You're listening to American Shadows, a production of I Heart radio and Grimm and mild from

Aaron Manky.

Most of the children lived on the street.

Others had left school to work so their families might have enough food to eat.

No matter where they came from, they worked for morning until night, regardless of the

weather.

A called Newsies, the children who were mostly boys, sold newspapers on New York City's

street corners.

Whatever their backgrounds, the newsies shared a system.

After buying a stack of 100 papers from the publisher for 50 cents, they'd sell each

paper for a penny.

That meant they earned just 50 cents for a day's work, if they were lucky enough to sell all

100 papers.

It's the equivalent of $16 a day in today's money.

And in July of 1899, New Yorkers stopped getting their papers.

The newsies went on strike, and that put wealthy news giants like William Randolph Hearst

and Joseph Pulitzer in a bind.

The newspapers had bumped the price to 60 cents a bundle, cutting into the newsies'

minuscule profits.

And when the kids found out that not only had the price gone up, but the bundles included

fewer papers that had enough, they tipped the New York Journal delivery wagon over

and stole the papers.

...