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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Sharecroppers’ struggles for rights and power
Feathers and Pennies - the 1888 Matchgirls and us
Trumka: “Art is why they remember our struggles”
Live from The Battle of Blair Mountain!
The Battle of Blair Mountain; Remembering Ed Asner
Marching on Washington: civil rights to voting rights
Sacco and Vanzetti; Midnight in Vehicle City
Trumka on the future of American labor (archive show)
Remembering Rich Trumka (1949-2021)
Keokuk before the strike
Indigenous Longshoremen & the I.W.W.
Houston, We Have a Labor Dispute
Dramatizing The Murals
2020/2021 Joe Hill award-winners
The Memphis Fire Fighter Strike of 1978
Marvel Cooke, a Journalist for Working People
LHT Archives: Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth
LHT Archives: Debs on capitalism; Dudzic on the Labor Party
LHT Archives: Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
The 1913 Dublin Lock-out
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