In
England, in what became known as the Great Unrest, hundreds of strikes erupted
in 1911 involving nearly a million workers. Among other labor actions, between
1900 and 1914, thousands of newsboys in the United States and Canada engaged in
strikes against newspapers and news agencies.
The
socialist Industrial Workers of the World, often just called the “Wobblies,”
stirred up some of the strikes against newspapers and other industries. The
Wobblies sought to overthrow the free market and to create a “workers’
commonwealth.” The union was active along the docks of the Gulf Coast and in
the Piney Woods timber industry.
We
don’t have any evidence that the Wobblies or other labor organizers were behind
the newsboy strike in Mobile. But the youths certainly would have been aware of
what fellow newsboys and adults had been up to around the country and the
world.
In
nearby New Orleans, 250 newsboys marched to Lafayette Square in July 1911 in
protest of two papers raising their price to carriers. The New Orleans Daily
States and the New Orleans Item raised the wholesale price of their
2-cent papers from 1 cent to 1 ½ cents.
The
strikers littered the streets with shredded newspapers, beat up scabs, and marched
in a night parade. The strike ended when the papers raised their retail price
to 3 cents and restored the newsboys half-price discount.
In
Mobile, newsboys also erupted when faced with a cut in their wholesale
discount. The Mobile Daily Item told its carriers in August 1911 that it
was reducing the subscription price of the newspaper from 15 cents to 10 cents
a week. For each subscription, 6 cents would go to the paper and 4 cents to the
carrier. The Item published weekday afternoons and Sunday mornings.
The Item
may have cut its subscription price in its circulation war with the morning Mobile
Register. The Item’s 12,000 readers was just under the Register’s
14,000.
The
youths who delivered the Item on subscription routes objected to the new
pricing. On the night of Sunday, August 20, one of youths visited the home where
many of the carriers lived. He called on them to meet at the Central Trade Council
Hall on Monday morning, August 21, to form a union and strike against the Item.
At
the meeting, the carriers formed Newsboys Union No. 1. But the President Judge
of the Central Trades Council ruled that it couldn’t recognize the group as a
labor union because it had been put together solely to call a strike.
Nevertheless,
a committee of youths from the new union met several times that morning with
the Item’s management. The carriers demanded 6 cents for their share of
the new price. The carriers also demanded that the paper pay them 6 cents for
delivering deadheads, or free copies. Deadheads went to political friends and
relatives of the editor, publisher, or other employees of the newspaper. The
managers responded that the paper couldn’t make a profit supplying subscriptions
at the price the newsboys demanded. The managers said they were open to
arbitration of the dispute.
On the
afternoon of August 21, apparently encouraged by outsiders, more than 150
carriers struck the Item. To get public support for their strike, the
newsboys handed out flyers explaining their demands and paraded in the streets.
To
deliver papers to subscribers, the Item turned to loading them in cars and
having the drivers drop the papers off. The striking newsboys put out pickets
who attacked anyone attempting to deliver the paper and destroyed any copies
they could. The newspaper got police officers to ride with its drivers and
immediately sought an injunction against the newsboys. Police also arrested
several of the Item’s striking carriers.
It
also began to appear that the Item’s competitor, the morning Mobile
Register, had a hand in the newsboys’ strike. Police arrested several Register
employees for taking copies of the Item from carriers and tossing them
in the trash. Among those arrested from the Register: J. O. Stuardi, the
former Item circulation manager who had switched to the Register
circulation department, Norman Stuardi, Leslie Stevens, E. C. D’Olive, and John
Allman.
The Item’s
management and members of the newsboys union met twice the afternoon of August
23. The
newspaper’s advertisers may have begun asking about credits for their ads in
papers that weren’t being delivered, adding to the pressure to settle the
dispute.
The
managers and newsboys agreed to ask the newly created three Mobile City
Commissioners to arbitrate the dispute. The two sides also agreed that the
route carriers would get 5 or 6 cents a week for each paper delivered
regardless of what the arbiters decided and the carriers agreed to return to
work.
This
gave the labor dispute a political cast. The city had just adopted the
commission form of government, considered to be a progressive reform for good
government that would break the power of ward bosses.
Progressive reformers in
Alabama and across the nation had been working to sweep away old aldermanic forms
of city government. Reformers associated mayors and councils with political
rings, ward healers, spoils, cronyism, and corruption. Progressives in Mobile
sought to replace the mayor and board of aldermen with what they considered a
more business-like, three-member commission. The three members would rotate
terms as mayor and divide up duties of city administration.
Current elected city officials,
staff, and those who benefited from the existing system opposed the change. The
Mobile Item early on supported a commission government. But when the
campaign for the commission began in earnest, the Item switched sides
and supported the aldermanic forces.
That put the Item
at odds with the Register, which supported the measure. The Register’s
progressive Democrat owner, Frederick I. Thompson, worked with the city’s
Progressive Association, a coalition of businessmen and professionals, to lead
the fight for the commission.
The two sides fought bitterly.
Old political alliances and friendships broke. The two newspapers’ advertisers
undoubtedly pressured the publishers to support their sides of the issue.
On June 5, 1911,
Mobilians turned out in large numbers to approve the commission government,
2,227 to 1,401. It was the largest turnout of voters in some time.
The Birmingham News
gave much of the credit for the success of plan to the Register. “Too
much cannot be said in praise of The Mobile Register for the splendid
fight it made in behalf of Commission Government,” the News opined. “The
victory of the good government forces would have been impossible but for the
clean, intelligent and fearless campaign of this journal.”
We
don’t know the result of the commission’s arbitration in the newsboy strike. As
had been the case in other newsboy strikes around the country, there may have
been no formal announcement. The paper may have just spread the word that the
two sides had agreed and the strike was over.
The Item’s
opposition to adopting the commission government would seem to have made it
unlikely the new commissioners would support the newspaper’s position. Plus the
newsboys already seem to already have won the dispute with the Item
agreeing to increase carriers’ share to 5 or 6 cents of each subscription.
Newsboys
Union No. 1 doesn’t appear to have outlived the strike. The carriers had
managed to flex their muscle and to show managers at the Item, and the
competing Register as well, that they could seriously disrupt newspaper distribution
if their interests were harmed. The newsboys proved, to the delight of some and
the surprise of many, that they could organize and win a strike.
Sources
Vincent DiGirolamo, Crying the News, A History of America’s Newsboys. (Oxford University Press, 2019), 414, 418
N.W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual and Directory, 1914, 33
“News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 22, 1911 3:5; “Newsboys Strike In Mobile,” Atmore Record August 24, 1911 1:3
“News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 23, 1911 6:4
“News of Mobile and its vicinity,” New Orleans Times-Democrat August 24, 1911 11:4; “Newsboys Strike In Mobile,” Atmore Record August 24, 1911 1:3; “Strike of Newsboys Will Be Arbitrated,” Montgomery Advertiser August 24, 1911 3:4
David E. Alsobrook, “Patrick J. Lyons,” Encyclopedia of Alabama. Online: http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2163. Accessed March 9, 2020
“Commission Government Wins in Mobile,” Fairhope Courier June 9, 1911 4:2; “Mobile Throws Off Shackles,” Birmingham News June 6, 1911 4:1
