Selling the Gospel News, or: The Strange Career of Jimmy Brown the Newsboy

The Amer instit & myth of the newsboy is examined. The career of the newsboy originated in the post-boys & printer's boys of the early & mid-18th cent. By the late 18th cent, there had emerged a definite newsboy image which proliferated following the rise of the big city dailies in the 19th cent. After about 1835 an elaborate newsboy myth was built up & manipulated by popular writers & apologists for special interests. Once the newsboy's unfortunate circumstances were agreed upon as constituting a soc problem, the responses to it ranged from outright paternalistic philanthropy, newsboys' lodging houses & assoc's, & child labor legislation to New Deal efforts & so on. The image is particularly well defined in the carriers' addresses. In reality the newsboy phenomenon constituted a perversion of the needs & instincts of childhood, a violation of true democratic principles & a major soc abuse. Repeated efforts, stretching now through more than 100 yrs, to eliminate this soc abuse have largely failed although certain fortunate changes in Amer society have lessened its more grotesque features. What is finally at issue is the viability of a nat'l ideology that predisposed Amer's through 2 cent's of cultural flux to consistently treat a certain group of children inhumanely. M. Maxfield.