Newspapers in New York City

This video of children vying to deliver newspapers in New York City demonstrates a survival instinct at work. As children likely had no other wages in this time period, not to mention their parents probably wouldn't have earned much either, delivering newspapers around the city would have helped them to live what they would likely have called 'the good life'.
On the one hand, this could be seen as many people working together; if only one person tried to deliver hundreds, if not thousands of newspapers across all of New York City, it would take them far too long. However, with dozens of children scrambling to collect newspapers to dish out to the public, it makes their job easier. This ties in with Adams stating that the original colonists of America had 'no chance to get ahead unless others came also, by birth or immigration', being proof that Americans working together can achieve great things, even if it's only delivering the newspapers on time.
However, this scrambling could also be seen in a negative light, as it could be implied that, like in the Old World, it's a fight to survive in New York. This seems particularly evident when two of the children in the film start fighting, as if whoever is slower out of the two won't get to deliver newspapers and will thus go hungry tonight. This is almost reminiscent of how the original colonists, particularly in the less-fortunate New England colonies like Plymouth and Weymouth, would likely have fought over basic essentials.
Cullen talks about the 'social cement...loosening' at the turn of the century, however I think the same could be applied to the turn of the 20th century, what with rising social unrest and mass industrialisation. This also relates to Adams talking about how, no matter how '[industrialist]...the settlers were, in many respects, success in State building could come only by cooperation'. This means that people had to put aside their self-interests in favour of the collective good, if a new life was to be carved out, and that can be seen here with the children working together to not only get the job done but also improve their collective lot in life.


https://www.loc.gov/item/00694376/
file:///C:/Users/Callum%20Edwards/Downloads/jim%20cullen.pdf
file:///C:/Users/Callum%20Edwards/Downloads/AM1212-James_Truslow_Adams-The_epic_of_America-Chapter_of_The_epic_of_America-pp214-221.pdf