If you ever find yourself on Manhattan's Lower East Side, you're bound to see them- in fact, it wouldn't be Manhattan in this day and age without the children hawking headlines in voices from all over the world.
They're an assorted bunch, girls and boys both, ranging in age from as small as seven to as old as eighteen, all wearing variations on the same uniform: shirtsleeves, worn boots, and a flat cap. One of them, who has to be on the older end of things, wears a red handkerchief around his neck, while another has a cigar stuffed into the pocket of his shirt. Yet another sports a patch over one eye, giving him the appearance of a young pirate, while another hobbles around on a rickety crutch, his leg twisted at a strange angle. Most of these characters are boys, though you think you spot a single girl hurrying about with them, or selling near the park.
"Extra! Extra! Three-headed baby born in Brooklyn!"
"Fire on Ellis Island!"
"Coldest winter in living memory!"
Something tells you these headlines can't be true, and yet, when a dusty-haired newsie approaches you, effortlessly carrying what has to be at least fifty copies of The World, despite his size, you toss him the two cents and take a copy of Joseph Pultizer's paper without bothering to question why the headline isn't what the boy was hawking. There's no point, see, not with the dusty-haired boy already run off to find more customers, his pockets two cents heavier.
Venture further south from the south-eastern corner of Central Park and you'll find yourself on Orchard Street. You see a street packed with tenements, teeming with the immigrant families whose children may very well one day fill the ranks of the newsies. Poland, Germany, Italy, and Ireland, Catholics and Lutherans, Jews and Presbyterians—all countries are represented here, as are all faiths. It is this immigrant population that fills the factory benches, children sitting beside their parents in the cramped dark, without a union to protect them.
But that is none of your concern.
At the corner of Orchard Street and the street intersecting from the north—Delancy Street, the sign reads—you spot two children.
There is no telling their age exactly, though it is clear they are old enough to be working, and it soon becomes clear that they, too, are newsies—less rambunctious, perhaps, than their cousins farther north. Still, they stand at their posts, hawking headlines and drawing pedestrians off the streets and the tenement dwellers out of their homes more quickly than you've seen sugar-water draw bees on a summer's day.
As you draw nearer, two things become apparent. The first is that one of the newsies is, in fact, a girl, her reddish-brown hair done up in a bun and her head left uncovered, wearing a shirtwaist and trousers, while the other is a boy. The boy easily stands a head taller than his friend (are they friends? You can't help but wonder), and his trousers are held up by red bracers—a variation on the newsie uniform, perhaps.
The second thing you notice is what the two newsies call out. They speak with the same tone as the others you encountered earlier, declaring what can only be headlines, only, you struggle to decipher the languages they use to accomplish this.
"Geimhreadh ab fhuaire le cuimhne na ndaoine!" the girl cries, catching the attention of an elderly woman whose shoulders are wrapped in a heavy wool shawl. "Ar mhaith leat nuachtán, Mrs. O'Halloran?"
You see the old woman nod, and reach into her skirts, searching for coins, only to come up with a singular cent.
The girl says something to the old woman in a lower tone and the coin returns to its place in Mrs. O'Halloran's skirt pockets, though a paper still exchanges hands.
You watch as a similar scene plays out between the boy and a middle-aged woman with a child tugging on her skirt, while another lies asleep in her arms, only, this time you recognize the language from earlier in the day as that spoken between the newsie with the cigar in his pocket and a couple others. This realization leads you to assume that the boy must be one of the many Italian immigrants come to this city in search of a new life, while the girl remains a mystery.
If there was more than a trace of red in her otherwise-brown hair, you would assume Irish, for, didn't all Irishwomen have bright red hair? She appears to be slightly built, though maybe it is just a common trait among all immigrant children and newsies, that slightness of frame, and her complexion is fair enough, you assume, beneath the dirt, that she could, just possibly, be Irish.
Whatever the case, you have no reason to remain on Orchard Street and observe the two newsies, who by this point, you've realized must be close enough friends, to sell so close to each other, and so, without so much as another word, you leave the street of packed tenements and the newsies of Manhattan's Lower East Side with it, behind.