Kid Blink Beats the World
The World and The Journal's plan to squeeze pennies from the newsies wasn't adopted by the city's other papers. The New York Times and The New York Tribune, for example, left their prices unchanged and were not struck. It is these papers' strike coverage that provide us with the record of the newsies struggle. Undoubtedly happy to enlarge upon their competitors' discomfort, the other newspapers portrayed the newsies as urban Peter Pans and Robin Hoods, endearing urchins who delivered mock-heroic speeches in dialects-ridden, fractured English. "Me men is nobul," Kid Blink is reported to have said. "And wid such as dese to oppose der neferarious schemes how can de blokes hope to win?" (Kid Blink was a popular subject of the press and appeared in many newspaper stories. Reported to be blind in one eye, the papers sometimes referred to him as Mr. Blink.) Still, news stories rife with 'dem,' 'dese,' and 'doz' must have irked the newsies; At the New Irving Hall rally they told the papers to cut it out. And in spite of the patronizing, whimsical nature of much of the news coverage, the reality of the strike must have been more sobering. The newsies were largely poor, many from immigrant families in New York's tenement neighborhoods. The pennies the strikers earned wasn't a trifle intended for their own amusement but an essential contribution to their families' existence; the loss of even a single penny was intolerable. The strike was violent. The newspapers hired men to protect the newspaper deliveries and there were fights using fists and clubs and reports of threats involving revolvers. And what became of Kid Blink, Crazy Arborn, Racetrack Higgins, Barney Peanuts, Jim Gaiety and the rest at the conclusion of the strike? They slipped back into obscurity and anonymously made their way into the Twentieth Century, where two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Nuclear Age awaited them.

 
Ruth Law Thrills a Nation / Alice Ramsey's Grand Adventure / One Giant Leap / Rare Treasure / Uncommon Traveler / A Voice from the Wilderness / Across a Dark & Wild Sea  / Far Beyond the Garden Gate / Mack Made Movies / American Boy /  Our Time on the River /  Odd Boy Out /  Kid Blink Beats The World /  The Good Lion

All contents copyright Don Brown 1999, 2000, 2001,2002, 2003, 2004, 2005