New York Street Cries
The number of "street cries" and people peddling their wares on New York City sidewalks was notably decreasing, A.R. Ross wrote in a 1924 New York Times Magazine article.
The time is coming when all street cries will be stilled. The radio gives out with no uncertainty the boisterous tones of robust tenors and bellowing baritones and far-reaching basso profundos, to say nothing of hilarious jazzes of strident brass bands. Overhead whir the airplanes and finally come the remorseless and everlasting toots of automobiles, pleasure and business craft, the trumpetings, screechings, and agonized howls as of lions, tigers, hyenas in the last throes of torturing death to drown all our cherished street cries into silence and to consign them to an oblivion from which they shall never emerge.
Among the most prominent "street criers" of the early 20th century were newsboys. The occupation is perhaps most prominent to modern audiences from 1992's Disney movie Newsies starring a young Christian Bale, plus the 2012-14 Broadway musical adaptation. These kids would stand at streetcorners to hawk the latest print editions by calling out headlines. In particular, they became known for the phrase: "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!"
Sure enough, they began to disappear around 1924. "The age of the newsboy lasted only until the 1920s, when a growing preference for home delivery and tougher child labor laws ended the papers' reliance on street sales," Marquette University's Children in Urban America Project explained.
New York Street Cries: They Are Not So Many Nor So Noisy as Once They Were
Published: Sunday, July 6, 1924