Newsboys' strike of 1899 | |||
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![]() Newsboys and newsgirl getting afternoon papers in New York City (1910) | |||
Date | July 18 – August 2, 1899 | ||
Location | |||
Methods | Striking | ||
Parties | |||
Lead figures | |||
Louis "Kid Blink" Baletti Joseph Pulitzer |
The newsboys' strike of 1899 was a U.S. youth-led campaign to facilitate change in the way that Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst's newspapers compensated their force of newsboys or newspaper hawkers. The strikers demonstrated across New York City for several days, effectively stopping circulation of the two papers, along with the news distribution for many New England cities. The strike lasted two weeks, causing Pulitzer's New York World to decrease its circulation from 360,000 papers sold per day to 125,000.[1] Although the price of papers was not lowered, the strike was successful in forcing the World and Journal to offer full buybacks to their sellers, thus increasing the amount of money that newsboys received for their work. This event inspired the 1992 movie musical, Newsies, which was adapted for Broadway on March 29, 2012.