Newsboy Strike Research Paper

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thousand went on strike on July 20, 1899 after months of planning to boycott ("William Randolph Hearst"). All of the other newspapers lowered their prices back to pre-war prices of 65 cents for 100 except Joseph Pultizer’s Evening World and William Randolph Hearst’s Evening Journal. At this high of a rate Newsies could not make enough for housing and food. The reason many newsies started protesting was because they believed that Pulitzer and Hearst were being greedy saying, "Ain't that ten cents worth as much to us as it is to Hearst and Pulitzer who are millionaires? well i guess it is. If they can't spare it how can we?... I'm trying to figure out how ten cents on a hundred papers can mean more to a millionaire than it does to a newsboy" (The Newsboy Strike of 1899). There were riots in the streets to protests against the world and the journal. They yelled speeches at Pulitzer and Hearst and the rest of New York to let them know about the strike. Leaders like Louis Ballatt a.k.a. “Kid Blink” rallied the newsboys together and blocked off the streets of New York. They picked on “scabs” that continued selling papers and they destroyed the carts that held the newspapers (The Newsboy Strike of 1899). Many were arrested as they were blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and blocked taxis (NEWSBOYS ACT AND …show more content…

The Newsies requested that the public did not buy Pulitzer or Hearst's newspapers until the strike was over (The Newsboy Strike of 1899). They kept others from selling the papers by tearing up the newspapers from distributors in the streets. Almost 5,000 Newsies took to the streets at each rally all across New England to protest the rise in prices put in place (The Newsboy Strike of 1899). The Newsies formed a union called the The News Sellers’ Union by about a hundred Newsboys and many representatives from

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