Forty-Three Newsboys and Their $96.80 War Chest
Seattle's newsboys pay themselves sick benefits and once covered a young member's funeral — and still find money for the canal.
The Seattle Newsboys' Union came to the front yesterday with a share of $96.80 for the canal fund. 'We hope the bugle will soon be heard,' said one of the boys, 'and we can still get more papers. We have $96.80 on hand, and by the time we are called upon to pay the subscription we will have a lot more money — no telling how much, unless the boys get sick.
'We have a membership of forty-three, and we allow sick boys $3 a week, and then we pay the bills if the boys' people are too poor to pay them themselves. When Cecil Higginbotham died we paid out $15 for the doctor's bill and funeral expenses. But the boys have all been well lately, and that's why we have so much money on hand. The dues are only ten cents a week, but that gives us a good fund, and so we are all right. But we want to see the canal dug.'
“When Cecil Higginbotham died we paid out $15 for the doctor's bill and funeral expenses… But we want to see the canal dug.”
Decades before child labor laws, Seattle's newsboys ran their own union — dues, sick pay, even funeral costs. Their mutual-aid ethic foreshadows today's quarrels over gig work and who covers a worker when illness strikes.
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