Late Night Musings

I had told him from the beginning it was a bad idea.  There was just something about his whole plan that seemed so…wrong.  It was cruel, and underhanded, and his logic was entirely off center.

He doesn't know that I myself was a Newsie, when I was younger.  It was only for a few years, and then I found other ways of making my living, but that's my dirty little secret.  I know what it's like to be living on thirty cents a day, scraping around for a meal, sleeping on the streets.  I know what it means to have that price hiked even by a tenth of a cent.  It's the difference between eating and not eating, sleeping in a bed or under an unsold pape.

But he never listens.  I can give him advice, but he won't hear it.  He lives in his own little world.  Now, now those boys who he said would work harder because of the price hike have cut our circulation by seventy percent.  They are the main way we make any profit, and they've stopped working.

I think he's realizing just how much power these boys have.  You wouldn't think, really, that these street rats, these urchins and orphans and runaways had this power.  They've brought the World and the Journal to their respective knees, almost.  It fascinates me, makes me want to go out and see what they're doing, exactly, to achieve this.

However, I am almost confined to the Chief's office.  He keeps going further, and even though we may catch their leader, the boys will still strike.  I do not doubt it, having been among their ranks myself.  They are a special breed, Newsies, and I fear they shall soon be a dying one as well.  The Chief isn't taking this well.  He's already making notes to bypass the Newsies as a means of selling the papers.

I just hope these boys get out before it's too late.

A/N:  Well, this came out of watching the movie this afternoon and feeling incredibly sympathetic towards Seitz.  Don't ask. ^_^;;  Tried to implicate a few things about the results of the actual strike, not sure if it really worked.

Disclaimer:  I don't own them, really I don't, though I wish I did.  Life's unfair like that.