Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1890-03-13
A MARRIED MESSENGER BOY.
He Has to Hustle to Support His Wife
and Three Young Children.

and Three Young Children.
| As elevator in one of the big office build
| ings in Broadway was passing one OF the upper
| floors on its downward trip a shout of Down"
was heard, and messenger ran at full speed
| along the corridor just In time to leap into
| the car The incident excited no little merri-
ment among those in the elevator, who In the
| free and easy American way began to make
comments
"You must be new at the business" said
one man to the messenger, who was evidently
thirty or thirty-five years old and wore full
beard
well not exactly" was the answer; tits
fifteen years since went into it,"
Then you probably had fit of absent
mindedness, didn't youl" asked another man,
and everybody laughed, especially the author
of the joke
you're wrong there" was the reply: Il
am paid by the job, : and here the elevator
reached the ground floor. The messenger,
who had taken his stand near the door, was
the first man out, and before the car was
empty he had entered building two doors
down the street.
In spite of the jokes of the 'funny" man
and the general idea of the public, there are
many messengers who do not spend an hour
and half tossing pennies, looking in show
windows and reading dime novels every
time they are sent to deliver me sage. Es-
pecially is the popular BELIEF untrue as far as
the Western Union messengers down town
are concerned. The reasOa Is plsin. They
ars yaid les than two cents for every tele-
gram they deliver, and if they were as gla-
cier Ike II their movements 5,s the comic pa
'pers would have us beliege they are, they
would not earn enough to Ply for their uni
FERNS. Not a few of them are married and
have children, and it viii be readily believed
that they have to get AROUND at lively pace
to earn enough TO support t5eir families.
Bearded messengers always arouse more or
less curiosity. People cannot understand how
man cal make living az boys work.
Yet the Adult messengers find their occupa-
ton profitable well as to taeir taste If
fitted for their work, they can generally
make from sig to SIS weeL, which Is more
than they sud earn at many other callings.
As beginnings at the business make only a
quarter as 1Juch, the question arises, how can
man, even With many years experience do
four times the work of a green boys In
answer to this messenger, who has gotten
married and raised three children since he en-
tered the service, said:
There's good deal more science about the
messenger business than you might think In
the first place, | have always been in the de-
tail which delivers messages IN the district
which lies within half dozen blocks of the
Western Union building. In the fifteen years
that have been at the work Ihave delivered
kilograms to about every firm in the district
and have come to know Just where the office
Of Of ic rod
ii big saving in time, as new man finds out
after he has spent ten or fifteen minutes read
ing the directory in the hall of the building,
asking questions of the elevator man or going
from one room to another making inquiries.
Another way in which l have an advan-
tage is that | know just where to get nv
book signed. The bashful 'greeners' will
hang around until somebody takes notice of
them, and the fresh ones will interrupt a
man who IS adding up column of figures,
and get jumped on. I always go to the
right man at The right time, and viii have
three kilograms delivered before a new mes
senger gets rid Of one"
''Do you expect to stay in the business all
your lifef" seemed natural question to ask
well, don't see any way out Of it. I
make enough TO keep my family, and that's
more than would be sure of doing at many
other things. have given my oldest boy
good common school education, and am going
to make a messenger Of him next summer
believe that it will give him better bust
ness training than anything else would. He
will get around everywhere, see everything,
meet all kinds of people, learn how business
is done, and get to be bright, sharp, quick
and active. After he's been with the Vest
ern Union few years I'll try to get him a
place of the same kind IN brokers office.
II he's the right sort he can get to be clerk
after while, and sometimes brokers' messen-
gers become partners in the firm Why
shouldn't my boy be Wall street millionaire
some day! Jay Gould and the rest didn't
start in life with much better advantages
than he has. New York Tribune