work horses

Cover photo: "I'm a whole show" Isaac Boyet, 12, messenger and owner of Club Messenger Service in Waco, Texas, delivering messages in the Red Light neighborhood. Lewis Wickes Hine, November 1913. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03910)

Quim Turon

Now, home order delivery people. Before, bike messengers. Now, pizza, sushi or hamburger. Before, a letter, a contract, a newspaper or medicines. Now, the fight against cars, buses, pedestrian zones. Before, mechanical precariousness, inclement weather, insecurity. Now, obscure tax formulas and indefinite working conditions.

But what is there and what has been behind an almost romantic image of young people on bicycles, working outdoors, touring the city? What do bicycle delivery businesses hide so that they really are a business?

Messenger Boys, Indianapolis Western Union. Lewis Wickes Hine, August 1908
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03203)

Permanent geolocation, unusual hours, algorithms, profiles in need of good ratings, cars, smoke, theft... For the business to work, the platforms need a specific profile of delivery people: one who is willing to accept any conditions in order to be able to work.

The modern platforms created by successful entrepreneurs have not, more often than not, had too many qualms about hiding the working conditions of couriers and denying them part of their labor rights, imposing particular rules on them, as if traditional labor rights were not with them, but only served for traditional business models.

ADT Messengers, Indianapolis Lewis Wickes Hine, August 1908
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03227)

From the horse with wheels of the Count of Sivrac, the celerifer (Paris, 1790), to this day, the bicycle has stood out for being an economical, healthy, ecological and sustainable means of transport. According to the 2022 Bicycle Barometer (www.redbici.org), 57% of the inhabitants of the Spanish State frequently use bicycles for their daily transportation, and 75% of Spanish households have a bicycle. Nearly 20 million people in Spain use it regularly, multiplying by three in the last ten years, and the number of people who travel by bicycle daily to go to work or school is also growing significantly.

Thus, its use is not exclusively recreational or sporting, and not only in terms of health, but its use is increasingly involved for ecological, mobility or economic reasons.

Sivrac's celerifer quickly became obsolete for technological reasons: first Karl Drais von Sauerbronn (1813) and later Kirkpatrick MacMillan (1839) evolved the invention, exploring the difference between propelling the contraption alternately between the right and left foot or being able to add the two impulses. Finally, in 1846, Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow patented the use of pedals as the driving mechanism of the machine, thus being considered the inventor of the bicycle.

It is not, however, our objective to make an evolutionary chronology of the bicycle. For the moment, we only want to focus on the fact that the initially called horse with wheels was quickly considered work horse. From its initial use as a means of transportation, it went, long before being adopted for recreational, sporting or competitive use, to being considered ideal for bicycle transporters and messengers. And thus it became a powerful engine of social change, both for its ability to be inclusive (an economically affordable work tool) and for its contribution to environmental sustainability.

It is since the appearance of the bicycle, in the second half of the 19th century, that there have been delivery men, postmen and bicycle messengers. In 1870 we found them on the Paris Stock Exchange, and in 1890, in the United States, the Western Union Telegraph Company used them in their communication networks. The bicycle is the work tool of young people, or rather, children, who carry out postman duties and deliver newspapers or medicines. In 1904, the National Child Labor Committee was created, a private organization created with the mission of promoting "the rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and young people with respect to work." » at a time when one in six children between five and ten years old had a paid work contract in the United States. And four years later, in 1908, the NCLC hired a renowned sociologist and photographer, Lewis Hine, in order to document the working conditions of children, including the work of bicycle messengers.

Boy messenger working for the Mackay Telegraph Company. Waco, Texas. Lewis Wickes Hine, September 1913
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03870)

Lewis Wickes Hine, born in 1874 in Wisconsin, will seek to document and at the same time denounce an American society that was in a moment of great progress as a nation, but that required a critical look and commitment to social rights.

Commissioned by the NCLC, Lewis Hine documents the conditions of child labor in factories, plantations and mines, traveling more than 80,000 kilometers across North America over 10 years. His reports, mainly in New York and large cities in the US, show a great capacity for observation and reflect the need to raise awareness about problems such as immigration, homelessness or labor exploitation of children.

Hine encountered an unimaginable reality: children who began working at less than ten years old, who pedaled all day and slept on the street or under a bridge, who delivered their jobs in the most dangerous slums, and who received These are miniscule salaries, often cut by unscrupulous employers. Children of 5 or 6 years old who worked up to 18 or 20 hours a day. In each photograph, Hine attaches a brief sentence explaining the personal situation of each of those children.

Curtin Hines. Western Union Messenger. Houston Texas. Lewis Wickes Hine, October 1913
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03892)

The reports served as an argumentative document for Lewis Hine to pressure the American Congress and to get the Keatings-Owen Act passed in 1916, which established age restrictions and work shifts. According to this law, no producer, manufacturer or merchant could ship products made by minors under the age of fourteen, nor could they be allowed to work more than eight hours in a day, more than six days a week, or after seven in the morning. afternoon, or before six in the morning. However, the law was declared unconstitutional two years later and, consequently, repealed.

Lewis Hine's photographs had become an important instrument of social justice. Later, between 1930 and 1932, Hine carried out the assignment that would bring him greater recognition: documenting the construction of the Empire State Building. His photograph of the workers having breakfast sitting on a beam is iconic, an example of what Lewis Hine's documentary work was: approaching the workers, speaking through their mouths, making them aware that each one of them was part of a great project and the capacity that human beings have to carry out great actions.

Hine's report for the NCLC, with more than 5,000 photographs, is available for consultation on the NCLC website. Library of Congress from the United States.

Leo Day. Telegraph Messenger Postcard. Tampa, Florida. Lewis Wickes Hine, March 1911
(Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03558)

Bicycle messengers became very popular especially in large cities around the world with important financial districts. Bicycle trips are less subject to traffic jams and parking limitations, and are more time-efficient for small document deliveries. However, the digital era presented them with a strong drawback: the Internet and technological innovation have made the bicycle courier business obsolete. Paradoxically, the same technology has transformed it towards home delivery of food, driven by the rise of delivery apps, as well as the increase in electric bicycles.

Despite this, and as in their beginnings, today's bicycle delivery drivers also suffer labor exploitation, dangerous traffic, theft and unregulated parallel businesses. A job that is insufficiently remunerated in relation to the risk and physical effort it requires.

Western Union Messengers Group. Norfolk, Virginia. Lewis Wickes Hine, June 1911 (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection 03731)

Quicksilver (1986), a film starring Kevin Bacon, which tells the adventures of a stockbroker turned bicycle messenger who travels around New York dodging the dangers of traffic and the city itself, made a certain aesthetic of messengers fashionable: the shoulder bags, fixed gear bicycles and, also, the skills or imprudence of urban cycling.

A few years later, in 1992, two messengers from Berlin, Achim Beier and Stefan Klessman, mobilized to gather bicycle messengers from all over the world, and launch the Cycle Messenger World Championships. The first edition, in 1993, brought together about 500 messengers in Berlin.

Every year, couriers and cycling enthusiasts meet at the CMWC to show their skills in different tests that simulate the daily tasks of a courier: trips to collect and deliver packages, transporting bulky objects on the bicycle, sprints, balances... In 2024 , the XXX Cycle Messenger World Championships take place in Zürich at the end of July.