An American engineer and industrialist who founded the Pullman Palace Car Company and designed its railroad sleeping car, marketed as luxury for the middle class and staffed by porters who became a respected professional class in their own communities. His legacy is dual: the sleeping car transformed long distance rail travel, but in 1894, when demand fell, he cut factory wages by thirty percent while holding rents unchanged in his company town near Chicago, triggering the Pullman Strike; federal troops suppressed it with several deaths, a presidential commission called the company town un-American, and Illinois courts later forced Pullman to divest ownership of it. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
FAQs
How did a strike at one company town become a nationwide rail shutdown?
Rail workers across the country refused to handle Pullman cars, and the federal government sent troops when the mail was blocked.
Pullman's workers struck on May 12, 1894, after a 30 percent wage cut with no cut in company town rents. Sympathetic railroad workers, under the leadership of Eugene Debs, then refused to handle trains carrying Pullman cars, and on June 26 all Pullman cars were cut from trains. When union members were fired, entire rail lines shut down and Chicago was besieged. Because the stoppage blocked the federal mail, rail owners called in the federal government, and troops were sent in. Violence followed, and by the end of July the strikers were dispersed, the courts had sided with the railway owners and Debs was jailed for contempt of court.
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Source Wikipedia: George Pullman
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Source Wikipedia: George PullmanLead sentence 1tier 2Quote, Lead sentence 1
George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831 – October 19, 1897) was an American engineer and industrialist.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: George Pullman
Wikipedia- Career and Pullman Strike sections
Lead section (full name)
George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831
- Operates: Pullman Palace Car Company
In Group: Railway Inventors and Industrialists, Lead sentence
George Mortimer Pullman (March 3, 1831, October 19, 1897) was an American engineer and industrialist.
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