The Town of Pullman: Success or Failure? The invention of the railroad was probably the most important occurrence in the nineteenth century. The United States became a unified front and interstate travel become safe, cheap and efficient. Industries related to the railroad began to prosper, fueling much of the American economy. Entrepreneurs quickly began to take advantage of this boom and thus “American Big Business” was born. George Pullman was one of the many prominent tycoons of this “Railroad Era”. Through the use of his talented ingenuity and high organizational skills, he acquired a vast fortune and immense power. George Pullman is most notably credited for the creation of the Pullman Sleeping Car. Its invention enhanced the pleasure of railroad travel by making it more comfortable, clean and exciting. As George Pullman’s invention gained quick public approval, his company began to expand at an enormous rate. This presented a great deal of problems to Pullman. “The company wanted to increase efficiency and economy in servicing and providing cars by spreading facilities. He [Pullman] wanted several hundred acres adjacent to railroad and water transportation.” In 1868, Pullman decided on the Calumet region in southern Chicago. Pullman selected the Calumet region because it offered “cheap land, low taxes, and excellent transportation.” Few people knew his second and main intention was to build a model town adjacent to the new factory, which he hoped would improve his business enterprise. Pullman was deeply troubled by the social problems of the mid- nineteenth century. He believed that they were the root of the labor unrest his company was experiencing. “The period showed a dramatic intensification in the numbers of the urban poor, as people with little capital and few useful skills came to the cities in search for employment.” Living conditions were terrible and congestion, dirt, and poor sanitation were held responsible for diseases. Crime, prostitution and violence were blamed on poor housing while alcoholism became synonymous with the slum. Many attributed the poverty and the poor living conditions of the working class to “the lack of such virtues such as frugality, industriousness and temperateness.” It was believed that the general solution to the problem of the workingman and his family was to elevate their character. Through Pullman’s experience ...
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...n social planning and happiness for the individual. A town is recognized for the individuals who live in it, not the business it seems to incorporate. Pullman had a disillusioned, egotistical regard for his workers. When asked about his intentions on building the model town, he commented: “Capital will not invest in sentiment, nor for sentimental considerations for the laboring class. But let it once be proved that enterprises of this kind are safe and profitable and we shall see great manufacturing corporations developing similar enterprises and thus a new era will be introduced in the history of labor.” Pullman never seemed to grasp how a workingman’s happiness must be fulfilled on a much deeper level than his mere physical settings. The leisurely enjoyment of oneself as well as an overall establishment of identity was the key. When Pullman planned his model town, it was a dream which he envisioned for himself. A dream which would increase his wealth, improve his business and make him renowned. In his heart, he might have never intentionally wanted to socially deprive his work force; it just so happened that the planning of the town did not take this into proper consideration.
The strike affected much of the country, and it had great influence on public opinion on the rights of workers. It showed how the roles of management and the roles of government handled this situation. The Pullman Strike of 1894 and its aftermath had a huge effect on the course of the labor movement in the United States. The use of federal troops and the labor injunction sent a message to U.S. workers that would not change until the new deal of the 1930s. George Pullman was no longer look at as the great enlightened employer who took care of his workers, but a greedy intolerant man. After the strike he was worried that people would rob him so when he was buried he had it lined in concrete so no one could. The Pullman strike ultimately was unsuccessful at the time. Workers were sent to jail and many couldn’t find any jobs after. Although, it was successful in several ways. The federal government was involved for the first time in history because of a strike, and because they all took a stand for their human rights it impacted the future and how workers are treated
To urban middle-class Americans of the late 19th century, nothing symbolized the progress of the American civilization quite as much as the railroad. Not only had the great surge in railroad construction after the Civil War helped to create a modern market economy, but the iron horse itself seemed to embody the energy, force, and technology of the new order. In fact, the fanning out of railroads from urban centers was an integral part of the modernizing process, tying the natural and human resources of rural areas to the industrializing core.
In Henry George’s article, What the Railroad Will Bring Us, it discusses the main social, political, and economic transformations that the trans-continental railroad would bring to the state of California. More importantly, he discusses not only the benefits, but also discusses the major drawbacks with the arrival of the railroad. Henry George stated the railroad would be the “greatest work of the age” (297). With a railroad stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, multiple benefits would be brought to the state of California. First, the railroad will not only create a new means of transportation across the United States, it additionally would also become “one of the greatest material prosperity” of its time (298). This means more people, more houses,
James B. Weaver illustrates the true damage of monopolies on the public in “A Call to Action” (Document 4). Weaver, a two-time candidate for president of the United States, addresses the meticulous tactics which trusts and monopolies use to increase their profit at the expense of the public and asserts that their main weapons are, ”threats, intimidation, bribery, fraud, wreck, and pillage.” Arguments such as Weaver’s, suggest and end to the end of the laissez-faire capitalism that monopolies are sustained upon. Laissez-faire capitalism is essentially a system where the government takes no position in the affairs of businesses and does not interfere, no matter what harm is being done. This ideology dominated the business world of the century and allowed for vast unemployment, low wages, and impoverishment. Soon, laborers also begin to express their dismay with the way that such businesses are run and the treatment of workers in the railroad industry. An instance of this being the Pullman Strike of 1894. In 1894, laborers went on a nationwide strike against the Pullman Company; they issued a statement regarding their strike in June (Document 6). Workers are repulsed by Pullman’s exertion of power over several institutions and how his greed affects his competitors, who must reduce their wages to keep up with his businesses. This incident inspires many to take
The Baltimore and Ohio railroad has a very interesting background on why it started. Many years after the American Revolution a large number of people began to migrate west over the Cumberland Narrows, which is two mountains with a narrow gap in-between located in western Maryland. The Cumberland Narrows was also an early traveling path to the boat building centers located in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. It was also the same route George Washington took for Braddock’s Expedition, an attempt to capture the French Fort Duquesne which failed. The route had become famous as the Cumberland Road which was one of the five passes through the rough Appalachians. Now that multitudes of people were moving to the West, it was a chance to make profit. While water transport and travel was the hottest technology of the day, some of Baltimore’s business community wanted something new and different that would also generate wealth. The intelligent comm...
Taylor, George Rogers, and Irene D. Neu. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1956. Print.
George M. Pullman is best remembered for his contributions to the railroad industry through the invention of his Pullman Cars. The cars sold well and the railroad industry flourished with this new invention. Although the success attached to his name, not many people know the real truth behind this robber baron. His greed for money took him to extreme measures as his workers were seriously mistreated and put under strict
... were left unprotected and abandoned by the unions. How is it that the unions can demand labors lose months of wages, be subject to labor blacklisting and ultimately sacrifice their lives without any protections for the strikers and still claim success? They can’t. If anything, the Pinkertons who dispersed the crowd did more to help the worker, by reopening the Homestead, than the union had done. Thus, the unions were an utter failure in furthering the position of the laborer, as the laborer was better off before hand. Before unions the laborer had their life, as many died in failed strikes, and their dignity, as society at least held an intrinsic value in their lives. However, unions succeeded in decimating any chance of advancement by tarnishing the reputations of all laborers, leading to a direct decline in the socio-economic position of the blue-collar worker.
Railroads were America’s first big business and contributed a great deal towards advancing industrialization. Beginning in the early 1870's, railroad construction in the United States expanded substantially. Before the year 1871, approximately fourty-five thousand miles of track had been laid. Up until the 1900's another one-hundred and seventy thousand miles were added to the nation's growing railroad system. This growth came about due to the erection of transcontinental railroads. Railroads supplied cities and towns with food, fuel, materials, and access to markets. The railroad system made way for an economic prosperity. The railroad system helped to build the physical growth of cities and towns. It even became another means of communication. Most importantly, it helped to produce a second
the early American economy was described by littler, nearby markets, revolved around huge urban communities. The boundless extension of the railways in the late 1800s changed this, entwining the nation into one national business sector, in which merchandise could be transported available to be purchased the nation over. The railways likewise gave a gigantic force to financial development since they themselves gave such an enormous business sector to products steel and timber, for instance. In the late nineteenth century the railways spoke to the primary "enormous business." The railroad business was the biggest single boss of work in the U.S., and institutionalized America financially, socially, and socially.
Because of an economic depression in 1893, the Pullman employee’s wages were cut, and quite a few of them lost their jobs.3 Most were getting paid too little to live on. One lady that was interviewed said “I received [one dollar] day and paid [seventeen dollars seventy one cents] per month rent for one of the companies houses”.1 She needed either higher pay or lower rent in order to have the means to pay for housing. Multiple cases of this were reported when the strike went to court. Another example was when J. B. Pierson, another employee of Pullman was questioned as to the price of the Pullman houses he was quoted as saying that “the Pullman houses averaged from one-third to one-half higher than similar houses in the surrounding suburbs”.1 Pullman...
Rebecca Harding Davis wrote “Life in the Iron Mills” in the mid-nineteenth century in part to raise awareness about working conditions in industrial mills. With the goal of presenting the reality of the mills’ environment and the lives of the mill workers, Davis employs vivid and concrete descriptions of the mills, the workers’ homes, and the workers themselves. Yet her story’s realism is not objective; Davis has a reformer’s agenda, and her word-pictures are colored accordingly. One theme that receives a particularly negative shading in the story is big business and the money associated with it. Davis uses this negative portrayal of money to emphasize the damage that the single-minded pursuit of wealth works upon the humanity of those who desire it.
The railroad played a major role in forging the history of many countries including the United States of America. The railroad began to bring people to places that before then where only accessed by weeks of dangerous travel over harsh and deadly terrain. The industrial revolution had ushered in a completely new era. The new era was one of mass production, supply and demand, and new requirements of industry. The growth of industry had created new demands for transit, trade, and more robust supply lines. The railroad boom across the U.S. had spread and proceeded to grow the economy quickly therefore, many people began using the rail roads just as quickly. The rail market continued to grow and by the 1860’s all major cities within the United States were connected by rail.
Throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the United States economy changed dramatically as the country transformed from a rural agricultural nation to an urban industrial gian, becoming the leading manufacturing country in the world. The vast expansion of the railroads in the late 1800s’ changed the early American economy by tying the country together into one national market. The railroads provided tremendous economic growth because it provided a massive market for transporting goods such as steel, lumber, and oil. Although the first railroads were extremely successful, the attempt to finance new railroads originally failed. Perhaps the greatest physical feat late 19th century America was the creation of the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific Company, starting in San Francisco, and the new competitor, Union Pacific, starting in Omaha. The two companies slaved away crossing mountains, digging tunnels, and laying track the entire way. Both railroads met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, and drove one last golden spike into the completed railway. Of course the expansion of railroads wasn’t the only change being made. Another change in the economy was immigration.
“Chicago,” by Carl Sandburg wrote a poem that the great city of Chicago that embraces everything that the city has to offer, from hog butchers to railroads, from construction sites to prostitutes. The poem paints a portrait of a vibrant, cunning, wicked, joyful, laughing place. The speaker begins the poem by telling the reader about all of the negative aspects of the city of Chicago but ends in the exact opposite stance. The poet feels that Chicago will face the future ready to fight and win. Sandburg can show how Chicago holds many of the same qualities as an immature young man: both are vibrant and active, but both also have many flaws. Sandburg also celebrates the many types of workers that helped the city grow, from the hog butchers that feed the populace to the people that build the