Taking Your Kids to See Newsies? Read This First.

Disney’s Newsies is playing now through Sunday at the Tennessee Center for Performing Arts (tickets are still available!), and and then moving on to other theaters across the country. We got to see the musical on opening night and it has one of the strongest casts I’ve seen in a touring show- Literally every singer and dancer in it was a standout performer. We LOVED this show.

Now that we’ve seen it, I would strongly recommend that parents take the time to explain the true story behind Newsies before taking kids to see it. The storyline can be difficult for children to follow (and the jokes hard to understand) without context. Luckily, there’s a wealth of information online (not to mention some great photos) about the newsboy strikes 100 years ago.

Here’s the short version:

Back in the 1890s, girls and boys, most from orphanages and special boarding houses called ‘refuges’ in the play, sold newspapers out on the street to earn money. In order to sell the papers, they had to buy them first- 50 cents for a stack of 100. If they sold all 100 newspapers that day, they’d make 50 cents.

In 1898, the Spanish American War created high demand for the daily newspaper- so newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer (who published the New York Evening World) and William Randolph Hearst (who published the New York Evening Journal). started charging newsboys 60 cents for 100 newspapers. Once the war ended, demand for newspapers waned, but while most papers went back to the original rate, the World and the Journal did not. This meant that newsies in many cases weren’t making enough money to pay for their food and/or lodging.

As a result, a group of newsboys decided to stop buying and selling those newspapers. They convinced hundreds of other children to join their boycott and together, they made a lot of trouble in the city that summer, rioting, burning newspapers, attacking drivers of wagons carrying newspapers and boys who didn’t join the strike, and even marching on the Brooklyn Bridge and stopping traffic for hours.

Here’s a paragraph from the Telegram, published that summer:

When the early editions of the evening newspapers were offered to the boys they refused to buy. They demanded a return to the prices that prevailed prior to the war. The circulation managers refused. The newsboys, filled with indignation, coffee and butter cakes, made a rush for the distributing agents, taking from them bundles of the Evening World and the Evening Journal, and scattering the newspapers about the streets. They attacked every boy who presumed to sell the newspapers, tore up his wares and routed him. Every little news vender [sic] south of Fifty-ninth street who escaped a trouncing was a member of the Newsboys’ Union.

Fill me with indignation, coffee and butter cakes, and I might end up rioting, too.

Where was I? Oh!

The two publishers ended up compromising with the newsboys – The price of papers remained at 60 cents, but they agreed to buy back from the newsboys any papers that were unsold that day, allowing the newsies to make a (very) modest living.

Nashville newsies held a strike of their own here in 1892. You can (and should, if you’re going to see Newsies) learn more about it by visiting a FREE special exhibit outside the Tennessee State Museum (which is located in the same building as TPAC).

 

 

Added bonus: If your kids decide to have a knock-down-drag-out fight while you try to take a loving family photo, chances are the exhibit will be completely EMPTY and it won’t matter! Heh.

The exhibit only takes a few minutes to look over, but my kids were into it.. In addition to the (wonderfully melodramatic) story of Nashville’s own newsie strike, you can also learn more about the Broadway musical, the history behind downtown Nashville’s Printers Alley, and how the long history of Tennessee newspapers began.

I actually began by reading my kids the story of the New York newsie strike while we were there, then we read about the Nashville strike, the history of Printers Alley, and the story of turn-of-the-century photographer Lewis Hine, who helped change child labor laws with his photographs of the conditions they faced in America’s large cities. My kids were VERY interested in his story and we will definitely be following up with some research online. You can find the Nashville Newsies exhibit on the G-level gallery of the James K. Polk Cultural Center through June.

Why does this moment in history matter?

Angela Grovey, who plays burlesque theater owner Medda Larkin in the touring company of Newsies, put it well in a recent interview with Broadway World:

“We ALL can (like the newsies) come together and make a change in the world,” she said. “We all have a voice and it doesn’t matter how young, old, rich, poor, etc… We deserve to be heard. And with hard work and determination the “good guys” can come out on top.”

Newsies also spotlights the appalling conditions poor and orphaned children faced in cities across America 100 years ago. With a wealth of photographs, newspaper archives, and commentary on that time period at your fingertips online, it’s a good subject to explore with your own children, both before seeing Newsies on stage (or you could opt for the movie version on DVD) and after.

Great resources:

Don’t miss this study guide created specifically for the Newsies musical.

Check out this New York Times article on the strike, written back in 1898.

Here’s the full article written for the Telegram.

Here’s the New York Tribune’s account of the strike’s end.

TPAC posted more information on Tennesseee’s printing history here.

Read more about the conditions turn-of-the-century newsies faced on this Digital History site.

 

Header image: Wikimedia Commons