Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/676

 The Making of a Telegraph Boy

��Training Messengers

��to Become Mana2:ers

���A tailoring department is rnaintained, for the boys must look neat enough to enter the finest

hotels in the city. Each boy is measured and provided with two suits for which he pays a

small weekly rental. Three tailors keep the uniforms clean and in repair

��IT is a big undertaking to produce useful and capable men from boys whose opportunities for education have been limited and who are practical- ly without training. Yet that is the task assumed by one of our great telegraph companies. Its messenger boys are to be- come not merely bearers of dispatches, but men of char- acter.

Fred Geigle, manager of these boys — and there are several hun- dred of them — is the man who has charge of the work. He em- ploys and dis- charges, repri- mands or pun- ishes, as the oc- casion arises. But above all he sets out to win a boy's confidence. Mr. Geigle him- self commenced as a messenger boy and worked his way up step

���Between calls there is an opportunity to become expert with the typewriter and to learn how to use telegraph instruments. Every boy with any ability has an opportunity to work up to a responsible office position

648

��by step to the manager's chair. Surely he knows just the conditions under which the boys work. On the other hand, the boys feel instinctively that he is their friend. To him they go confidently for assistance in any difficulty.

From the time the boy hands in his application every precaution is taken conscientiously by the company to safeguard him. Neatness and courtesy are val- uable business assets. The rules presented to a new boy stipu- late that his uni- form must at all times be in per- fect condition, must be clean, in repair, buttons all on, and coat kept buttoned. The company provides as many changes of uni- forms as are needed to keep the boys up to

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