A newspaper hawker, newsboy or newsie is a street vendor of newspapers without a fixed newsstand. Related jobs included paperboy, delivering newspapers to subscribers, and news butcher, selling papers on trains. Adults who sold newspapers from fixed newsstands were called newsdealers, and are not covered here. The hawkers sold only one newspaper, which usually appeared in several editions a day. A busy corner would have several hawkers, each representing one of the major newspapers. They might carry a poster board with giant headlines, provided by the newspaper. The downtown newsboy started fading out after 1920 when publishers began to emphasize home delivery. Teenage newsboys delivered papers on a daily basis for subscribers who paid them monthly. Hawkers typically purchased a bundle of 100 copies from a wholesaler, who in turn purchased them from the publisher. Legally every state considered the newsboys to be independent contractors, and not employees, so they generally were not subject to child labor laws.
In the United States they became an iconic image of youthful entrepreneurship. Famous Americans that had worked as newsboys included Bruce Barton, Ralph Bunche, Joe DiMaggio, Thomas Edison, Dwight Eisenhower, Sam Rayburn, Walter Reuther, David Sarnoff, Cardinal Spellman, Harry Truman and Mark Twain.[2]
- ^ Katz, Wendy Jean (2007). "Fancy Painting, Street Children, and the Fast Men of the Pavé". Nineteenth Century Studies. 21: 85–126. doi:10.2307/45196988. JSTOR 45196988.
- ^ Whisnant, David E. (1972). "Selling the Gospel News, or: The Strange Career of Jimmy Brown the Newsboy". Journal of Social History. 5 (3): 269–309. doi:10.1353/jsh/5.3.269. JSTOR 3786658.