Inside Western Union

By M. J. Rivise and John Fischetti

Recalling the days before the advent of the internet and social media, when rapid written communication came not electronically, but electromechanically, Inside Western Union is a nostalgic collection of anecdotes by Mike Rivise, an experienced sales manager.

In this fascinating book, first published in 1950, the author draws on his own experiences to with many tales of demanding customers who expected the most from their messenger boys, recalls stories of coded messages used to minimize word counts, and provides accounts of crooks that tried to wire the loot across town for later pick up.

Rivise also includes details of the history of the Western Union company, including its early takeover by financier Jay Gould in 1881, its acquisition by American Telephone and Telegraph in 1909 following Gould’s death, the arrival of the competing service Postal Telegraph, and the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse, which revolutionised communication.

An invaluable read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781789123142

M. J. Rivise

M. J. “MIKE” RIVISE (April 9, 1902 - June 1972) was an American Western Union salesman and writer. He was born Maurice Joseph Rivise in Pennsylvania and later moved to New York. Rivise was married to Sally and the couple had a daughter, Elaine. Mike Rivise passed away in New York in 1972, aged 70. JOHN R. FISCHETTI (September 27, 1916 - November 18, 1980) was an editorial cartoonist for the New York Herald Tribune and the Chicago Daily News. He received a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1969 and numerous awards from the National Cartoonists Society.

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Text originally published in 1950 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

INSIDE WESTERN UNION

BY

M.J. (MIKE) RIVISE

Illustrated by John Fischetti

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

1950: Prologue 5

1—The General of the Sahara 7

2—Boys and Their Dogs 12

3—The Customers Never Write 16

4—My Favorite Millionaire 23

5—Miss Primrose 36

6—Any Help Wanted 42

7—The Duchess and the V-Girls 48

8—The Morse Men and Me 53

9—Birth of a Salesman 57

10—Special Messengers 62

11—Boys on Boys’ Errands 68

12—Who’s Who from WU 76

13—Scratching for Heroes 84

14—Wrought from an Old Picture Frame 91

15—Cold War and Hot Wires 97

16—The Singing Division 102

17—Tailor-Made Telegrams 108

18—The Headache Division 112

19—The Yellow Blank 117

20—Cuban Bon-Bons 122

21—What Price Efficiency? 126

22—Strike Scene 137

23—How to Sell Stunts 139

24—Persistence Is Its Own Reward 145

1950: Epilogue 151

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 153

DEDICATION

To Sally

and Elaine

for their

encouragement

and

inspiration

1950: Prologue

THE DAY was one of the rare ones when I would be through work at five o’clock if I was lucky. I leaned back on my swivel chair, readjusted the Consultant sign on my desk, and took a glance through my day’s schedule.

My desk is in a noisy, drafty section of a room shaped like a cigar box but with none of its pleasant aroma. Special messengers squeeze by, carrying slips of paper, bundles of bills, and trays full of coffee and doughnuts. Their early-morning occupation is to hold the trays at just the right height for the electric fan to puff pencil stripes of powdered sugar from the doughnuts onto my blue serge suit. Before stepping away from my desk I always have to take a few seconds to brush off the sugar.

I looked over my schedule again:

11:00—John Gray at Wallach’s

(Check on results of gift-certificate-by-messenger campaign)

11:30—Roy Larsen at Time magazine

(Another subscription promotion)

2:00—Frederic Gimbel at Gimbel Brothers

(Door-to-door circular distribution)

2:45—William Littleford at Billboard

(Final arrangements for collection of weekly best-seller ballots from music shops all over America)

3:30—Frank Walker at MGM Records

(Why not messengers to deliver latest record releases to radio station disc jockeys?)

4:00—A book publisher???

(Get sample reaction on my plan to have bestsellers displayed in Western Union windows and delivered by messenger)

I opened the dog-eared classified telephone directory to select a publisher at random and my phone began to ring. I let it talk to itself and I penciled in Sterling on my schedule. Another messenger with coffee and doughnuts passed by, lowered his tray to fan-level and powdered my suit again. I answered the telephone and it was Sally, my wife.

I’ll be home for supper early tonight, I told her.

Her silence betrayed her disbelief.

You’ll see, I promised. My last call is a publisher at four o’clock.

Uh huh, she said. Maybe the publisher will ask you to write a book.

And Bing will ask me to sing on the air with him. I’ll be home, I promised. You’ll see.

Then, with another fond glance at my Consultant sign, I dusted off my suit again and left the office. I didn’t leave a minute too soon; another messenger carrying coffee and doughnuts was war-whooping it in the direction of my desk as I opened the door to the street.

At each appointment it is my personal policy to get friendly, to leave the room brimming with Western Union good will. It’s no pretense with me as I’m naturally friendly from the beginning. Many of my customers buy Western Union services or sales promotions and take months or even years recognizing that I’ve sold them anything.

I reached the publisher promptly at four and something he said reminded me of a Western Union story, which I told him. If given a chance, I’ll always tell a few stories. Then I explained the book window display plan.

It’s no good, he said, and told me things I hadn’t known about the book business.

I told him a few things he hadn’t known about the Western Union business. At five o’clock his secretary went home and he asked me about some of my customers. I told him about the incomparable wrath of Orson Welles, and about the invincible man with the purple feather. At six everyone else went home and I disclosed some meaty morsels of company politics, from the upper hierarchy to my own personal inner sanctum. This led inevitably to the story of my secretary, the prim but ever-loyal Miss Primrose.

The cleaning woman came in while I was telling about the grandiose General of the Sahara. The publisher had a habit of swallowing his chuckle in a grin so that as he grinned the chuckle jumped up and down inside him. The jumpiness reminded me of my promise to Sally.

Have dinner with me, the publisher said. I want to hear more.

I called Sally and explained that I’d be delayed. Well, she said, with overtones of sarcasm spilling all around, I knew you wouldn’t make it for dinner....Your daughter and son-in-law will be here. Maybe you can spare a few minutes from Western Union to say hello to them.

On the way to the restaurant the publisher asked, Do things happen to you often so you don’t get home to dinner?

At dinner I told him about the time I was going home on the Bronx subway when I read in the evening newspaper that I had been indicted by the U.S. Government. I told him how the case of the mongrel of Central Park South had kept me busy for a night and a day. We were still there when the restaurant began closing, and then we went back to the publisher’s office. After I told him several stories of the singing messengers and Lawrence Tibbett, the publisher went to his typewriter and filled out a book contract. He didn’t say a word. I read the contract through and signed it right then and there.

What, I asked, will fill a book?

The publisher grinned. The things you’ve been doing for Western Union for the past twenty-seven years will more than fill a book. Just write down the stories you’ve told me, and stick to facts...Mike, grab your hat! I may be able to make the last train.

As we dashed together for Grand Central, I realized something. Western Union’s best idea salesman had been sold an idea. I rushed for a phone booth and phoned my wife.

Sally, honey, I began, I have a surprise for you…

1—The General of the Sahara

IF YOU WERE to ask me to name the most unusual customer I ever served, I’d say The General of the Sahara Desert. A constant subject of conversation among the messengers, his fame had spread from Brooklyn to the far reaches of the Bronx.…

One day a peculiar thin man came to see me at my office. He carried an umbrella although it was a sunny day. In a crisp British accent, he introduced himself as Mr. Dobbins and asked if I would furnish messengers for his employer’s army.

Mr. Dobbins was a butler and his employer was a self-appointed General, a man of peculiar tastes, with little knowledge of English but a convenient quantity of wealth. Mr. Dobbins spoke with much profusion about the wealth, and gestured mysteriously with his hands as he told of sugar plantations in Haiti and high palm trees swaying in groves, but whether the wealth came from the sugar cane or was buried in small satchels under the sugar plants I was not able to determine. Neither was our credit department, but they opened a charge account anyway.

Several times a week after that I received calls to send him his army. The platoon size varied: sometimes I’d send twelve messengers, sometimes six, sometimes only three or four. It depended on how many men were available and the mood he was in.

The General never called me personally. Mr. Dobbins was liaison between his battleground and our camp.

Maneuvers will commence in two hours, Dobbins would say in his very very British way.

All maneuvers were performed with military correctness. This was in the early nine teen-twenties, and the General’s home was a brownstone mansion near Gramercy Park. The messengers assembled in formation at our office and marched to the front of the General’s house. There they stood at strict attention in their smart Western Union uniforms, awaiting orders.

Mr. Dobbins was the aide-de-camp. His entrance was spectacular. He would suddenly step out from behind high green bushes and formally announce The General of the Sahara to all within ear-shout. Then the General would come onto the scene, marching from behind the garden gate to the sidewalk with short mincing steps. He was built like a beer barrel and his neck was lost from view as his chin rested securely on his chest.

Both the General and Mr. Dobbins wore custom-made uniforms and both were bedecked with a razzle-dazzle of specially-designed medals. Sometimes the General wore thirty of them. He had awarded them to himself for acts of valor.

From his sidewalk perch, the General inspected the boys, oblivious of the inevitable gathering of amazed passers-by. Soon he shouted commands and marched the boys back and forth in military drill. He had a strong Haitian accent and a constant burp and new boys had to follow his ‘bout face barkings by instinct, carefully distinguishing between the bark and the burp. The burp was on a contralto level.

Sometimes during the course of drilling, the General halted the men and announced a mythical victory. The butler then ran from the house with a box of new medals, and the General pinned medals on the kids and on himself.

There were other honors that went with working the Sahara job, as the boys called it. The General often appointed various boys as ministers to his cabinet. This was strictly an honorary job with no extra pay. However, when he hired sixteen or twenty boys, the General had his butler appoint sergeants and corporals. The ranks were temporary, good only for that day’s drill. Just before they were dismissed, the boys were each tipped. Naturally, the non-coms got the larger tips.

One day when the General’s picture appeared in the newspapers, our offices were very excited and the messengers were duly impressed by the news story that he would wed a former Ziegfeld beauty. The morning after the wedding, my telephone rang.

I am calling for the General of the Sahara, Mr. Dobbins announced. Maneuvers will commence in two hours.

It was business as usual.

The kids liked working for the General. They didn’t understand the whole thing, but it was a way to earn money and it broke up the usual messenger routine.

Sometimes the General was very stern and very military. But at other times, the army was given time out for mess. The boys reported that the food, usually served in the General’s basement or kitchen, was excellent.

None of them ever saw the main rooms of the house. The boys always talked about how they’d like to get a glimpse of the General’s Ziegfeld-beauty wife, but they never managed it.

One morning there was an additional request as the boys returned from their drill. The temporary sergeant reported to me: The General says war is imminent, sir. He wants us to come armed tomorrow.

At first I didn’t take the boy seriously. The boy was insistent. Mr. Rivise, he really told me that.

The temporary corporal backed him up. He really did, sir, the corporal said. I heard him. The corporal was a red-headed youth with a keen sense of rumor. I think the General saw a few ‘blues’ in the neighborhood, he added. Blue was the color of the uniforms of our rival Postal Telegraph messengers.

I checked with Mr. Dobbins.

His Majesty, the General of the Sahara, hears that the enemy troops are throwing precaution to the wind. He orders that henceforth his regiment arrive armed with broomsticks. We never questioned the General’s orders. We bought twenty-four brooms and thereafter, when the Grand Army of the Sahara marched to the Generals mansion, each boy carried a broomstick over his shoulder. The General paid for the brooms, of course.

The boys always attributed this defense measure to the General’s mysterious wife.

Trouble!

Never before had we seen the General at the main office. Now here he was in all his uniformed finery...and nearly frothing at the mouth. His butler, rather calm about the whole thing, stood at his right.

There ees a spy among my zoldiers! he shouted.

I was speechless. The General stomped over to where the idle messengers were sitting. Carefully he peered into each boy’s eyes. Suddenly his right arm shot out and he pointed accusingly at a very small messenger named Bobby.

You! he screamed. Arrest him! He’s a spy!

The butler placed a restraining arm on the messenger’s shoulder. You are under military arrest, he said crisply.

I watched, fascinated, as the General appointed our messengers members of a court-martial. Mr. Dobbins approached me. In a throaty whisper he told me: We should like to employ all of these messengers for a period of one hour. I agreed.

Meanwhile, the General addressed the messengers. Men, he said, thees ees a wery zerious zituation...

The boys listened, enraptured.

For twenty minutes the General called for security, an alert counter-espionage system, stout hearts and strong spirits. Once he became so wrapped up in what he was saying that he lapsed into a mixture of French and Spanish. When the boys exchanged glances, he caught himself and jumped back to English in the middle of a sentence. He spoke glowingly of recent victories. He took time out to award a medal or two.

Through it all, he maintained an air of injured solemnity whenever his eyes so much as grazed the prisoner. At last he turned to the accused and fastened his beady eyes upon him. Confess! he said. Thees ees your final chance!

What’d I do? asked the alleged spy.

You zee! boomed the General, He confuses nozing and denies everyzing. Thees ees zee proof of guilt!

The butler whispered something into the General’s ear. Oui, said the General. Let heem haf defense before we find heem guilty.

I was appointed defense counselor. What did you do, Bobby? I asked him.

Bobby, it seems, was a new boy. He’d heard so much office talk about the General of the Sahara that curiosity had gotten the best of him. The morning before, during an off-duty hour, he’d trailed along after the others to watch the notorious General drill his army.

I stayed on the other side of the street, he said.

Were you in uniform?

Yes, he said. He thought about it. That must have been my undoing, I guess, he said.

The trial was resumed. The General had changed his mind. No defense allowed. All was fair in war and this was treachery in the ranks.

Bobby sat stone still as the General delivered his final passionate appeal for a plea of guilty. His vast abdomen quaked each time he sucked in an air supply. The verdict was guilty, of course. The penalty?

Death by a firing squad, announced the butler.

So saying, the butler examined his watch. The hour was up. The General of the Sahara and his aide-de-camp retired from the scene, leaving the guilty man unexecuted.

A few days later a call came in for twelve boys. Bobby was among those in the office at the time.

Not me, Mr. Rivise, he said. He was thoroughly frightened. They’re liable to shoot me!

Weeks passed without a word from the General. Some of the boys used to make fun of the maneuvers but now they were all concerned.

Let’s call him, someone suggested.

Another boy offered the thought that perhaps the General had used up his money. The boys talked about the possibility of drilling for the General gratis, on their own time, just once for old time’s sake.

Another week and still no communiqué from the General. The rumor went around that he had gone over to the enemy and was now employing Postal Telegraph