The Pittsburg Leader - Photograph of 23 newsboys, ca. 1880-1890s

Occupational photograph of twenty-three newsboys outside a branch office for The Pittsburg Leader, measuring approx. 5 x 7 inches on 7 x 9 board. In Good condition with moderate surface rubbing and soil; board has pinholes in the corners and at the bottom edge of the photograph, slight losses at the corners. No markings on the verso; the photograph has “J. Kerr” is penned beneath one of the kneeling figures and the boy on the far right looks like his face was swiped out (intentionally?) by a thumb.

The image is especially poignant in its anticipation of the Lewis Hine “newsies” photographs produced ca. 1908-1912 during his time as chief investigator and photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. In this photograph, the twenty-three boys appear to be around 8-14 years old. The eldest-looking boy hangs a pipe from his mouth in the doorway. The others, a mix of Black and White children doubtlessly representing the city’s major immigrant populations, are dressed, if not smiling, for the occasion. One boy reclines in a hand cart, several others show their carrier bags face-out, prominently advertising the “one cent daily.” 

Undated, ca. 1890: certainly post-1875, when the publication begrudgingly shed the “h” from Pittsburg(h), and pre-1898, when the newspaper sold at two cents per copy (and boasted to potential advertisers that this distinction from the penny daily’s meant their papers weren’t discarded). The paper began as the Sunday Leader in 1864, founded by John Pittock, who had started out as a newsboy himself. At the end of the century, it was reported to have the largest circulation in the city and published authors including Willa Cather, who was a contributing writer from 1896-1906.

A contemporary history of the city’s rise remarked, “The Leader, from its beginning, has been extremely independent in its character. It has backed at all times the man in whom it believed without regard to party. It has railed unceasingly at whatever it thought to be wrong, and has been of undoubted service to the community,” (Killikelly, The History of Pittsburgh, 1906, p.494). That assessment was proven when the Leader withdrew from the Pittsburgh Newspaper Publishers’ Association and signed the union scale in 1907. It ceased publication in 1923, when it was among 3 Pittsburgh papers bought out and eliminated by the competing Chronicle-Telegraph, Gazette-Times, Post, Press and Sun.