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As shown in the New York Public Library photo above, news stands also sold magazines, candy, gum, and other convenience items. News stands were everywhere--on city streets, near or in subway stations, inside hotels, at bus and railroad terminals. This was because the Big Apple was awash with morning, afternoon, evening, and weekly newspapers, many published in English and some in the various languages of those who lived and worked in the city. Papers were the definitive source of local, national, and international news in those days before radio and television.
I checked newspapers for, well, news about news stands during World War I, and discovered that distribution hit a snag in early February of 1918. The dealers who supplied papers to 5,000 local carriers ("newsies") went on strike in a dispute over money. At top, you can see a special box printed on the front page of the New York Tribune (Sunday, Feb 3, 1918), explaining the newspapers' position.
According to a New York Times report on Monday, Feb 4, thousands of people in New York City (and suburbs) had been desperate to get a Sunday paper on the previous day. They besieged news stands, publishing plants, hotels, and other locations where papers were ordinarily sold. The police had to restore order in a few instances, as demand surged well beyond supply. Publishers eventually used taxicabs to ferry any extra copies to outlying distribution sites.
I imagine that Lena and Litman sold out quickly that Sunday and then tried to obtain more newspapers. They definitely weathered the strike (since Litman's 1918 draft registration was dated that fall and he was still running the stand). By 1920, with World War I over, the couple converted their newspaper stand into a fruit stand and soon parlayed that into a grocery store. Later still, they ran a small restaurant, quite a different living from the modest newspaper stand they originally ran.
"Working for a Living" is this week's #52Ancestors prompt from Amy Johnson Crow.
