The Day Tacoma's Newsboys Went on Strike
Forty newsboys organized a blockade against the evening paper's manager, demanding return privileges for unsold copies.
Forty or fifty newsboys who sell the evening News struck this afternoon because Captain Roediger, business manager of the paper, would not agree to sell the boys three papers for a nickel, provided un-sold papers were not returnable, or two papers for a nickel provided unsold ones were returnable at purchase price. This demand was reduced to writing by the leader of the strikers, Oscar Gardner, and sent up to the business manager of the News. No attention was paid to it, and when Captain Roediger offered for sale checks used in securing copies of the paper at the pressroom, the boys would not buy them. Some of the boys had signed an agreement not to buy papers unless their grievances were adjusted, but some of the others, being anxious to earn a few pennies, bought under the former rate of two for a nickel, the papers not being returnable. These were called 'scabs' by the young strikers, and some of the papers bought by them were torn up by the strikers. By this time the lads were excited and causing something of a disturbance. Fifteen or twenty of them were arrested and marched off to the police station and mildly reprimanded. They promised to behave themselves like little men, and were dismissed. The boys propose to organize a newsboys' union.
“They talk and conduct themselves very much like grown-up strikers, and announce that 'this strike will be on,' and the line, until satisfactory settlement is reached.”
Long before digital headlines, the newsboys were the original gig economy laborers, bargaining for better overhead protection. Their strike highlights a century-long tension in media: who assumes the risk for unsold inventory?
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