Back in the day of publishers William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, newsboys were essential players in the circulation pipeline, cheap labor that made the highly competitive industry profitable. The newsboy became an America cultural trope or archetype, a focus of rags-to-riches fiction, the target of pity and social welfare activism, a smiling stereotype, an exemplar of hard work, and an incarnation of urban poverty. "Please Buy My Last Paper, I Want to Go Home”: Portrayal of Newsboys and Newsgirls in 19th and 20th Century Music" is a talk given last Fall by Joshua Duchan from Wayne State University’s Music Department and Eric Freedman from the Michigan State University School of Journalism. The talk was part of MSU’s Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives brown bag series, organized by John Beck. Today’s show features highlights from that talk, and adds in a number of the songs they reference.
On this week’s Labor History in Two: renowned Illinois poet Carl Sandburg wrote about workers in Gary, Indiana and farmers around Omaha, Nebraska; he wrote about railroad workers and steel workers.
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Labor History Today is produced by the Labor Heritage Foundation and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.
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“Boomer Jones": Vintage labor radio show (LHT podcast extra)
We Do The Work; Working History
Cutting along the Color Line
A travel guide to labor landmarks
“The Flintstones” and class struggle; The Ford Hunger March
Remembering Gene Debs; Waging Peace
No longer newsworthy?
Confederate monuments and the Knights of Labor
Strike!
“Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”: the Housewives League of Detroit
2020 Great Labor Arts Exchange contest winners!
Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth
SCOTUS bans LGBTQ workplace discrimination; Queer history of the UAW
Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers
The Minneapolis general strike; “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property”
“Politics of the Pantry”; “We Just Come to Work Here”
“The Long Deep Grudge: A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland”
“Strike for Your Life!”; labor history's lessons for the COVID-19 crisis
Jack Kelly’s "The Edge of Anarchy”; “Union Maids” director Julia Reichert (Part 2)
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