenth century, yeah, food is like.
Right, the one I guess it also, though, is like this thing where you're like, right, these are these are children?
Yeah? Like children children?
Yeah, these are like six to eighteen. If folks liked you, you got a nickname. Most of the characters that we'll talk about today have nicknames. But there's a couple that I didn't work into the script that I just want to read out. You've got kid Fish, You've got Scabooch, You've got Crutch and Morris, You've got Barney Peanuts, you got little slur for jew that's not actually what they
call them. Uh. You got fishbone skinnies, you got cheek Grubber, you got Friedman, Frockets, young Monks, and hungry Joe.
It's pretty good. I know, I feel like I feel like the nickname game. I mean, obviously, I guess you know why.
I was going to say something very everyone fancies some solves like a real nickname person. But you know what, I probably wouldn't be better than anyone else at the nickname game.
I'm realizing, I guess I say it out loud.
They also gave nicknames to their adult supporters, like three women who were like news vendors with newstands. There was Aunt, there was Beauty, and then Hannah Kleff's nickname was just Fight. And I was a train hopper for a while, and everyone had like tough as fuck names, right, I have never met anyone with a name that goes as hard as some lady just named Fight. Why she called that, I don't know, fairly referenced.
Lovely.
Yeah. Yeah, so those were the news with old fight Yeah yeah, yeah, totally. I wouldn't mess with her, I know that much.
I you know, I feel like there's like a twenty four cent chance it's a because she was quite a gentle soul life.
No, that's true.
The nickname game price falls just about those percentages.
You never know, but yeah, no, totally, Like little John could be very small or very large, isn't in between. This woman is either tough as nails or will like spends all day taking kittens out of trees. And yeah, like it's polarizing. That's all you know about a nickname. It's either the thing or not the thing very much. So totally poor poor beauty okay or not? Yeah no, yeah, So these are the newsies, and across the country, but especially in New York City, they actually go on strike
like kind of a lot. And it's interesting because there's not much institutional memory that you're talking about when you're talking about a job that someone holds free maximum of eleven years. Most people probably for three or four years, you know, right. In eighteen eighty six, the Brooklyn Times raised its price to newsboys and woos Wlliamsburg to one in an eighth cent, while it stayed one cent in downtown Brooklyn. It only took a one day strike to
get that solved. The newsies refused to buy the paper, and they refuse to let anyone else buy the paper either. All papers were one cent after that. In eighteen eighty seven, this is my favorite, these little strikes. In Montgomery, Alabama, the newsboys went on strike against a labor union, the Knights of Labor, an American labor federation. They weren't technically a union. They're like a weird Have you heard the Nice of Labor?
Nope?
They should be so cool, right, they are the Nice of Labor. They're a semi secret society. They come before any other labor union stuff in America, and they're so boring. They're just whenever you read about them, they're like they're like the milk toast liberals. They're like, yeah, the not aggressives, the not radicals, you know.
Right, Yeah, it's it's all the you know, the names.
I think that's the thing though, It's like it's like what you're saying about uh acronyms?
Yeah, was that before we started rolling it? Might have been.
I was complaining about acronyms of labor unions before we started rolling. There's too many of them.
But I think it's like, yeah, anyway, truly like the names. When the names get picked, those those are the good names.
Get taken so long ago that yeah, almost by definition, if institution has been going on long enough, it might have an amazing name, but it has gone quite soft if it still exists totally.
Yeah, maybe the Knights of Labor used to be an actually secret society before they became semi secret, and maybe they like function up and ruled. But yeah, I don't know about that, but I do know they raised their newsboy prices from thirty five cents per hundred to fifty cents per hundred copies of their paper, so the news struck flinging mud at scabs. This embarrassed the shit out of the Knights of Labor because they were a labor federation.
I actually couldn't track down the results of the strike. I'm I think it was successful, but I don't know.
Yeah, it is, that is the thing.
I mean, it's it's less but not I don't know enough.
I know it has, you know, happened I think recently ish, but it is like the employees of labor unions and more but more often like things like nonprofits or places that are nominally doing good. Really, it is a little shocking how little people practice what they preach with their actual direct employees.
Totally.
It's fucked up.
Yeah, Like, if you want to destroy a nonprofit, unionize its workers. It should be the easiest workplace in the world to unionize. Yeah, and shout out to anyone who's a union organizer in a nonprofit world, you are doing very important work.
Yeah.
In eighteen eighty nine, we get another strike in New York City. This one is a lot like the one that came aft ten years later, to the point where literally I had to spend a while being like is this a typo? When I would read eighteen eighty nine and all these newspapers because this was gonna sound whatever. I'm like, I'm going to say these things, but you all don't know the rest of the story yet, so
it doesn't sound prescient yet. Two newspapers, The Evening Sun in the Evening World tried to hike their rates from fifty cents to sixty cents. The Newsboys of Manhattan Brooklyn both struck and of course an important part of striking is stopping scab labor. So they followed delivery wagons. They pelted the delivery wagons with rocks. They threw mud at a political cartoonist who was against the strike. I didn't realize how much flinging mud was like a literal thing
instead of a metaphorical thing in the nineteenth century. And they burned stacks of the newspapers in the street. They would like run and capture them and then just set them on fire. Hell yeah, yeah, and apparently like dance around the bond fires and shit, hoot and holler, and.
It really is. It's true.
It's like the just thinking of like where you'd even get mud in Manhattan is kind of freaking me out. Oh it wasn't paved yet, Yeah right, no, I know, yeah, it's definitely what a different era. Yeah, during this strike, an eleven year old an Italian by the name of Joseph Baldy, he tore up the newspapers of a kid who was scabbing, so the cops arrested him. So another eleven year old, a Polish kid named Arthur Lufft, hit the cop of the bail stick. And I know what
you're thinking, what the fuck is a bail stick? And I don't know what the fuck a bail stick is because I assume it's a pole you used to bail hey or move bales of hay. But the only Google results for bailstick are New York Times from the turn of the century talking to various people hitting and killing each other with bail sticks in the city. Oh god, so I'm guessing that they are a common improvised weapon.
Yeah, is it? Like, I mean, the thing that you bail hay with is like a little book right now?
Yeah, I don't know, Oh yeah, or like something you.
Paid it it is with so visceral Like anytime you're like anytime you talk about like, yeah, I guess original labor, whether it's like you know, pick axes and axe handles or axes or whatever it is. I'm just like, I mean, I know it's good that humanity is not built like that anymore.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, no, it' there's like there's some like questions around the efficacy of violence as relates to labor actions, and like also the morality of violences related to labor actions that like and.
I guess guns really changed a lot of that shit. That's true, that's true. Yeah fuck so yeah, so so Arthur left. The eleven year old hits the cop with a bail stick and then leads a crowd of one hundred kids to de arrest their but Arthur is also arrested. This is how we have their names. It's like from criminal records. Both of them are taken to Enemy of the Pod, the Tombs in New York City. If anyone has someone goes to the Tombs on your cool people
bingo card, go ahead and mark that square. Basically everyone gets sent to the Tombs. It's this very depressing jail in Manhattan. Even though the most newsboys were not formally organized. Okay, so that was that strike.
And so even though most newsboys were not formally organized, they were also more reliable for solidarity than other people were with them, so they were constantly sticking up for other strikes, much like the Screen Actors Guild is now sticking up for you. During the eighteen ninety four Pullman strike in Chicago, which was a train strike, there was a boycott organized newspapers that printed articles against the boycott found that the newsies would drop those papers into the sewers.
So suddenly the press had to be a little bit more positive about the strike because the eleven year olds who sold their ship wanted to be on the right side of history.
I mean it is like really funny.
It's like you're almost talking about like, yeah, the newsy is being the last mile in terms of delivering media. Is some real like Elon Musk, the fascist buys Twitter kind of shit where you're like, yeah, just like the last the last mile can really influence shit.
You're right, that is those people have no power.
Yeah. Yeah, I wish that Twitter was run by a bunch of eleven year olds. It would be substantially better than it is under Elon Musk.
Yeah, it sounds the problem is not like humor wise, it is, but fascism wise.
It's. Yeah, the problem is that's like a real Nazi eleven year old.
Yeah you no, no, but no, it needs to be run by a whole bunch of actual several Yeah, not one old man who likes to pretend that he is young and acts like he is young.
Yeah. No, a grip of children for CEO.
Yeah, absolutely, that is the new motto of every.
Good The only good billionaire is like ten million children.
In a trench coat.
Yeah.
Yeah, So there's way more strikes than just these. Many went unremembered, like literally, like there's like one in eighteen ninety three in New York City that the only reference that we have to it was a kid giving a speech later being like, hey, we won an eighteen ninety three, We're gonna win now, and like and maybe there's other references to it that I couldn't find, but the news are being you know, it's like it's the history isn't
recessarily just written by the victors. It's written by the newspapers, right.
Right, And so in this case, the losers yeah totally yeah boom, you don't want to admit that lost.
And so there weren't too many people speaking for the voiceless street kids, and mainstream labor wasn't actually helping them very much either. So the strike of eighteen ninety nine wasn't out of the blue. It's still ruled, and let's talk about it, just kidding us. Let's give more context, hahaha, all contexts, context all the way down. Baby, don't worry. Most of the context people hitting cops with sex. It's great.
Context is the real text.
Yeah, totally, just means with text, I don't actually know the oediblagy.
I mean it has to be. Yeah.
So in eighteen ninety eight, the US had a little war with Spain. It was called the Spanish American War. We're not going to get into it, but it is worth knowing that it was like like newspaper people like took credit for starting that war. I don't remember which one.
I didn't write it into the script. It's worth knowing that war means good headlines means good newspaper sales, and so unfortunately for the newspaper companies, but fortunately for I don't know, human life, the war didn't last very long. During the war, it was a seller's market, and newspapers jacked up their prices and they charged the newsboys sixty
cents per one hundred copies instead of fifty cents. And some newsies were like, the hell with this, you can't raise their prices, but most of them were like, you know what, war sells, It's fine. We're selling so many more papers. We more than make up for it in bulk,
even though I have a lower profit margin. But then the war ended, and all the papers lowered their prices back down to fifty cents, except two of them, the two biggest papers in New York City, decided they quite liked making more profit, thank you very much, And they didn't care that they're already starving newsboys would have to starve harder. These two papers, they're run by men. People still remember today. Most people don't realize that they're villains.
I think people pretend all the time that these two were fierce, right, that they were bitter enemies. That's just not true. They were like in competition with each other, and they worked constantly together against the real enemies children. Yeah, I don't know how'll just say that.
I mean watching watching this happen firsthand, Like you know, as as this writer, the writer's build. We are striking against a conglomeration of companies who I don't even know who that should be fighting each other. It is shocking the amount of solidarity. I mean, without getting into the weeds, it is like some companies within the studios that were striking against stand a profit much more from the systems
that they're trying to uphold. Yeah, and it is truly shocking that places like I don't know, we'll say, like a CBS is handing the entity Netflix, which will one day destroy, literally handing them ammunition with this strike, with this action.
No that they the enemy always has saw the giant corporations always have solidarity with each other. It's so hard to write when you talk about like newspapers or Netflix. Right, it's like I like watching TV. I presume you like writing TV. Like the the union people in the newspapers
like making these papers. It's literally just the companies, the institutions themselves, not necessarily the individuals within it inside some of the individuals at the top who when I'm like the enemy, you know, it's like, yeah, so these two the enemy of children are men named Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hurst Senior. Pulitzer is of course remembered as the namesake for the Journalism Prize. These two together invented
what's called yellow journalism aka clickbait. More ways, they disrupted. They came in and disrupted traditional newspapers.
They actually they disrupted actual informa.
Yeah, totally. Yeah. They led with sex and violence and huge misleading headlines. One of them like invented the headline that actually goes across the entire paper instead of just like being at the top of the little column. And
they also well, okay, two things. One is that they collaboratively decided to not raise, to not lower their prices together, right, because if only one of them had these were these were in a huge fight with each other, right, and so if only one of them had lowered their prices, like, it would have gone bad for them, right. Yeah, yeah, but friendly competition. Okay. The other thing that they did is they developed this whole trick where the real customer
was their advertisers. But they get people to pay you for the right to get ads shoved down your throat. So they're getting paid on both sides, which is why it's worth pointing out that we hear at cool zone Media give you the choice, eh, eh, it's either free with ads or you pay us and then there's no ads. I tried to write this snarky, but honestly, I think it's actually a really important difference between trying to get paid on both sides of it. Yeah, so that came
off so genuine, Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah, And uh so, if you are one of our paid subscribers on cooler zone Media, which is currently an Apple podcast and eventually hopefully be also available for Android.
You can soon stop asking, I'll tell you, yeah.
Stop asking Sophie about it, unless it's already happened, in which case it's funny to ask Sophie. You can find Sophie.
Don't ask, right, Okay, Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.
So either listen to ads or don't, depending on which choice you've made.
Or you can choose to do both.
Choose both.
That is a way to double support.
If you, the listener want to want to get get an extra weird gold star.
Yeah, yeah, And we're gonna make extra weird gold Stars and send them to you as long as you just add us on Twitter at I read. Okay, okay. To talk about Pulitzer, if you take out the whole mistreatment of children thing, Pulitzer starts off looking okay. He was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant to the US who fought for the Union in the Civil War, and stopping slavery wins a lot of points in my book. Right, there's a lot of like pretty mediocre people who did that thing,
and I'm like, well you did that thing. That was a big one, you know. He also rode freight trains, around after the war looking for work, and I just think that's esthetically cool. My grandfather used to do that. He worked sixteen hour days to break his way into journalism. His coworkers treated him very well and with respect and gave him the nickname Joey the Jew because they didn't actually treat him with respect. And then he got himself
into office as a Republican. And I feel like it's worth saying anytime I mentioned the word republican in the nineteenth century on the show, that I need to point out that this means the opposite of what it means today, republican other kind. Yeah, totally og And you know, you end his story here and he's great, but he was really into capitalism. So eventually he left the Republicans and joined the Democrats. Now that the shadow of the Confederate so he was dropping away.
Other kind, but not as much the other kind as yea for the other kind.
Yeah, around the time it was starting to shift. I think at least anti slavery was more important to him than being pro free market was. Soon he spent his time both trying to control people through elected office and controlling people through the news. He was fairly upfront about this. He started the Saint Louis Post Dispatch. He crushed some unionizing there. He moved to New York City. He bought The New York World. He built it up to be the biggest paper in the country, of the circulation of
six hundred thousand copies. And then you've got Hurst. Hurst was a rich wasp who was raised by a rich fuck wasp. He claimed to be a progressive democrat the working classes friend, but he was not. And then he later became a fierce anti communist and conservative who loved Hitler, literal Hitler. And then he built himself a castle overlooking the ocean.
So, yeah, which we're remarkably chill about. Honestly, it's I know, but you know what if we if we include the architecture of every Nazi lover, where would we be as a society?
You know, I want to look in the ocean?
Yeah, yeah, the castle park concentrated on the castle park, not the Nazi part.
Yeah yeah, totally.
You get them to build it, and then you will still drive forwards, come on, totally.
Yeah. Anyway, there are villains, fuck them both. They decided to fuck over literal children. The literal children who had built their fortune, not just random children, but literally the ones who had built their fortune by going out late at night, starving, screaming extra extra, read all about it. The children were like, nah, fuck that. So they went on strike. And this strike is actually fairly typical of a Newsy strike, although larger in scale, and so the
prices stayed high. The war has ended, the prices stay high. So on July eighteenth, eighteen ninety nine, the one thing I think people get wrong about this is me being potentic. The one thing people get wrong about it wasn't just like one day they raised the prices and people were like, no, more right, The prices hadn't gone down, And then eventually people were like, but we're literally starving. We can't do
this right. Our profit margin cannot you know, going from twenty five cents a day to like, I don't know, eighteen cents a day or less is not a doable thing. So on July eighteenth, eighteen ninety nine, newsboys in Long Island City, only time that that will ever come up in any history book ever, the only thing that's ever happened in Long Island City. They turned over a wagon for the new York Journal and they're like, man, fuck this.
And they might have announced this as a strike, but I think it was just an insurrectionary labor action, like completely unorganized. The next day, Newsy's in Manhattan Brooklyn were like, oh, it's a strike. They formed a union. It was called the Newsboys Union. They elected officers and they refuse to take papers to sell, and of course, just as importantly, they refuse to let anyone else take papers to sell as well. The president on paper was a guy named
David Dave Simmons, who doesn't even get a cool nickname. Literally, his nickname was Dave.
That is I disagreed, that is cool.
Okay, name is no, name is David, and you go by David, quotes Dave and then Simmons. It was like, that's so bonkers, it's I think it's quite cool.
No, all right, all right, I'm here because he gets presented as like the boring guy, right yeah, because he was not a good speaker and he mostly like gave speeches about like the numbers and how things were going. But this actually makes sense because okay, he'd been selling paper. He's twenty one when this starts, he's like the oldest
of them. He'd been selling paper since he was eight, and he was an amateur boxer who would like prize fight on the street, my god, and he had a prime spot for selling papers because anyone who wanted it could have it. They just had to lick him as how he used it and no one could do it. I suspect this is how he ended up the president of the union. It was not his charisma, it was
his Yeah, don't fuck with Dave. You're right in a world full of like, I don't know hid fish and yes, don't fuck with Dave.
Dave.
Dave is the actual scariest motherfucker are out.
That's terrifying. Who is he?
Oh? His name is David. He goes by Dave. What he doesn't need a better nickname? Yeah, gotcha, loud and clear.
Yeah. I bet other people try to give him nicknames and he just punched them. You know, they're like, I'm Dave. Yeah.
I like.
I like how entertained Andrew is by this entire bit.
It's just so weird. It's it's just it's like, who do.
You know? You could be anything? He could be danned off, I mean.
Yeah, literally anything.
Yeah, So I say he was the leader. He's the leader on paper, because the leadership in this organization was very, very informal, so you might imagine this was technically a union, but it was not a bureaucratic engine. People were generally more loyal to their regions than to any central leadership. For example, you had spot Conlin over in Brooklyn, who
was the leader there. He always wore pink suspender and he got the best line in the nineteen ninety two Disney version of this when he shows up with a slingshot and he says, never fear, Brooklyn is here. And I don't know if he was as small as he was in the I couldn't find enough information about spot Conlin in the movie. He's like the small kid who's like the scary boss of Brooklyn that you don't want to mess with. The strike's method was fairly simple. You
stop the papers from getting sold. However you feel like stopping the papers from getting sold. Anyone selling the papers, kid or adult, would get mobbed up, possibly beaten up, depending on what you're reading, and have his papers destroyed or just followed around by people yelling scab, scab, scab all day. Soon most scabs joined the strike.
Yeah, not like a little little shave and just like seeing you're on the wrong side of things.
Yeah, totally, totally. So at one point, a scabbing kid was with a scabby kid was selling papers and he was being guarded by a cop. Like directly, this cop was like defending his one kid. So a news he named Young Mush spoke up and Young Mush got his name because he had a girlfriend, and that was like mushy, like, ew' go girlfriend, Yeah, your name is young Mush. I love it, he said, basically, And this is like a direct quote from a newspaper, but I don't believe the direct quotes
from newspapers around this. He said, quote that CoP's too fat to run fast, and I'll get him after me if you'll tend to the scab when he gets away. So Young Mush walks up, snatches the kid's papers and just takes off running. The cop chases him, and fifteen strikers beat up the scab. The scabbing kid runs off.
They catch up with him a few blocks away and are like, so, are you with us, and he's like, yeah, I'm with you, and then he yeah, that day helps bring down someone who's trying to smuggle some papers into Brooklyn.
Yeah, I'm I'm you know, yeah, it's sort of like those are the tools you got.
And I understand, yeah totally.
I was thinking actually about this because one of the as far as I know, I don't know the formal process for what the Writer's Guild will do about scabs. The thing I've heard the most, which again I'm not one hundred percent sure how like true this is or what the process is, but it is a little funny that one of the things the Writer's Guild of America can hold over potential scabbers is that you will not be allowed or potentially I think in you know, I
guess it would have to be incredibly egregious. You would have your health insurance taken away, or you would not be able to join the guild and get guild health insurance. Oh yeah, And it is a little bonkers that truly, Like the reason they have this cudgel is because America is so fucked up.
That's totally.
Like withholding health insurance is like a pretty terrifying thing.
It's like actually fairly comparable to beating someone up. Both some of them are your health will get worse yeah, although I would rather take like get beat up when I'm thirteen by some other thirteen year olds, which happened to me on a regular basis, then like die of cancer untreated or whatever, you know, right right, I'm not trying. It's just I'm just it's amazing that yeah, our country.
It is just it's just so yeah, it's just wild that like this the truly the one piece of leverage we have over scabs, honestly is this thing where I'm like, oh yeah, yeah.
And it is possible, it's possible that the other papers were playing up all of the violence to sell papers. Right, For the most part, the striker's goal was the destruction of newspapers and the and scabers no scabs no longer, choosing to continue in that behavior rather than specifically through violence. But I don't know. I believe that there was a decent amount of violence, and I don't know to what
degree it was exaggerated by all the newspapers. It's the golden era of newspapers lying, and this strike just fucked up the paper's profit margin. The public loved the newsies, advertisers dropped, circulation dropped about seventy percent. The strike spread to New Jersey quick enough through delegates that were sent out to different regions and also just people other people acting on their own through like sort of insurrectionary means.
And it was joined in the end by And I'm going to pull up the list Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island City, Mount Vernon, Newark, Troy, Clifton, Jersey City, Hoboken, Elizabeth, New Jersey, Trenton, Plainfield, Fall River, Massachusetts, New Haven, Norwalk, Norwalk. I don't know un to pronounce New England names. Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeah, maybe it just actually said New York.
I don't know, we should deserved to read it.
Cincinnati, Ohio, Lexington, Kentucky. Also probably Queens. Queens wasn't on the list that I found, but another place pointed out that all the Burroughs, Yeah I.
Got to be Queens. I know, I was the biggest Burrow.
Yeah right, I.
Think physically it's the biggest.
Okay, Queen's is where I've spent more time than any of the others actually, But so yeah, this strike is now referred to, or at the time it becomes referred to, as the most successful strike in the history of the city and several regional papers have been trying to creep up their wholesale prices. Immediately were like, oh never mind, I like being fifty cents. That's cool with me. Hurst himself was run off by a crowd of newsies at
one point. Well, which might be why like the Empire he struck back, which we'll hear about on Wednesday.
Wow, yes, you know who came up with that?
A writer, A writer's old writer wouldn't exist without us?
Amazing. Wow, Andrew, do you have anything you'd like to plug?
Just doing this racist? Please give us a listen.
If you like this vibe with I'll just say one point one less research. If it's all vibes that no facts you're looking for, Jos, this racist is a place to go, Sophie, what do you got?
We have a new show on cools and Media that launched recently. If you're listening in current time, it's called Sad Oligarch. It is hosted by j Canrahan and it is an investigative series that dives into the mysterious deaths of all the Russian billionaire oligarchs that just keep falling out windows stairs, stabbing themselves in Eating Poison and it's really good and Jake's the best, so please listen, and it's on all the things.
Hell yeah, and if you like children fighting against oligarchy. I'm currently kickstarting a tabletop role playing game called PA Number City that I'm one of the writers for. And one of the character classes you can play is a rat king, who is an orphaned child who eats mushrooms to communicate with rats and sends them out as swarms against his enemies and or her enemies or their enemies. And you can find it by googling the Number City.
Probably you don't even tape Kickstarter. It's not a lot of things named Pa Number City, true, but it's one of them.
But you know what, if there's another one, there's definitely a rat king that's true.
Oh and you can hear Jamie Loftus, Cool Zone Media's own Jamie Loftis and me and a few other people playing Pu Number City on YouTube if you look at our Kickstarter there's a link to it in a bunch of other places. But we play a game of it, and you can hear Jamie Loftus as a rat king based in Jamie piled Yeah. See you all, Wednesday.
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.