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The Bowery Boys: New York City History

#219 Newsies on Strike!

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.83.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2016

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We're in the mood for a good old-fashioned Gilded Age story so we're replaying one of our favorite Bowery Boys episodes ever -- Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst vs. the newsies! It was pandemonium in the streets. One hot summer in July 1899, thousands of corner newsboys (and girls) went on strike against the New York Journal and the New York World. Throngs filled the streets of downtown Manhattan for two weeks and prevented the two largest papers in the country from getting distributed. In this episode, we look at the development of the sensationalist New York press -- the birth of yellow journalism -- from its very earliest days, and how sensationalism's two famous purveyors were held at ransom by the poorest, scrappiest residents of the city. The conflict put a light to the child labor crisis and became a dramatic example of the need for reform. Crazy Arborn, Kid Blink, Racetrack Higgins and Barney Peanuts invite you to the listen in to this tale of their finest moment, straight from the street corners of Gilded Age New York. PLUS: Bonus material featuring a closer look at the Brooklyn Newsboys Strike and a moment with the newsies during the holidays. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0

Episode 219 of The Bowery Boys.

0:02.8

Newsies on strike.

0:05.4

Hey, it's The Bowery Boys.

0:07.0

Hey.

0:08.0

Support for The Bowery Boys is provided by our listeners.

0:11.7

Join us for as little as a dollar a month

0:14.3

by visiting patreon.com slash Bowery Boys.

0:20.1

Hi there, welcome to The Bowery Boys. This is Greg Young.

0:22.9

And this is Tom Myers.

0:24.4

And to end 2016, we thought we would provide you

0:28.7

with a little comfort food, a show from our back catalog

0:32.5

that's almost six years old.

0:34.8

Way back catalog Greg.

0:36.0

We're reaching back to what 2009?

0:39.0

2009 is when we first recorded this show.

0:41.9

And many of you may not have heard this.

0:44.3

This is one of our personal favorites.

0:46.5

So we wanted to bring it back to you.

0:49.2

It has a lot of relevance today.

0:51.4

This being the story of the news boy strike of 1899.

0:56.9

You could say that this is an extra edition,

0:59.9

an extra special edition.

...

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