^S[%b% 
 
 PerS? 
 
 TME STORY ^r 
 
 PULLi^AN 
 
Qass. 
 Book 
 
 Y<^'r;^ 
 
THE 
 STORY OF PULLMAN, 
 
?^1 ' 
 
 Blakely & Rogers 
 Chicago. 
 
 TMP96-007457 
 
THE Pullman World's Fair exhibit is unique. 
 It is unique in the fact that what it repre- 
 sents is in its entire development, as well as 
 its origin, distinctively and purely American. 
 It is the evolution of an idea originated by 
 an American, in a wholly new field of pro- 
 gress in which there had not been even any 
 tentative gropings in other lands than ours, 
 and by an American worked out along lines 
 of strong individual personality, until it has 
 overshadowed and revolutionized all other 
 methods everywhere in the area of its operation. 
 It is an interesting fact in connection with 
 the Pullman exhibition train that it holds 
 precisely the same position in its particular 
 field that was held by the first Pullman car 
 ever built. The first Pullman car, at the time 
 it was completed, represented the Nineteenth 
 century's highest achievement in the ma- 
 chinery of travel, just as unquestionably as 
 does the train of Pullmans exhibited at the 
 Columbian Exposition of 1893. Not only that, 
 but there has never been a time, from the com- 
 pletion of that first car to the completion of the 
 World's Fair train, when the Pullman car was 
 not the Nineteenth century's highest achieve- 
 
ment in vehicles for passenger transportation 
 During all the years from the beginning of the 
 Pullman work to the present day, it has never 
 been dislodged from the dominant position it 
 took in one leap at the very outset. Had a 
 World's Fair been held every year, from that 
 in which the old Pioneer, the first of the great 
 Pullman fleet of traveling palaces, was launch- 
 ed, to the year in which we live, the best the 
 century had done in solving the problem of 
 long journeyings by land would always have 
 been the latest car turned out from the Pull- 
 man shops. 
 
 Of the material benefits to humanity which 
 this achievement has brought, the beautiful train 
 of World's Fair cars is the expression. It 
 speaks for itself; needs no interpreter. But 
 there is more than a material side to what has 
 been accomplished. In the building up of the 
 Pullman industries, what may be termed pure 
 abstract sentiment has played a greater part 
 than is commonly known. Appreciation of 
 the value of the beautiful has not found expres- 
 sion merely in making sleeping-car interiors 
 the object-lessons in decorative art that they 
 are. That which is harmonious and beautiful 
 has been recognized as having an incitive 
 energy of its own, capable in its way of being 
 turned to account as a force in the production 
 
8 
 
 of results, just as is the force of the steam 
 engine itself. It is as a symbol of this, to a cer- 
 tain extent, that the World's Fair model of the 
 Town of Pullman has significance. But the 
 Town of Pullman means more than that. It is 
 a product, and perhaps may prove to be the 
 culminating product in its enduring benefits to 
 mankind, of the principles on which the entire 
 Pullman fabric is reared. Its growth is as 
 much the logical outcome of those principles 
 as is the palace-car train itself. 
 
 To understand this, to know something of 
 how one man has been able to create a vast 
 productive industry, which is one of the cen- 
 tury's great civilizing strides, and which, from 
 small beginnings has now reached a market 
 value of $60,000,000, it is necessary to get back 
 to the beginning of the undertaking, and to fol- 
 low briefly the outline of its development. 
 
11. 
 
 At just what time Mr. Pullman first began 
 thinking on the subject of sleeping-cars, he 
 would himself perhaps find it difficult to tell. 
 The problem had been raised by the comple- 
 tion of what then were considered long lines of 
 railroad. Baltimore, Philadelphia and New 
 York had thrown out filaments of iron for 
 considerable distances toward the West. To 
 get to the Ohio River at either Wheeling or 
 Pittsburgh, or to get to Lake Erie at Dunkirk 
 or Buffalo, involved a journey ot over 400 
 miles. A journey of 400 miles took as much 
 time as now does one of more than double that 
 distance. The physical fatigue involved was 
 greater than is now incident to a trip from the 
 Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. 
 
 With the increase of competition there had 
 come an increase in the public demands. 
 Roads began to make efforts to increase travel 
 by introducing devices to promote the trav- 
 eler's comfort, and certain clumsy attempts 
 were made to provide him a sort of bunk in 
 which he could get a little sleep at night. 
 
 Mr. Pullman was at that time a young man. 
 In a general way, the sleeping-car and its pos- 
 sibilities had floated through his mind, and 
 
he had casually discussed the matter with 
 friends. His first serious attention to it, how- 
 ever, dates from a certain night journey he 
 made about that time from Buffalo to West- 
 field. It was a sixty-mile ride, and he occupied 
 a bunk in one of the so-called sleeping-cars of 
 that epoch. During the journey he lay awake, 
 revolving in his mind plans by which the car 
 could be transformed into a dormitory, in 
 which there would be a greater degree of com- 
 fort and elegance. While it cannot be said 
 that his determination to make sleeping-car 
 construction the occupation of his life, dates 
 from that particular night's ride, it is certain 
 that he left the train at Westfield convinced 
 that he could build a better car than the one 
 he had just occupied, and dimly seeing, even 
 thus early, the possibility of there being in that 
 direction a field for his life-work. 
 
 But it was not until some time after this 
 that he entered into the subject in earnest. 
 His reflections had then convinced him that in 
 the sleeping-car lay the solution of the problem 
 of long continuous journeys, which in the near 
 future was destined to become among the most 
 important to the traveling public of any grow- 
 mg out of the rapid expansion of the American 
 system of railroads. During the years from 
 1859 to 1863, he made a series of experiments 
 
8 
 
 on the Chicago & Alton and the old Galena 
 roads. From these experiments, which in- 
 volved not only his own devices but the sug- 
 gestions of patents then existing, he had worked 
 out detailed plans which he set about putting 
 into execution on a thorough and comprehensive 
 basis. A work-shop was rented and skilled 
 mechanics employed. Mr. Pullman threw him- 
 self into the task with the ardor of a man who 
 moves from settled convictions. Although he 
 was without mechanical training himself, he 
 personally directed the work of others in all 
 the minute details of putting the ideas he had 
 originated into material form. 
 
 The result of many months of hard, loyal 
 labor was the car Pioneer. The place the 
 Pioneer at once took as the most perfect rail- 
 way vehicle the world, up to that time, had ever 
 seen, has been already mentioned. How great 
 was the gap between it and the best that had 
 gone before is indicated by the comparative 
 cost. The best sleeping-cars in use before the 
 Pioneer had cost $4,000 each. The Pioneer 
 cost $18,000. That was a tremendous leap for- 
 ward. It was a revolution in all existing 
 theories of car construction. The new car 
 was a radical departure, not only in respect 
 to weight and solidity, but also in the elabo- 
 rate and artistic nature of its interior fittings 
 

 
 and decorations. In both of these respects 
 it was adversely criticised. That massive 
 strength combined with striking beauty of 
 ornamentation and minute elaboration of every 
 device for comfort, which all the world now 
 recognize as the highest distinctive merits of 
 the Pullman cars, was the very point which 
 at the outset was most strenuously objected to 
 
 It is time that tells in the case of all great 
 progressive innovations, and in the light of 
 what time has told us who live in this last 
 decade of the century, it is instructive as well 
 as amusing to recall the grounds on which the 
 first application of the Pullman principles in 
 car building were condemned. 
 
 We know now that men will not climb in 
 between the sheets of a Pullman sleeping-car 
 bed with their boots on, and that they will not 
 regard sleeping-car carpets and upholstery in 
 the light of convenient cuspidors. We know 
 that the same instinct which makes people 
 conform in their habits to elegant surroundmgs 
 in homes, will make them proportionately 
 conform to them in public vehicles. We 
 know that the beautiful interiors of Pullman 
 cars, which were once condemned as absurd 
 extravagance, have now a commercial value, 
 which men are not only willing to pay for, but 
 have come to demand, and that they therefore 
 
10 
 
 are a profitable financial investment. We 
 know, too, that probably from no other one 
 source has there sprung so widely diffused an 
 education, so general an ambition in the direc- 
 tion of interior decorative art, the effect of 
 which is seen in thousands of American homes 
 to-day, as has come from the beautiful object- 
 lessons which these cars have carried to the 
 remotest regions of the country. 
 
 All this we know, now that it has been demon- 
 strated to us, just as well as we know that 
 the massive weight and strength of the Pull- 
 man car have saved hundreds of lives in rail- 
 way disasters, and that the Pullman standard 
 of weight, solidity, and beauty of ornamentation 
 has set the pace which has been followed in 
 the construction of the passenger cars in use 
 upon all the roads of the country. Indeed, the 
 best types of all passenger vehicles in opera- 
 tion to-day in the United States, might properly 
 be included in the Pullman World's Fair 
 exhibit of results accomplished, for the reason 
 that they are as distinctively* the outcome of 
 Pullman ideas and the public demand which 
 is the result of those ideas, as are the Pull- 
 man cars themselves. 
 
 It is not to be understood that the criticisms 
 of the Pioneer were universally adverse. On 
 the contrary, the car attracted wide attention, 
 
11 
 
 and was enthusiastically admired. Its su- 
 periority over anything ever before built was 
 too obvious to be unrecognized. The objection 
 found to it was the vital one that it would not 
 pay. The fact was that the stride forward was 
 too sudden, too great a shock to existing 
 theories for even the most progressive railway 
 men to follow at once to its real significance. 
 
 The Pullman idea in particular, that money 
 could be safely invested in an elaboration of 
 the utilitarian into the artistic and beautiful, 
 was a startling departure. The American 
 citizen, it was assumed, had a sovereign con- 
 tempt for anything, especially in the applied 
 sciences, which in the slightest degree stepped 
 over the baldest utility into the boundaries of 
 the ornamental. If you gave him the substan- 
 tial with artistic surroundings and beautiful 
 accessories, the assumption was that it was 
 reasonably certain he would expectorate on 
 the surroundings and wipe his boots on the 
 accessories. It was certain he would never 
 pay for either the one or the other. 
 
 That was practically the theory on which rail- 
 way passenger cars were constructed prior to 
 the building of the Pioneer. It was erroneous, 
 of course, as the. Pioneer and its immediate suc- 
 cessors demonstrated. Yet the crudity of public 
 taste in the United States at that time as con- 
 
12 
 
 trasted with the present day is sufficiently ap- 
 parent. There is no more striking illustration 
 of this than comes from a comparison of the 
 architecture of the decade of 1850-60 with that 
 of the decade in which we are now living. The 
 progress in artistic development made in the 
 interval by the people of the whole country 
 which this contrast reveals, is truly remark- 
 able; and it is quite within bounds to say that 
 one at least of the influences which have 
 brought about this result, is the sincere efforts 
 in that line which have marked every stage of 
 progress in the Pullman work. 
 
 In his own field Mr. Pullman was in reality 
 the pioneer in this element of progress. He 
 was a believer in the beautiful, and he believed 
 earlier than others whose dealings were with 
 the public, that the American people would 
 pay their money for it and respect it in a public 
 vehicle as well as in a private home. How 
 firmly he nailed his colors to this conviction he 
 demonstrated in the very next car he built. 
 Into the Pioneer he put more than four times 
 as much money as had ever gone into the con- 
 struction of any car it succeeded. Into the 
 Pioneer's successor he put six times as much. 
 The Pioneer cost $18,000; the car which came 
 after it cost $24,000. 
 
 It was on the Michigan Central Railway that 
 
13 
 
 the Pioneer's immediate successors were first 
 run. Mr. Joy, the President of that line when 
 the new Pullmans were put on, was one of the 
 progressive railroad men of the day, and he 
 had caught the meaning of the Pullman work 
 and had seen in it practical possibilities. But 
 even he had his doubts when the conditions 
 under which the new cars must be run were 
 presented to him. Their largely increased cost 
 necessitated an increased tariff for berths. The 
 price of a berth in the old cars was $1.50. It 
 was impracticable to sell a berth in a car that 
 had cost $24,000 for less than two dollars. The 
 increase, President Joy said, could not be 
 attempted. The additional fifty cents would 
 drive night-travel from his road to competing 
 lines. 
 
 Mr. Pullman suggested that the matter be 
 submitted to the deci sion of the traveling public. 
 He proposed that the new cars, with their 
 increased rate, be put on trains with the old 
 cars at the cheaper rate. If the traveling pub- 
 lic thought "the beauty of finish, the increased 
 comfort and the safety of the new cars worth 
 two dollars per night, there were the $24,000 
 cars; if, on the other hand, they were satisfied 
 with less attractive surroundings at a saving of 
 fifty cents, the cheaper cars were at their dis- 
 posal. It was a simple submission without 
 
14 
 
 argument of the plain facts on both sides of 
 the issue — in other words, an appHcation of the 
 good American doctrine of appeaHng to the 
 people as the court of highest resort. The 
 decision came instantly and in terms which 
 left no opening for discussion. The only 
 travelers who rode in the old cars were those 
 who were grumbling because they could not get 
 berths in the new ones. After running practi- 
 cally empty for a few weeks, the cars in which 
 the price for a berth was $1.50 were withdrawn 
 from service, and Pullmans, wherein the two- 
 dollar tariff prevailed, were substituted in their 
 places, and this for the very potent reason 
 that the public insisted upon it. Nor did the 
 results stop there. The Michigan Central Rail- 
 way, charging an extra tariff of fifty cents per 
 night as compared with other Eastern lines, 
 proved an aggressive competitor of those lines, 
 not in spite of the extra charge, but because of 
 it and of the higher order of comfort and beauty 
 it represented. 
 
 Then followed a curious reversal of the 
 usual results of competition. Instead of a level- 
 ing down to the cheaper basis on which all 
 opposition was united, there was a leveling up 
 to the standard on which the Pullman serv^ice 
 was planted and on which it stood out single- 
 handed and alone. Within comparatively a 
 
15 
 
 short period all the Michigan Central's rival 
 lines were forced by sheer pressure from the 
 traveling- public to withdraw the inferior and 
 cheaper cars and meet the superior accommo- 
 dations and the necessarily higher tariff. 
 
 In other words, the inspiration of that key- 
 note of vigorous ambition for excellence of the 
 product itself, irrespective of immediate finan- 
 cial returns, which was struck with such em- 
 phasis in the building of the Pioneer, and which 
 ever since has rung through all the Pullman 
 work, was felt in the railroad world of the Unit- 
 ed States at that early date just as it is even 
 more dominantly felt at the present time. At 
 one bound it put the American railway passen- 
 ger service in the leadership of all nations in 
 that particular branch of progress, and has 
 held it there ever since as an object-lesson in 
 the illustration of a broad and far-reaching 
 principle. 
 
III. 
 
 Mr. Pullman had the good fortune to bring 
 to the task he had undertaken an ambition free 
 from the fever of rapid wealth-getting. He 
 had within him, to a marked degree, the crea- 
 tive instinct, the instinct which finds its highest 
 gratification in the thing itself that is created; 
 which puts that always first, leaving the finan- 
 cial results to follow in their proper place, as 
 incidents and corollaries of the main proposi- 
 tion. He never at any stage of his progress 
 entertained the idea of turning the results he 
 accomplished into a speculation. A voyage to 
 the illusive shores which border the oft-naviga- 
 ted sea of watered stock never entered into 
 his calculations. His entire energies were con- 
 centrated upon the work itself, and upon its 
 constant improvement. Indeed that which 
 from the first has kept the integrity of the Pull- 
 man prestige, may be described as a chronic 
 dissatisfaction with that which has been. The 
 persistent effort to do something better than 
 has ever been done before, which sent the first 
 Pullman car leagues ahead of anything that 
 had preceded it, has never for a moment been 
 relaxed. In all the early contracts with rail- 
 
17 
 
 road companies, there was provided a margin 
 to devote to efforts toward this constant bet- 
 terment. 
 
 It is this spirit which has made the Pullman 
 work throughout its entire development a 
 progressive series of revelations, many of them 
 almost as striking as was the revelation in 
 travel possibilities which the Pioneer itself 
 represented. Gradually in this way the travel- 
 ing-hotel* idea was expanded. It was Mr. Pull- 
 man who taught the world that you can take a 
 luxurious meal at the rate of fifty miles an 
 hour, just as it was he who has made it possible 
 for a man to do a day's work in one city, and 
 rise refreshed and ready for another day's 
 work in another city nearly a thousand miles 
 away. It is an interesting speculation as to 
 how much this, by multiplying many times the 
 working capacity of the individual, has added 
 to the total industrial energy of the country. 
 
 The hotel feature on the Pullman train was 
 itself developed and improved upon until it 
 reached its culmination in that exclusively 
 Pullman device, the vestibule, which makes a 
 solid yet perfectly sinuous train with practic- 
 ally absolute immunity from danger to pass- 
 engers in even the most violent collision, and 
 with the striking result of an entire train under 
 one roof, in which the traveler may pass from 
 
18 
 
 his dining-room to his sitting-room, or to his 
 sleeping-room, as in his own home. 
 
 How startling was the revelation made by 
 this bold and original departure, is sufficiently 
 shown by the almost universal adoption of it, or 
 of substitutes which were close imitations 
 of external appearances only, containing 
 such features as might be used in technical 
 avoidance of the Pullman patents, but lack- 
 ing the essence of the invention whk:h gives 
 It its greatest value— the frictional contact 
 for preventing oscillation, and the greater 
 strength in resisting the shocks of collision. 
 
 With the possible exception of the invention 
 of the air-brake, which puts the control of the 
 train so completely into the hands of the 
 engineer, there has been no event of railway 
 development so important in securing safety to 
 the traveling public, as the invention of the 
 Pullman vestibule. In its latest application 
 as illustrated by the World's Fair train, it is 
 extended to the locomotive tender itself, thus 
 taking into its protecting arms not only the 
 passengers, but the employes in the baggage" 
 and mail cars as well; and this extension is so 
 constructed as to act as a wind-deflector, thus 
 diminishing atmospheric resistance to the 
 speed of trains. 
 
 The vestibule feature has also been enlarged 
 
Id 
 
 in the Pullman exhibition train to the full width 
 of the cars, by extending the sides of the cars 
 and enclosing the ends, together with an origi- 
 nal and ingenious arrangement of vestibule 
 entrance doors, and trap doors over the steps. 
 This materially adds to the comfort of passen- 
 gers by doing away with the "wind pockets" 
 which are formed by the- ordinary projecting 
 hoods over open platforms; and, furthermore, 
 provides a comfortable and protected place for 
 brakemen or other train employes whose duties 
 may require them to ride occasionally upon 
 platforms. 
 
 It is barely six years since the vestibule was 
 invented, yet it has become so firmly fixed a 
 feature of railway appliances that it has in 
 reality given a new word to the English 
 language. The term "vestibuled train" has 
 passed into accepted use wherever English is 
 spok=^n. 
 
 But the making of the best cars that had 
 been known was but a preliminary step toward 
 building up the Pullman service such as we 
 know it to-day, Wc now start out from a 
 city in the United States, Canada or Mexico, 
 and we travel to all accessible parts of the 
 North American continent, and everywhere, 
 over hundreds of different railroads, we find 
 the one harmonious, perfectly administered 
 
20 
 
 system of transportation. You may go aboard 
 a Pullman car in New York or Chicago, and 
 you may go aboard one in the wilds of Arizona, 
 and in either case you find the same beautiful 
 surroundings, the same cleanliness and order, 
 the same comfort and attentive service. It is 
 like one vast ubiquitous hotel, this Pullman 
 service, which you may enter anywhere and in 
 which you may go anywhere, taking your slip- 
 pered ease in your inn as you go. 
 
 What of labor and tact and diplomatic gift it 
 has required to build up all this, is compara- 
 tively little appreciated. We now and then 
 marvel at the beauty and comfort of the par- 
 ticular shuttle which we occupy in its swift 
 fhght, but the great complicated mechanism of 
 travel which spreads all over the continent, 
 and of which our own particular shuttle is 
 only a detail doing its appointed part — all this 
 we accept as a matter of course. If we think 
 of it at all, it is with the vague general impres- 
 sion that it is a natural evolution, a problem 
 which somehow worked its own way out. 
 
 To demonstrate that the objections to the 
 first Pullman car were groundless, was a much 
 easier task than to convince railroad men that 
 it was only through an administration extra- 
 neous to any one road, or group of roads, that 
 the best results to the railroads and to the 
 
21 
 
 public from the operation of those cars were 
 to be obtained. The cars themselves carried 
 their own argument, told their own story. 
 The operating system came only gradually 
 into evidence. Railroad men, with their minds 
 concentrated on the development and admin- 
 istration of their own lines, had not given 
 sufficient attention to the matter of long con- 
 tinuous runs to enable them quite to grasp the 
 subject. The building up of such a system, 
 they said, was impracticable. The interests 
 involved were too conflicting, it was argued, 
 ever to be harmonized. At the very best such 
 a system would hang upon the slender thread 
 of contracts, and contracts would expire. 
 Besides this, if the business should prove profit- 
 able, each railroad would insist upon operating 
 its own sleeping-car and parlor-car services. 
 
 As a matter of fact, all the difficulties in the 
 way of carrying out the project which were 
 predicted for it, as well as many more which 
 were not predicted, actually did present them- 
 selves and had to be overcome. There were 
 two forces which constantly pushed the Pull- 
 man plan toward success. The plan, to begin 
 with, was the logically correct one. In addition 
 to that, the public was being steadily educated 
 up to demand a standard of excellence in car 
 equipment which just one concern produced, 
 
22 
 
 and that was the PiiUman Company. The 
 constant evolution by that company of striking 
 material improvements and new beauties of 
 design and ornamentation, kept a wide gap 
 between it and the entire field ot imitators 
 which had sprung up in opposition. It was a 
 contest to be decided on its merits alone, and 
 the deciding power was fast slipping from the 
 hands of the railroads to the hands of the 
 public. The public had demonstrated not only 
 that it would pay for the best, but that it would 
 demand the best, and vv^ith competition at the 
 point which it had now reached, the public 
 demands were not to be slighted. 
 
 Then came the completion of the great Pa- 
 cific line across the continent. Here was the 
 problem of long continuous journeys presented 
 in its most striking form. Almost simultane- 
 ously with the completion of the Pacific road, 
 there was put upon the rails one of the most 
 superb trams ever turned out of the Pullman 
 shops. Its journey to California and its recep- 
 tion there, were in the nature of a progress 
 and an ovation. From that time forth the 
 great population of the Pacific coast knew no 
 train for long-dSstance travel save a Pullman 
 train, and would hear of no other. When peo- 
 ple from California reached Chicago on their 
 way eastward, the road over which Pullman 
 
23 
 
 cars ran got their patronage, and roads over 
 which other cars were operated did not. News- 
 papers and magazines were awakened anew to 
 studies of the Pullman cars and the Pullman 
 system, and scores of printed pages were filled 
 with the marvels of a journey to the Pacific 
 ocean, which was nothing more than a six days' 
 sojourn in a luxurious hotel, past the windows 
 of which there constantly flowed a great pano-. 
 ramie belt of the American continent thous- 
 ands of miles in length, and as wide as the eye 
 could reach. Illustrated magazine articles 
 which appeared, telling the story of a trip to 
 California, had as many pictures of Pullman 
 interiors as they had of the big trees or the 
 Yosemite Valley. 
 
 The effect of all this was far-reaching. The 
 great Pennsylvania line abandoned its own ser- 
 vice and adopted the Pullman. The companies 
 operating the sleeping-car and parlor-car ser- 
 vices on the New York Central and Lake Shore 
 systems made application for the privilege of 
 using the Pullman plans, and were permitted to 
 do so upon payment of stipulated royalties, 
 which continued for many years, and until 
 the expiration of the Pullman patents. 
 Other opposition lines were absorbed, and 
 the Pullman system and the Pullman cars 
 established at last as we now know them, when 
 
24 
 
 the very name Pullman has become a synony- 
 mous and interchangeable term for the sleeping- 
 car and the sleeping-car service. Its fleet has 
 grown from one car to 2,500; its working force 
 from half a dozen men to 15,000. Its cars are 
 operated over nearly a hundred roads, and over 
 a mileage equivalent to five times the circum- 
 ference of the globe. From the first year of its 
 existence it has paid its quarterly dividends 
 with the regularity of a government loan, and 
 its $30,000,000 of capital has a market value of 
 $60,000,000, while its stock is so largely sought 
 as a rock-ribbed security for the investment of 
 the funds of educational and charitable insti- 
 tutions, of women and of trust estates, that out 
 of its 3,246 stockholders, 1,800 are of this class 
 and 1,494 of these 1,800 are women. 
 
IV. 
 
 The story of Pullman naturally divides itself 
 into three parts — the building of the car, the 
 building up of the operating system, and the 
 building of the town. Each of these stages is 
 the natural, logical sequence of the other; 
 through them all there runs the same under- 
 lying thought, the same thread of ideas. 
 
 The Pullman Palace Car Company suffered, 
 as did all other industries, during the financial 
 depression immediately following 1873, but 
 the reaction which came on the heels of that 
 gloomy era, on the resumption, in 1879, of 
 specie payments, developed a rapid expansion 
 of the Company's business. To meet this ex- 
 pansion and to extend the business still further 
 along the line of general car-building and of 
 other collateral industries, it became necessary 
 to enlarge the plant. Its shops in St. Louis, 
 Detroit, Elmira and Wilmington were unable 
 to keep pace with the growing volume of de- 
 mand for the Company's productions. New 
 shops must be built on a larger and more com- 
 prehensive scale than any that had gone before. 
 
 Chicago, with its central position with ref- 
 erence to the railway system of the continent, 
 was obviously the natural site; but there were 
 weighty objections, touching both finance and 
 
26 
 
 the matter of labor, to be urged against build- 
 ing within the limits of the city proper. 
 
 To meet these objections and to have at the 
 same time the advantage of Chicago's geo- 
 graphical position and great focus of railway 
 connections, Mr. Pullman fixed upon the 
 vicinity of Lake Calumet, fourteen miles away. 
 Here he purchased 3,500 acres, which have 
 since increased in value proportionately with 
 Chicago's remarkable development. The en- 
 tire tract is now embraced within the boundary 
 limits of the great city. Already the advance 
 waves of Chicago's swelling tide of popula- 
 tion are lapping its edges and encircling its 
 borders. Even now, the Pullman district is a 
 center around which there is a connected 
 girdle of thickly populated communities. At 
 a very early date the beautiful town of Pull- 
 man, with its shaded avenues, its glimpses 
 of bright water, its harmonious groupings 
 of tasteful homes and churches and public 
 buildings, the whole colored here and there 
 with the green of lawns and the bloom of 
 clustered banks of flowers — at a very early 
 date all this will be as a bright and radiant 
 little island in the midst of the great tumultu- 
 ous sea of Chicago's population; a restful oasis 
 in the wearying brick -and-mortar waste of an 
 enormous city. 
 
27 
 
 And then, too, at its very door will come, not 
 loni^ hence, the bulk of Chicag-o's manufactur- 
 ing commerce. It is only a matter of a 
 short time when Lake Calumet, along which 
 the Pullman land stretches for miles, will be- 
 come an inside harbor. The thirty million bricks 
 per year which the Pullman company is now 
 manufacturing are made of clay taken from 
 the bottom of the lake, and in the meantime 
 the Government is dredging out the river which 
 connects Calumet with the thousands of miles 
 of waterway of the great chain of lakes which 
 lead to the ocean and to the world beyond 
 seas. 
 
 What this land, which a dozen years ago was 
 bleak, sodden prairie, will represent when this 
 comes to pass, and great ships are moored tc 
 its miles of water front, is an interesting item 
 in speculations upon the marvelous probabili- 
 ties of Chicago's future growth. The day is 
 not only coming, but is near at hand, when the 
 $30,000,000 present capital stock of the Pull- 
 man Company will be covered, and more than 
 covered, by the value of the 3,500 acres of land 
 on which is built the town of Pullman. 
 
 Of the details of how Pullman was con- 
 structed ; of how the dreary, water-soaked 
 prairie was raised to high and dry land; of how 
 the entire town was planned and blocked out 
 
28 
 
 in all its symmetrical unity of purpose by Mr. 
 Pullman himself; of how the architect and 
 landscape engineer, working together, carried 
 out the details of the plan to their harmonious 
 and beautiful conclusion — all this has been 
 told and retold in the scores of studies of Pull- 
 man which have appeared in print on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 In the same publications there have appeared 
 minute descriptions of the system by which the 
 sewage of the town is collected and pumped 
 far away to the Pullman produce farm; of how 
 every house and flat, even to the cheapest in 
 rent, is equipped with the modern appli- 
 ances of water, gas, and internal sanita- 
 tion; of how grounds for athletic sports were 
 made; all the merchandising of the town 
 concentrated under the glass roof of a beautiful 
 arcade building; a market house erected that 
 is the ornament of one of the handsomest 
 squares in the town; churches built; abeautiful 
 school-house put up, in which there attend 
 nearly a thousand scholars; a library founded 
 of over 8,000 volumes; a savings bank establish- 
 ed, paying a liberal rate of interest and con- 
 forming in its regulations to the greatest 
 convenience of the wage-earners; a theatre 
 provided that is an artistic gem. 
 
 All this has been detailed so much at length 
 
that there need be to it only a passing refer- 
 ence. With these details in mind, imagine a 
 perfectly equipped town of 12,000 inhabitants, 
 built out from one central thought to a beautiful 
 and harmonious whole. A town that is bor- 
 dered with bright beds of flowers and green 
 velvety stretches of lawn; that is shaded with 
 trees and dotted with parks and pretty water 
 vistas, and glimpses here and there of artistic 
 sweeps of landscape gardening; a town where 
 the homes, even to the most modest, are bright 
 and wholesome and filled with pure air and 
 light; a town, in a word, where all that is ugly, 
 and discordant, and demoralizing, is eliminated, 
 and all that inspires to self-respect, to thrift 
 and to cleanliness of person and of thought is 
 generously provided. Imagine all this, and try 
 to picture the empty, sodden morass out of 
 which this beautiful vision was reared, and you 
 will then have some idea of the splendid work, 
 in its physical aspects at least, which the far- 
 reaching plan of Mr. Pullman has wrought. 
 
V. 
 
 But it is the social aspects of Pullman which 
 have been most discussed, and in the discussion 
 of which there has been, in many cases, 
 the most misapprehension. Indeed it is quite 
 surprising at times to follow the well-meant 
 reasoning from premises which do not exist 
 to conclusions which are not so. A fre- 
 quent source of error seems to lie in a failure 
 to grasp the fundamental fact that it is upon 
 solid quid pro gtco business principles that the 
 whole fabric is reared; that this is the very 
 element upon which rests its self-sustaining 
 strength, and from which its best benefits to 
 humanity come; that it is from this fact that 
 the forces which work to the general good are 
 made self-renewing and self-perpetuating. 
 Without a full appreciation of this pivotal prop- 
 osition any attempt to know the meaning of 
 Pullman, still more to discuss its meaning, is 
 worse than idle. Such discussions usually lead 
 off to such irrelevant fields of philanthropy as 
 are occupied by the hospitals, the retreats 
 for the aged, the maimed and the helpless. 
 To criticise Pullman, as indeed it has been 
 criticised, for its failure to meet the conditions 
 of this field, is as absurd as it would be to criti- 
 
31 
 
 else it for failure to promote the spread of the 
 gospel among barbarous peoples. 
 
 On the business theory that the better the 
 man, the more valuable he is to himself, just in 
 that proportion is he better and more valuable 
 to his employer ; on this simple business 
 theory an attempt has been made to surround 
 the workingmen in Pullman with such in- 
 fluences as would most tend to bring out the 
 highest and best there was in them. So far from 
 starting with the theory that these workingmen 
 are weaklings to whom things are to be given, 
 and who must be held up and supported lest 
 they fall, the starting point is in exactly the 
 opposite direction. The assumption is that 
 the Pullman men are the best type of Ameri- 
 can workmen, who stand solidly and firmly on 
 their own feet, and will work out valuable and 
 well-rounded lives just in proportion to their 
 opportunities. By the investment of a large 
 capital, it is found possible not only to give 
 them better conditions than they could get 
 elsewhere, but to give those conditions at 
 prices wholly within their power to pay; and 
 yet sufficient to return a moderate interest on 
 the investment, and so sustain it and make it 
 enduring. That is the whole Pullman proposi- 
 tion in a nutshell. With philantjiropy of the 
 abstract sentimental sort it has nothing to do. 
 
32 
 
 With the philanthropy which helps men to 
 help themselves, without either undermining 
 their self-respect, or in the remotest degree 
 touching their independence or absolute 
 personal liberty — with philanthropy of this 
 type it has everything to do. 
 
 To measure the actual effect of the condi- 
 tions which exist at Pullman it is only neces- 
 sary to look at any representative assemblage 
 of the Pullman workmen. During the eleven 
 years that the town has been in existence, 
 the Pullman workingman has developed into 
 a distinct type — distinct in appearance, in 
 tidiness of dress, in fact in all the external in- 
 dications of self-respect. Not only as compared 
 with the majority of men in similar walks 
 of life do they show in their clearer com- 
 plexions and brighter eves the sanitary effects 
 of the cleanliness and the abundance of pure 
 air and sunlight in which they live, but there 
 is in their bearing and personal demeanor 
 what seems to be a distinct reflection of the 
 general atmosphere of order and artistic taste 
 which permeates the entire town. It is within 
 the mark to say that a representative gather- 
 ing of Pullman workmen would be quite 
 forty per cent, better in evidences of thrift 
 and refinement, and in all the outward in- 
 dications of a wholesome habit of life, than 
 
33 
 
 would a representative gathering of any cor- 
 responding group of workingmen which could 
 be assembled elsewhere in the country. Nor 
 do the benefits that have been brought about 
 stop at mere external indications. The Pull- 
 man workman has a distinct rank pf his own, 
 which is recognized by employers everywhere 
 in the United States, and which makes him 
 universally in demand and sought after. There 
 is, as a matter of fact, hardly a great pro- 
 ducing center in the country, in the fields 
 reached by the great Pullman industries, to 
 which Pullman men have not been brought by 
 special inducements of promotion or wages. 
 
 These things speak for themselves, just as 
 do the six hundred thousand dollars which 
 stand to the credit of these wage-earners in 
 the Pullman Savings Bank, and just as does 
 the bright border of homes w^hich fringe the 
 outer edge of the Pullman tract, and which 
 represent the invested savings of nearly a 
 thousand Pullman workmen. 
 
 The story of the town of Pullman is but a 
 repetition on a large scale of the story of the 
 building of the first Pullman car. The same 
 organic solidity of structure, the same faith 
 in the intrinsic commercial value of the 
 beautiful, which entered into the one entered 
 into the other. Indeed this same logical unity 
 
34 
 
 of purpose and allegiance to fundamental con- 
 victions, which is manifest through all the 
 great fabric which Mr. Pullman has reared 
 during many years of labor, is the dominant, 
 the most impressive feature of his achieve- 
 ment. At every step, moreover, the convic- 
 tions upon which he has acted and the faiths 
 to which he has held have been vindicated, 
 and more than that, they have either actually 
 wrought, or have had in them the germs of, 
 radical benefits. The PuUnian car solved 
 the problem of long continuous railway jour- 
 neys, and the town of Pullman, along new 
 lines, gives a hope of bettering the rela- 
 tions of capital and labor. The issue of this 
 last is a question of the future, but it is at least 
 a legitimate subject of speculation, whether 
 what the car wrought in one direction, with all 
 its attendant and lasting benefits to humanity, 
 may not in some sort, on a broader scale, and 
 with benefits to humanity even more far-reach- 
 ing and enduring, be repeated in the great 
 field where the town of Pullman now stands 
 as the advance guard of a new departure and 
 a new idea. 
 
 In brief, the Pullman enterprise is a vast 
 object-lesson. It has demonstrated man's 
 capacity to improve and to appreciate improve- 
 
35 
 
 ments. It has shown that success may result 
 from corporate action which is alike free from 
 default, foreclosure or wreckage of any sort. 
 It has illustrated the helpful combination of 
 capital and labor, without strife or stultifica- 
 tion, upon lines of mutual recognition. 
 
ADDENDA. 
 
39 
 
 STATISTICAL DATA. 
 
 Total amount of lumber used annually by 
 the Pullman Company, 51,234,300 feet. 
 
 Total quantity of iron used annually, 85,000 
 tons. 
 
 Total number of employes, 15,341. 
 
 Total amount of wages earned daily by 
 Pullman employes, $29,346.05. 
 
 There are operated by the PuUman"^ Com- 
 pany 2,512 sleeping, parlor and dining cars. 
 Of these 650 are buffet cars, and 58 are dining 
 cars. 
 
 Pullman cars carried 5,279,320 passengers in 
 the year ending July 31st, 1892. 
 
 About 4,500,000 meals are served annually 
 in dining and buffet cars. 
 
 There are washed in Pullman laundries 
 33,383,160 pieces annually. 
 
 The number of miles run by Pullman cars 
 annually is 191,255,656, 
 
 Mileage of railroads under contract, 125,111. 
 
 The longest regular, unbroken run of any 
 cars in the Pullman service is from Boston to 
 Los Angeles, 4,322 miles. 
 
 The total producing capacity of construction 
 shops per annum is 12,520 freight cars, 313 
 sleeping cars, 626 passenger and 939 street cars.. 
 
40 
 
 Coupled tog-ether these cars would make a 
 train over loo miles in length. 
 
 If all the lumber used annually in Pullrnan 
 shops alone were delivered on one train, the 
 train would consist of 5,000 cars, and would be 
 35 miles long'. 
 
 The Pullman savings bank has 2,000 deposi- 
 tors, and their deposits amount to $632,000, an 
 average per person of $316. 
 
 The average wages per day for workmen of 
 all classes in Pullman shops, including boys 
 and women, is $2.26. 
 
 The Town of Pullman has eight miles of 
 paved streets and 12,000 inhabitants, of whom 
 6,324 are operatives. 
 
 Of the 2,246 Pullman employes who live on 
 the borders of the town, about 1,000 own their 
 own homes. 
 
 All the sewage of the Town of Pullman is 
 collected in a 300,000 gallon reservoir under 
 the water tower, and pumped to the Pullman 
 produce farm three miles away.