Newsboys Ready to Show Strength

Will Have Big Parade To-Night to Awaken Interest in Strike Against Park Row Papers.

Dealers Now Their Allies

Tie-Up So Effective That the Stand Keepers Have Concluded to Join in the Boycott.

Plan to License the Boys

Society Interested in Scheme to Keep Lads Under Supervision.

 

Newsboys who are on strike against the Evening World and the Evening journal will show their strength to-night. In their parade they expect to have several thousand workers in line. There will be no uniform and perhaps only one band. But there will be enthusiasm and noise enough for three parades of the ordinary kind.

Newsboys from the Battery to the Bronx will form the body of the marchers. They expect recruits, however, from Brooklyn, Long Island City, Jersey City and Hoboken. Even Newark has promised a delegation.

The cosmopolitan Bowery and aristocratic Fifth avenue will ring with the cries of the energetic little fellows. The route of the parade, which will form about eight o’clock in Park row, will be up Park row to the Bowery, then to Third avenue, to Forty-ninth street, to Fifth avenue, to Washington Square and in Eighth street to Second avenue, where the parade will be dismissed.

Police are expected to keep clear the line of march and even to head the parade. There will be coaches for the strike leaders, furnished by Charles Bacigalupo, a Mulberry street undertaker, a brass band or two and some fireworks.

Strong efforts were made to-day in behalf of the Evening World and Evening Journal to break the strike before the parade should take place. Negotiations were entered into by some of the leaders, but the boys stood firm and declined to make any terms unless there was a distinct promise that papers should be sold hereafter for fifty cents a hundred.

The tie-up was more complete to-day than ever. It now extends from New London, Conn., to Trenton, N. J. The best allies of the boys are the newsdealers, on whom the papers concerned depended on for sales.

These at first showed no inclination to join in the strike, but when some of the lesser ones were forced into the boycott and others saw that there was every chance of success for the movement, they decided to join. Some associations have taken formal action, and in almost all places within a hundred miles of the city the newsdealers individually have taken positions with the boys.

The Evening World and Evening journal are still endeavoring to-day to force the circulation of their papers by the $2 a day men. These find a certain number of purchasers, but the big number of newspaper buys are loyally supporting the strikers and refuse to buy the boycotted sheets.

Meantime new friends and guardians for the newsboys have appeared in the leaders of the Auxiliary Progressive Movement. Thomas C. Copeland, who has spent much time in investigating the newsboy problem, has interested them in a plan to organize the lads into a uniformed, licensed brigade, with an age limit and restricted hours of work.

It is designed to get municipal legislation restricting age and hours, and providing for license and badges, which are to be issued only upon the production of school certificates. Next will come the matter of uniforms, designed for utility, durability and appropriateness. After the first supply the uniform business is to be made self-supporting by the payment by each boy of a cent a day, payable weekly, and twenty-five cents a quarter, payable on the first of the months of January, April, July and October.

Mr. Copeland hopes to have 2,000 newsboys uniformed and organized in time to parade in Washington at the next Presidential Inauguration.

The prime object of the whole movement, Mr. Copeland says, is to give the newsboys a chance to do well. He says the society will take up the bootblacks if they were successful with the newsboys, and in the course of time reach many other classes of city street worker. Dr, Lyman Abbott, Randolph Guggenheimer, the Rev. William H. P. Faunce, Abram S. Hewitt, the Rev. A. K. Sandford, President Webb of the College of New York, and many members of the Municipal Assembly are said to be interested in the plan.

In relation to the newsboys’ strike this significant letter has been received:—

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING TELEGRAM:—

The West Side Newsdealers’ Association at its special meeting, held last night at the West Side Union Hotel, No. 312 West Forty-second street, unanimously adopted the following resolutions:—

“Whereas the newsboys of the city of New York and vicinity are striking against the war prices of the Evening World and Evening Journal, and

“Whereas we recognize that the demands of the strikers are just because those war times are over long ago, and therefore there is no reason why the prices should not return to their former rates:

“Be it resolved, that We, the members of the West Side Newsdealers’ Association, call upon every newsdealer of the city of New York to stop handling those sheets until the demands fo the strikers are granted. We also call upon the readers of the papers in question to stop patronizing them until the poor boys have won their strike.”

The association wishes also to have it announced that a mass meeting will take place at Apollo Hall, No. 176 Ninth avenue, to-morrow night. The strike question will be thoroughly discussed.

R. GRANT, Secretary.
New York, July 25, 1899.

Source: “Newsboys Ready to Show Strength.” Evening Telegram, 26 July 1899, p. 3.