The Western Union History
Western Union has had a long and distinguished history, but not without some setbacks along the way. The story of the company is a fascinating one for anyone interested in a business that has been shaped by an ever-changing technological landscape and by the vicissitudes of economics, politics, and culture. The company’s early history is told in terms of a dysfunctional telegraph industry and the intense competition over patent rights that drove it into bankruptcy. The rise of the company is also a lesson in the role of the state and its influence on private-sector companies in America’s Gilded Age. The book is divided into six chapters, each examining an aspect of the company’s evolution.
The chapter on the origins of western union focuses on Samuel Morse and other inventors who developed the first telegraph systems, as well as the ruthless battle over ownership that pitted telegraph giants like Gould and Vanderbilt against each other and ultimately put Western Union in the forefront. The second chapter looks at the impact of the Civil War on telegraphy, while the third explores how the state came to play a crucial role in regulating the industry and ensuring that telegraph networks were built in an equitable manner. Chapter four looks at how the development of the telegraph industry was a crucial step in the modernization of American democracy, while the fifth chapter explores how the company moved beyond the telegraph industry to offer other services such as money transfers and insurance.
During the next decade Western Union became a global powerhouse, acquiring rivals and expanding its networks. By the end of the 1860s the company controlled millions of miles of lines and owned two international undersea cables. In the 1870s it introduced stock tickers, which lent unprecedented sophistication to stock distribution and led to an expansion into money transfer services.
By the late 1960s, Western Union’s diversification had not yielded the robust revenue increases that had been projected and the company began to experience financial problems. Profits declined and debt rose, and in 1984 the company entered a lengthy period of chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It emerged from the process restructured under new management, and continued to grow its money transfer business.
In the 1990s, the company expanded into Mexico and Latin America, where it has continued to expand today. Its money transfer operations have grown rapidly, fueled by the rapid growth of Mexican immigration to the United States and the huge amounts of money that immigrants send home to their families. By 2015 the company was handling more than 9 million Mexican migrations annually, transferring about $10 billion in Mexico every year. This is more than double what it had been sending a few years earlier. The company has also expanded to other parts of the world, including Asia and Africa. In recent years, it has begun to operate in countries such as the Philippines and India. It also offers a range of digital products and mobile payment services.