Tacoma’s Newsboys Organize to Fund Their Own Band
Local newsboys are hosting a masquerade ball at the Dreamland rink to purchase equipment for the city’s first youth band.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In order to purchase equipment for the first newsboys' band ever inaugurated on the Pacific coast, the Tacoma Newsboys' Union will give a grand masquerade ball at Dreamland Rink next Wednesday evening. Prizes for costumes have been offered by a number of Tacoma merchants. The Tacoma Newsboys' band, which has been in training for three months, is making good progress and with the addition of the instruments to be bought with the ball proceeds, will be in readiness to furnish music on any occasion. All the members of the band are newsboys who sell papers on the streets each day.
“All the members of the band are newsboys who sell papers on the streets each day.”
Youth-led civic organizations were a significant part of the early 20th-century urban experience, providing vocational training and social structure to working children. Today, the spirit of this youth advocacy lives on in Tacoma’s youth empowerment and arts programs, though the economic conditions of paper-selling have long since vanished.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.