Wally our Newsboy was quite often accompanied by Newsgirls in the early 1900s as this Library of Congress image shows. Newsies had been around since the mid 1800s.
Child labor was not at all uncommon in those days.
By the 1950s kids had "Paper Routes" on bikes in a growing suburbia. As motor traffic mushroomed the routes were taken over by adults with cars.
We wonder what became of those 1920s Newsies..
THE REAL NEWSIES OF NEW YORK CITY
LEARN FROM WESTBURY KENNEL ASSOCIATION - WE ARE MORE THAN DOGS!
Newsgirl & Boy Selling around saloon entrances. Bowery. NYC c.1910
A seven-year-old newsboy sells copies of the New York Herald on Columbus Circle in New York City. c.1930?
There were no compulsory education laws much before the 1930s. This enabled kids to work and not go to school. Ironically, it is possible that the Newsies could not actually read the newspapers they were selling. Amazingly, led by NYC children, the Newsie Strike of 1899 helped change US Child Labor Laws,
which would not come into full effect until the late 1930s.