Introduction
Selling and delivering newspapers was one of the first and most formative experiences of America’s youth throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, yet its history has been obscured by myth and mired in cliché. Crying the News takes the job of newspaper peddling seriously as work and not just as an object of romance or reform. It shows how child street labor changed over time in practice and in perception, while remaining integral to the survival of working-class families, the socialization of their children, and the fortunes of a major industry. Boys and girls found both opportunity and exploitation in the news trade, and they came to personify the spirit of capitalism and its discontents. This book aims not simply to distinguish history from myth but to explore the relationship between the two—to dissect how newsboys’ dual careers as workers and symbols shaped each other, creating wealth for some and meaning for many.