“Ain’t Any Chance to Rise in the Paper Business”: Horatio Alger, Newsboys, and the Racialization of Poverty

Abstract

This essay reconsiders literary engagements with the figure of the newsboy in terms of their own ambivalences, critiques, and calls for social reform. Taking Horatio Alger’s dime novels as a primary case study, this piece explores Alger’s sense that the growth of literary business relied too heavily on the exploitation of poverty conditions produced by and disseminated through the medium of popular print.