George Pullman

George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831 – October 19, 1897) was an American engineer and industrialist. He designed and manufactured the Pullman sleeping car and founded a company town in Chicago for the workers who manufactured it. This ultimately led to the Pullman Strike due to the high rent prices charged for company housing and low wages paid by the Pullman Company. His Pullman Company also hired black men to staff the Pullman cars, known as Pullman porters, who provided elite service and were compensated only in tips.

Struggling to maintain profitability during an 1894 downturn in manufacturing demand, he halved wages and required workers to spend long hours at the plant, but did not lower prices of rents and goods in his company town. He gained presidential support by Grover Cleveland for the use of federal military troops which left 30 strikers dead in the violent suppression of workers there to end the Pullman Strike of 1894. A national commission was appointed to investigate the strike, which included assessment of operations of the company town. In 1898, the Supreme Court of Illinois ordered the Pullman Company to divest itself of the town, which became a neighborhood of the city of Chicago.

Pullman was born in 1831 in Brocton, New York, the son of Emily Caroline (Minton) and carpenter James Lewis Pullman (known as Lewis). His family moved to Albion, New York, along the Erie Canal in 1845, so his father could help widen the canal. His father had invented a machine using jackscrews that could move buildings or other structures out of the way and onto new foundations and had patented it in 1841. By that time, packet boats carried people on day excursions along the canal, plus travellers and freight craft would be towed across the state along the busy canal.

Pullman attended local schools and helped his father, learning other skills that contributed to his later success. In 1853, Lewis died, and George took over his business at the age of 22.

Pullman was a clerk for a country merchant. Pullman took over the family business. In 1856, Pullman won a contract with the State of New York to move 20 buildings out of the way of the widening canal.

During the 1850s, the streets in Chicago often resembled a swamp, as the city had been built to too low an elevation on the shore of Lake Michigan. The city undertook to re-engineer its sewage system to clear the surface of the unwanted and often pathogenic standing water. This project necessitated the raising of the street level an average of over a metre.

As the streets rose above the front doors of the adjacent buildings, the buildings needed to be demolished and rebuilt or else physically raised so as to adjust to the newly raised level of the street. In 1859 Pullman and his Albion-based business partner Charles Moore moved to Chicago to raise one such building, the Matteson House, a large brick hotel. Pullman and Moore went on to raise several more Chicago buildings before becoming part of a consortium that raised the entire ninety-eight-metre-long block of four and five storey brick and stone buildings on the north side of Lake Street between Clark and La Salle Streets, a feat depicted by Edward Mendel in a large lithograph. In 1861 Pullman contracted with the Ely and Smith partnership to raise the six storey high Tremont House. Pullman contracted to raise these and many other large buildings in Chicago, and his firm raised the buildings on average six feet without causing them any damage and often times while the buildings were still fully operational, with people entering and exiting them and conducting business within.

Pullman developed a railroad sleeping car, the Pullman sleeper or "palace car". These were designed after the packet boats that travelled the Erie Canal of his youth in Albion. The first one was finished in 1864.

After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Pullman arranged to have his body carried from Washington, D.C., to Springfield on a sleeper, for which he gained national attention, as hundreds of thousands of people lined the route in homage. Lincoln's body was carried on the presidential train car that Lincoln himself had commissioned that year. Pullman had cars in the train, notably for the President's surviving family. Orders for his new car began to pour into his company. The sleeping cars proved successful although each cost more than five times the price of a regular railway car. They were marketed as "luxury for the middle class".

In 1880, Pullman bought 4,000 acres (16 km2), near Lake Calumet some 14 mi (23 km) south of Chicago, on the Illinois Central Railroad for $800,000.

Pullman hired Solon Spencer Beman to design his new plant there. Trying to solve the issue of labor unrest and poverty, he also built a company town adjacent to his factory; it featured housing, shopping areas, churches, theaters, parks, hotel and library for his factory employees. The 1300 original structures were entirely designed by Solon Spencer Beman. The centerpiece of the complex was the Administration Building and a man-made lake. The Hotel Florence, named for Pullman's daughter, was built nearby.

Pullman believed that the country air and fine facilities, without agitators, saloons and city vice districts, would result in a happy, loyal workforce. The model planned community became a leading attraction for visitors who attended the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It attracted nationwide attention. The national press praised Pullman for his benevolence and vision. According to mortality statistics, it was one of the most healthful places in the world.

The industrialist still expected the town to make money as an enterprise. By 1892, the community, profitable in its own right, was valued at over $5 million. Pullman ruled the town like a feudal baron. Pullman prohibited independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings or open discussion. His inspectors regularly entered homes to inspect for cleanliness and could terminate workers' leases on ten days' notice. The church stood empty since no approved denomination would pay rent, and no other congregation was allowed. He prohibited private charitable organizations. In 1885 Richard Ely wrote in Harper's Weekly that the power exercised by Otto Von Bismarck (known as the unifier of modern Germany), was "utterly insignificant when compared with the ruling authority of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Pullman".

We are born in a Pullman house, fed from the Pullman shops, taught in the Pullman school, catechized in the Pullman Church, and when we die we shall go to the Pullman Hell.

On October 19, 1897, Pullman died of a heart attack in Chicago, Illinois. He was 66 years old. Pullman was buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. George and his wife Hattie had four children: Florence, Harriett, George Jr. and Walter Sanger Pullman.

Fearing that some of his former employees or other labor supporters might try to dig up his body, his family arranged for his remains to be placed in a lead-lined mahogany coffin, which was then sealed inside a block of concrete. At the cemetery, a large pit had been dug at the family plot. At its base and walls were 18 inches of reinforced concrete. The coffin was lowered, and covered with asphalt and tar paper. More concrete was poured on top, followed by a layer of steel rails bolted together at right angles, and another layer of concrete. The entire burial process took two days. His monument, featuring a Corinthian column flanked by curved stone benches, was designed by Solon Spencer Beman, the architect of the company town of Pullman.

Pullman was initiated into Freemasonry in Renovation Lodge No. 97 in Albion, New York. He was also member of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and received the honorary 33rd degree within that body.

Pullman was identified with various public enterprises, among them the Metropolitan elevated railway system of New York. It was constructed and opened to the public by a corporation of which he was president.

The Pullman Company merged in 1930 with Standard Steel Car Company to become Pullman-Standard, which built its last car for Amtrak in 1982. After delivery the Pullman-Standard plant stayed in limbo, and eventually shut down. In 1987, its remaining assets were absorbed by Bombardier.

In Pullman's will, he bequeathed $1.2 million to establish the Pullman Free School of Manual Training for the children of employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company and the residents of the neighboring Roseland community. In 1950, the George M. Pullman Educational Foundation succeeded the Pullman Free School of Manual Training, also known as Pullman Tech, after it closed its doors in 1949. Located in Chicago, Illinois, the George M. Pullman Educational Foundation supports college-bound high school seniors with merit-based, need-based scholarships to attend the college of their choice. Since its founding, the Foundation has awarded approximately $30 million to over 13,000 outstanding Cook County students.

The city of Pullman, Washington, is named in his honor. The town expected him to influence the Northern Pacific Railroad to build railroads to Pullman since he was the head of the Oregon Improvement Company that owned 60% of the Railroad. The initial route went into Spokane but between 1885 and 1889 railroads were built to Pullman Washington.

The Pullman Memorial Universalist Church (1894) in Albion, New York, was funded and built by Pullman in memory of his parents.

The SS George M. Pullman, a Liberty Ship built in World War II, was named for him.