Kid Blink Beats the World

"It was all for a penny. They left their cramped and crowded tenement apartments for a penny. They scurried beside the pushcart peddlers for a penny. They dodged street trolleys and horse drawn wagons for a penny. And in the summer of 1899, Kid Blink, Race Track Higgins, Tiny Tim, Crutch Morris, and Crazy Arborn battled the world for a penny." The story of the newsboys (and girls) who took on the world's most powerful press barons - and won. In the summer of 1899, the hundreds of newsboys who sold Randolph Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World on the streets of New York and surrounding cities went on strike. The issue was a penny-the extra penny that the press owners wanted to charge the newsboys to buy the papers. To the press owners it didn't seem like much, but to the newsboys it was a living, and they fought. Led by kids with colorful names like Kid Blink, Race Track Higgins, Tiny Tim, and Crutch Morris, they refused to sell the papers, staged rallies-and finally brought the newspapers to the negotiating table.