Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Communication, and Technology, 1850-1950 (review)

Thomas Hughes showed us some time ago that technologies are embedded in systems. Gregory Downey reminds us that technological systems depend on labor to function, and that they reorder human geography as a consequence of their functioning. His example is the role of telegraph messenger boys in creating and sustaining a nationwide communications network, and he closely examines “the history of a group of ‘system maintainers’ at the lowest level of the telegraph hierarchy, and the lived geography of the telegraph network that both resulted from and set limits upon their day-today labor” (p. 191). Downey’s initial task is to resolve the “paradox of a ‘lightning-fast’ information system that nevertheless seemed to rest on the speed of a lazy schoolboy” (p. 4). To resolve this paradox he uses two theoretical concepts: the social construction of technological systems and the social production of space and time. He concludes that messengers “occupied a key position . . . at the boundary between the virtual and the physical” (p. 10). Messenger boys, in other words, connected the telegraph network that moved information through space with customers who depended on timely delivery. Downey covers several facets of the history of telegraph messenger boys, including how they moved about in large cities and small towns, why they became objects of scrutiny for Progressive reformers, and what their prospects were for career advancement. Two subjects stand out as particularly useful and compelling. First, historians have typically regarded the postal system, telegraph, and telephone as competing communications media. Downey claims instead that the three were complementary, a “multimodal information internetwork that began and ended with young boys but encompassed a variety of technologies, institutions, and geographies in between” (p. 11). He points out that today’s bicycle couriers and expressdelivery drivers perform much the same function; they too connect diverse communications media and allow them to operate as a seamless web. A second interesting argument is that messenger boys helped the telegraph industry to survive longer than it otherwise would have, while at the same time their cheap labor retarded technological innovation. Hand delivery of telegrams helped the industry retain a distinctive identity that was necessary for it to compete with cheaper or quicker media like airmail and the telephone. A hand-delivered telegram was “a special event, . . . an occasion for a brave and bold messenger to track you down in the midst of your busy day and hand you an urgent communication with a smile” (p. 202). In addition, the telegraph industry saw no need to modernize its collection and T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U L T U R E