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"Wherever there were newsboys in Salt Lake City, and a need for a rhythmical hawker, there was always my dad," says Richard McGillis, 85, showing circa 1910 photographs of Charlie McGillis and an alley full of newsies wearing wide-brimmed felt hats or slouchy cloth caps and newspaper satchels slung over their shoulders.

The early 1900s illuminated the raucous days of the city's newspaper wars: when the morning Salt Lake Tribune and the evening Telegram competed with the Deseret News for street corners and a tough guy named McGillis was brought in from Denver to establish turf.

Charlie was a son of Jewish immigrants whose surname, misinterpreted at Ellis Island, "could have been Margoles for all we know," his son says. Charlie was born in 1889 in Colorado and raised on the mean streets of West Colfax. At 5-foot-6 and 135 pounds, he relied on his fists for safety and, like so many other sons of poor émigrés, became an amateur fighter.

Dubbed "Chick McGillis, the fighting newsboy of Salt Lake," his "windmill swings and . . . sheer gameness" had spectators on their feet. Once knocked down and considered out by fans already heading toward the door of the old Manhattan Club, he rose to settle the score and didn't stop there. Charlie McGillis, street sales manager for the Newspaper Agency Corp., was so tough, says Richard, "if one of Charlie's newsboys had a corner, nobody else would get it."

But McGillis' strength couldn't hide the unruffled realism about the plight of young newsboys, which led to an alliance and lifelong friendship with financier Russel L. Tracy, who sought to keep them on the straight and narrow.

In downtown Salt Lake City, 6- to 10-year-old children hustled newspapers and for some, it was a rite of passage; but for impoverished youth, it was a necessity. Accustomed to purchasing his daily Tribune from a street-corner newsie named Ralph Nielson, Tracy - president of Tracy Loan and Trust Co. - learned the 6-year-old, tow-headed hawker had lost his father and two siblings and was solely responsible for his invalid mother. Stunned, Tracy resolved "to help young newsboys improve their quality of life," he wrote in his memoir, Some Experiences of Russel Lord Tracy.

Tracy hosted a series of dinners but, after one outing for 75 high-spirited newsboys at Bond's Restaurant turned into a robust food fight, he had his doubts.

For more than 28 years, the brawn-and-brains reformers weighed the needs of each newsboy and his family. They provided food, clothing and sacks of coal to get them through harsh winters. They built a gymnasium, held monthly wrestling and boxing contests and organized annual parades.

Prior to the Boys Scouts of America, organized in 1910, newsboy camps in Big Cottonwood Canyon helped "develop characters of honesty, self-reliance, and moral uplift." To keep the newsies in school, monetary incentives were offered. Scholarly work garnered 50 cents; "very good" gleaned a quarter; and "good" got a dime. (When Ralph turned 10, he got off the streets.)

The federal child labor laws of 1916 wobbled until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 upheld child labor reform. So, by 1941, the newsies were no more. Some went on to become lawyers and doctors.

The boy who instigated the food fight? That was Herbert B. Maw, the Democratic governor of Utah from 1941 to 1949.

In 1910, McGillis built a unique newspaper store on wheels. Called "the most complete street newspaper stand built" by The Salt Lake Tribune, the tidy 10-by-6 red-bodied, black-trimmed store on yellow rims secured its corner on 200 South and State. It collapsed into a box by night and opened each morning into an elaborate magazine stand replete with wooden display panels, counters, benches and an electric sign reminding everyone to "Read The Salt Lake Tribune."

The way I see it, McGillis, who retired after 67 years in the newspaper business, protected corners, newsies and fighters like Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, all the while keeping his compassion, his business sense and his promise: "If you've got a home, I have your home paper."

Eileen Hallet Stone is a writer and public historian whose books include A Homeland in the West: Utah Jews Remember.