Children of the Penny, 1833–1865
A new contributor to the cries of New York. Nicolino Calyo, News-boy, ca 1840. Watercolor, Yale University Art Gallery.
Newsboys became proponents of Manifest Destiny during the Mexican-American War. Napoleon Sarony, One of the News-B’hoys. Sketches of N. York, No. 18, 1847. Sarony & Major, New York. Library of Congress.
A refuge since 1854. Charles G. Bush, “The Newsboys’ Lodging-House, New York.” Harper’s Weekly 11, no. 542 (May 18, 1867): 312–13. Eckel Collection, Princeton University Library.
Serving the troops. Cullen B. (Doc) Aubery, Recollections of a Newsboy in the Army of the Potomac, 1861-1865. Milwaukee, 1902. Eckel Collection, Princeton University Library.
Children of the Breach, 1866–1899
Peanut and news sellers in Jacksonville, Florida. Chandler Seaver Jr., “No. 46. Group of Natives. B,” The Southern Series (Boston: Chas. Pollock, 1874). Courtesy Early Office Museum.
The calm before the storm. “Newsboys Waiting for the Paper,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Feb. 27, 1886, 27–28. Eckel Collection, Princeton University Library.
“Waifs and Strays of a Great City,” Helen Campbell, et al., Darkness and Daylight: or Lights and Shadows of New York Life (Hartford: A.D. Worthington, 1891).
Children of the State, 1900–1940
Delancey Street, Dec. 26, 1906. Eugene de Salignac, gelatin silver print. NYC Dept. of Records, Municipal Archives, BPS: Bridges/Plant & Structures.
Lewis Hine, Newsgirl, Park Row. Against the Law, but “Who Cares.” New York, July 1910. Library of Congress.
“I’d Rather Be a Newsboy in the U.S.A. than a Ruler in a Foreign Land,” words and music by Charles Kuhn, Jeff Branen, and Robert Kuhn, 1919. Author’s collection.
West Coast fruit growers put wholesome-looking newsboys on their labels in the 1920s to tap national markets. Author’s collection.
Detail, Suzanne Scheuer and Hebe Daum, Newsgathering, Coit Tower, San Francisco. Public Works of Art Project, 1934. By Diderot, Creative Commons.
V-J Day Celebration, 1945. Courtesy, Wisconsin Historical Society.
