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Messenger Boys Fading Away
The Alger Hero Disappears
Unlamented As Western Union Modernizes
Electronic Speed Wins
Facsimile Reproduction and
Phone Telegrams Take Toll of Puttee Corps
New York Times, December 2, 1959
By Gay Talese
The Western Union messenger boy is slowly disappearing from the
American scene, and nobody seems to care - not even the Western Union
messenger boy.
Thousands of messengers have been replaced, puttees and all, by various
electronic gadgets that have lessened the need for those eager Alger
heroes who once traveled by foot, bicycle, saddle or howdah to deliver
telegrams anywhere in the world.
Since 1949, the number of messengers has dropped from 10,707 to 5,509
in the nation and from 2,095 to 1,364 in New York City.
Far from becoming nostalgic over this, Western Union instead is
concentrating on speeding electronic transmission through devices like
the Wirefax, which went into operation yesterday in New York,
Washington, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
At the push of a button and flick of an electronic roller, a message on
a Wirefax facsimile transmitter drum is scanned by an electronic eye,
and then is immediately reproduced on a Wirefax machine in another city.
This push-button technique is similar to that of Western Union's
Desk-fax, a box-like electronic machine that, with a push of a button,
reproduces a. facsimile of a message from a. machine in one place to a.
machine in another in a jiffy. Since World War II, the number of
Desk-fax machines in the nation has reached 36,000, reducing the need
for boys to deliver telegrams.
The post-World War II popularity of such items as the Desk-fax and
Teleprinter, not to mention the increased reliance on telephones, has
helped to change the role of telegram messenger boys.
No longer are messenger boys looked upon as likely leaders of the
future. No longer do messenger ranks graduate such distinguished alumni
as Andrew Carnegie, Thomas A. Edison or Glen Curtiss. Nor do they
produce such men as Jack Dempsey, Gene Autry or Steve Brodie (who,
according to a Western Union press agent) jumped from the Brooklyn
Bridge with his Western Uniol1 suit and puttees on.
Many of the current leaders of Western Union are former messenger boys,
but most of the present crop of messengers are not boys -they are men,
elderly men who go about their work with a mixed amount zeal.
Foot messengers have been largely replaced by automobile messengers in
the suburbs. And Western Union says that the reason the number of
telegraph offices and agencies has dropped from 24,298 in 1930 to
21,261 today is that many small branch railroad stations have been
closed and many persons have moved to the suburbs.
“Since World War II an increasing number of suburbanites prefer to use
the telephone to file their messages instead of going to our office to
do so,” a Western Union official said yesterday.
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