GIGGLING AND KICKING MY FEET RN!!! I LOVE TO LEARN ABOUT THE NEWSBOY STRIKE :333
“I think we’ll win this fight all right. I ain’t made 20 cents this week, but I can stand a heap of that and so can all the Brooklyn boys. Don’t you touch Worlds or Journals until they give us a decent deal. We’re putting them out of business fast and they know it.” -Race Track Higgins at the Strikers Rally, July 24 1899
Today 125 years ago the Newsboy Strike in New York began.
Prominent leaders include
Race Track Higgins leader of the Brooklyn boys, who spoke commonly in horse and race metaphors,
Louis ‘Kid Blink’ Balletti, an 18 year old Italian American who was later accused of scabbing (he wrote a Newboy poem because of this),
David Simmons, a 21 year old who’d been selling papers since age 8 who stepped down as union president after being accused of betraying the strike,
Morris Cohen, little is known but he stepped up after Kid Blink and David Simmons were accused of scabbing,
Henry Butler, leader of the upper manhattan Newsies after Kid Blink, was arrested for blackmail for telling executives at New York World he wouldn’t stop the strike for anything less than $600
Annie Kelly, one of the few Newgirls loyal to the strike, she spoke at the rally after being pulled on stage by other newsboys.