the.com/newsboy
A child labor force that once held entire cities' attention hostage with a folded scream.
means A boy who sold or delivered newspapers on the street, often hawking the day's headlines aloud — and, by extension, the flat round cap such boys wore.
from A plain English compound of "news" and "boy," naming the youths who worked the newspaper trade in the crowded cities of the 19th and early 20th centuries. "News" itself is wonderfully literal — it's simply the plural of "new," the new things, echoing a similar logic in French nouvelles and German Neuigkeiten. The cap's name came later, borrowed from the working-class boys who famously wore it.
- Great Strike
- 1899 newsboys defied Pulitzer and Hearst, won
- Sleeping arrangements
- Many slept in alleys and lodging houses
- The cap
- Eight-panel hat outlived the job entirely
- Pay model
- Bought papers upfront, ate unsold copies' loss
- Word coined
- Extra editions invented the shouted headline
newsies strike of 1899 — 10,000 newsboys struck in new york city against joseph pulitzer and william randolph hearst
the newsies musical — broadway musical that won 8 tony awards in 2012, based on the 1899 strike