George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831 – October 19, 1897) was an American engineer and business leader. He created and built the Pullman sleeping car and established a town in Chicago where workers who made the cars lived and worked. This situation eventually caused the Pullman Strike because the company charged high rent costs for housing and paid low wages to workers. His company also employed Black men to work on the Pullman cars, known as Pullman porters, who offered high-quality service but were only paid in tips.

Facing financial problems during an 1894 drop in manufacturing demand, Pullman cut wages in half and made workers spend long hours at the plant, but he did not lower the prices of rent or goods in the company town. He received support from President Grover Cleveland to use federal military troops to end the Pullman Strike of 1894, which resulted in the deaths of 30 workers during violent actions. A group of people was formed to investigate the strike and examine how the company town operated. In 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered the Pullman Company to stop controlling the town, which became part of the city of Chicago.

Early life

George Pullman was born in 1831 in Brocton, New York, to Emily Caroline (Minton) and James Lewis Pullman, a carpenter known as Lewis. In 1845, his family moved to Albion, New York, near the Erie Canal, so his father could work on expanding the canal. James Lewis Pullman invented a machine using jack screws to move buildings and other structures for canal construction. He patented this invention in 1841. At that time, packet boats transported people on short trips along the canal. Travelers and freight boats were also towed across the state along the busy canal.

George attended local schools and helped his father, gaining skills that supported his future achievements. In 1853, Lewis died, and George took over his father’s business at the age of 22.

Career

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

During the 1850s, the streets in Chicago often looked like swamps because the city was built too low near Lake Michigan. To fix this, the city redesigned its sewage system to remove standing water, which could spread disease. This project required raising the street level by more than one meter on average.

As the streets rose, buildings near the streets had to be either torn down and rebuilt or physically lifted to match the new street level. In 1859, Pullman and his business partner, Charles Moore, moved to Chicago to raise the Matteson House, a large brick hotel. Later, they raised several other buildings in Chicago before joining a group that raised a 98-meter-long block of four- and five-story brick and stone buildings on the north side of Lake Street between Clark and La Salle Streets. This work was shown in a large lithograph by Edward Mendel. In 1861, Pullman made an agreement with the Ely and Smith partnership to raise the six-story Tremont House. His company raised many large buildings in Chicago, lifting them an average of six feet without causing damage. Often, the buildings remained fully operational during the process, with people entering and exiting them and conducting business inside.

Pullman developed a railroad sleeping car, called the Pullman sleeper or "palace car." These cars were inspired by the packet boats he saw traveling the Erie Canal in his hometown of Albion. The first one was completed in 1864.

After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Pullman arranged for his body to be transported from Washington, D.C., to Springfield on a sleeper car. This event gained national attention, as hundreds of thousands of people lined the route to pay tribute. Lincoln’s body was carried on the Presidential train car he had commissioned earlier that year. Pullman’s cars were also used for the President’s surviving family. Orders for his sleeping cars increased rapidly, even though each car cost more than five times the price of a regular railway car. They were marketed as "luxury for the middle class."

In 1867, Pullman introduced his first "hotel on wheels," the President, a sleeper car with an attached kitchen and dining car. The food quality was compared to the best restaurants of the time, and the service was excellent. A year later, in 1868, he launched the Delmonico, the world’s first sleeping car focused on fine cuisine. The Delmonico menu was prepared by chefs from New York’s famous Delmonico’s Restaurant.

Both the President and the Delmonico, along with later Pullman sleeping cars, offered high-quality service. The company hired African-American freedmen as Pullman porters. Many of these men had previously been enslaved in the South. Their roles included being porters, waiters, valets, and entertainers. Because they were paid well and had the chance to travel, the position became respected in Black communities.

Pullman believed that for his sleeper cars to succeed, he needed to provide many services to travelers, such as collecting tickets, selling berths, sending messages, getting sandwiches, repairing torn clothing, and converting day coaches into sleepers. He thought former enslaved people from the South had the right training to serve the businessmen who used his "Palace Cars." Pullman became the largest single employer of African Americans in post-Civil War America.

In 1869, Pullman bought the Detroit Car and Manufacturing Company. In 1870, he acquired the patents and business of his eastern competitor, the Central Transportation Company. In 1871, Pullman, along with Andrew Carnegie and others, helped save the financially struggling Union Pacific Railroad. They joined its board of directors. By 1875, the Pullman firm owned $100,000 worth of patents, operated 700 cars, and had several hundred thousand dollars in the bank.

On February 25, 1881, Pullman posted a newspaper notice stating he had formed a group to buy controlling stock in the Northern Pacific Railroad. The group, called the Oregon Improvement Company, was led by Pullman and included William J. Endicott, Jr. Henry Villard, who later became president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, was not a member due to legal reasons. Villard convinced Frederic Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, to sell his shares to the group. Billings sold 50,000 shares he had bought for $1.50 each for $50 each. Billings was unwell with Bright’s disease and decided to retire. Villard became the new president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Soon after, the towns of Pullman and Endicott in Whitman County, Washington State, were named after the two key members of the Oregon Improvement Company. The goal was likely to encourage the Northern Pacific Railroad to build a line to Whitman County.

In 1887, Pullman designed and introduced "vestibuled trains," with cars connected by covered gangways instead of open platforms. These vestibules were first used on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s main lines. In 1890, the French social scientist Paul de Rousiers visited Chicago and described Pullman’s manufacturing complex as "everything done in order and with precision. One feels that some brain of superior intelligence, backed by a long technical experience, has thought out every possible detail."

Pullman company town

In 1880, Pullman purchased 4,000 acres (about 16 square kilometers) near Lake Calumet, about 14 miles (23 kilometers) south of Chicago, on the Illinois Central Railroad for $800,000. He hired Solon Spencer Beman to design a new factory there. To address labor unrest and poverty, he also built a company town next to his factory. The town included homes, shopping areas, churches, theaters, parks, a hotel, and a library for factory workers. All 1,300 original buildings were designed by Beman. The center of the town was the Administration Building and a man-made lake. A hotel named the Hotel Florence, after Pullman’s daughter, was built nearby.

Pullman believed that the fresh air and good facilities, without places like saloons or areas with vice, would create a happy and loyal workforce. The planned community became a major attraction during the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. It received national attention, and newspapers praised Pullman for his kindness and vision. Health records showed it was one of the healthiest places in the world.

Pullman still wanted the town to make money. By 1892, the town was worth over $5 million. He controlled the town like a powerful leader. He banned independent newspapers, public speeches, town meetings, or open discussions. Inspectors checked homes for cleanliness and could end workers’ leases with just 10 days’ notice. No approved church could pay rent, and no other groups were allowed. He also stopped private charity groups. In 1885, Richard Ely wrote in Harper’s Weekly that the power of Otto von Bismarck, who united modern Germany, was “utterly insignificant compared to the authority of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Pullman.”

The Pullman community is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In the 1930s, the Hotel Florence, named for Pullman’s daughter, became one of the city’s most popular brothels.

Marktown, Indiana, a planned worker community developed by Clayton Mark, was built nearby.

In 1894, when manufacturing demand dropped, Pullman reduced jobs, wages, and increased working hours to cut costs and keep profits. He did not lower rents or prices in the company town. Workers eventually went on strike. When violence occurred, he gained support from President Grover Cleveland to send U.S. troops. Cleveland sent troops, who forcefully ended the strike, causing many injuries, despite the objections of Illinois Governor John Altgeld.

In the winter of 1893–94, during a depression, Pullman cut wages by 30%. This was common among wealthy industrialists, but he kept rents the same because he had promised investors a 6% return on their investments in the town. A worker might earn $9.07 in two weeks, with $9 taken for rent, leaving only 7 cents for food. One worker later said, “I have seen men with families of eight or nine children crying because they got only three or four cents after paying their rent.” Another described conditions as “slavery worse than that of Negroes in the South.”

On May 12, 1894, the workers went on strike.

The American Railway Union was led by Eugene Victor Debs, a pacifist and socialist who later founded the Socialist Party of America and ran for president five times. Under Debs’ leadership, railroad workers across the country blocked rail traffic to the Pacific, starting what became known as the “Debs Rebellion.”

Debs gave Pullman five days to respond to union demands, but Pullman refused to negotiate. A fellow industrialist said, “The damned idiot ought to arbitrate, arbitrate, and arbitrate! …A man who won’t meet his own men halfway is a God-damn fool!” Instead, Pullman locked his home and business and left town.

On June 26, all Pullman cars were removed from trains. When union members were fired, entire rail lines shut down, and Chicago was isolated. One result was a blockade of federal mail. Debs allowed isolated mail cars into the city, but rail owners mixed mail cars into all trains and then called on the federal government when mail failed to arrive.

Debs could not calm workers’ frustrations, and violence broke out between rioters and federal troops sent to protect the mail. On July 8, soldiers began shooting strikers. This marked the end of the strike. By the end of the month, 34 people were killed, strikers were scattered, troops left, courts ruled in favor of railway owners, and Debs was jailed for contempt of court.

Pullman’s reputation suffered from the strike. A presidential commission later found his “paternalism” partly to blame and called his company town “un-American.” The report criticized Pullman for refusing to negotiate and for the hardships he caused workers. It noted that while the town’s beauty impressed visitors, it had little value for workers who struggled to afford basic needs. The state of Illinois sued, and in 1898, the Illinois Supreme Court forced the Pullman Company to sell its ownership of the town. The town was annexed to Chicago.

Death and burial

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

Worried that some of his former employees or labor supporters might try to take his body, his family placed his remains in a special coffin made of lead and wood. This coffin was then sealed inside a block of concrete. At the cemetery, a large pit was dug at the family plot. The pit’s base and walls were covered with 18 inches of strong concrete. The coffin was lowered into the pit and covered with layers of asphalt and tar paper. More concrete was poured on top, followed by a layer of steel rails fastened together in a grid pattern, and another layer of concrete. The entire burial process took two days. His monument, which includes a tall column with curved stone seats around it, was designed by Solon Spencer Beman, the architect of the company town of Pullman.

Freemasonry

Pullman began his membership in Freemasonry at Renovation Lodge No. 97 in Albion, New York. He was also part of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and earned the 33rd degree in that group.

Public projects

Pullman was associated with several public projects, including the Metropolitan elevated railway system in New York. This system was built and opened by a company where he served as president.

In 1930, the Pullman Company merged with the Standard Steel Car Company to form Pullman-Standard. This new company produced its final train car for Amtrak in 1982. After delivering this car, the Pullman-Standard factory remained unused and later closed. In 1987, the company’s remaining resources were taken over by Bombardier.

Legacy

In his will, Pullman left $1.2 million to create the Pullman Free School of Manual Training for the children of workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company and residents of the nearby Roseland community. In 1950, the George M. Pullman Educational Foundation took over the school, which was called Pullman Tech, after it closed in 1949. Located in Chicago, Illinois, the George M. Pullman Educational Foundation gives scholarships to high school seniors who plan to go to college. These scholarships are based on both academic achievement and financial need. Since it was founded, the Foundation has given about $30 million to more than 13,000 students in Cook County.

The city of Pullman, Washington, was named after him. The town hoped he would convince the Northern Pacific Railroad to build tracks to Pullman because he led the Oregon Improvement Company, which owned 60% of the railroad. The first railroad route went to Spokane, but between 1885 and 1889, tracks were built to connect to Pullman, Washington.

The Pullman Memorial Universalist Church (1894) in Albion, New York, was built by Pullman to honor his parents.