^{HISTORY |} _{PAST AS PROLOGUE}

How The Namesake Of Pullman Tried To Improve Worker’s Lives, But Failed

Pullman strikers outside Arcade Building.jpg — *Pullman strikers face off against the Illinois National Guard, 1894. Wikipedia*

In the late 1800s, as income inequality grew rapidly during the “Gilded Age,” some industrialists attempted to help their workers by creating towns for them, such as George Pullman’s town of Pullman, IL (south of Chicago). While these had modern conveniences, they were also sites of strict control and supervision, where management intruded into worker’s personal lives. And, they could prove how fundamentally out-of-touch corporate leaders were with the needs of their workers, such as when the Pullman railroad car company cut wages in 1884, but failed to cut rent in the town of Pullman, IL. The consequences were disastrous–34 people died and George Pullman’s reputation as being concerned for his workers never recovered.

RAMELLA: You may have heard that billionaire philanthropist Mackenzie Scott donated millions to charitable organizations. Or, that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helped to fight hunger and poverty. There are many wealthy people trying to help others and improve the world, but their efforts aren’t always successful, especially when they don’t take into account the needs of those they’re wishing to help. WSU History professor Karen Phoenix gives an example from the Gilded Age in today’s Past as Prologue, an occasional series from NWPB and WSU’s History Department.

PHOENIX: Household incomes have only grown modestly in the last century. Household wealth has not returned to pre-recession levels, and the gap between the wealthy and poor continues to widen. That’s according to the Pew Research Center. While some ultra-rich are philanthropic, and try to improve the lives of people, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Take the industrialists of the late 1800s. They also saw income inequality and attempted improve living conditions for their workers, but not always so successfully.

Take George Pullman, the inventor of the railroad sleeping car. Fun fact, Pullman, Washington is named after him, though it’s not really clear why. Pullman was concerned about the living conditions for his workers so when he built his factory south of Chicago in the 1880s, he also built a town next to it for his workers. The housing was spacious (by the standards of the day) and included the latest technology – indoor plumbing and sewers! There were stores, a church, and a fancy hotel. But the town was tightly controlled by Pullman who did random inspections and fired people for drinking on their days off. But hey, indoor plumbing, right?

Then, came a nation-wide economic downturn. In 1893, Pullman reduced wages by 30%, but kept rent the same. Workers went on strike. Pullman refused to negotiate with the strikers, and left town. President Grover Cleveland sent the National Guard, who fired upon the strikers. Thirty-four people were killed, and the strike failed. Eight years later, the Supreme Court of Illinois forced Pullman to sell the town and it was annexed by Chicago.

The strike—and the violence that occurred—became George Pullman’s legacy, In fact, when he died, his family buried him in a lead-lined coffin under several yards of concrete because they were concerned about workers desecrating his body.

There were many other bloody strikes during the Gilded Age, which impacted whole industries, like railroad or garment workers, and bloody strikes in mining camps and other factory towns. Communism and anarchism also grew during this time.

While there are a lot of differences between our situation today and the Gilded Age, there are some important lessons for us, most especially that when large groups of people feel that they don’t have an opportunity to rise economically or feel that there are fundamental failures in economic or governmental systems, they may try to overturn those systems in some way. We’ve seen echoes of this (although not nearly to the degree or scale) in the Occupy Wall Street movement, among many others today.

RAMELLA: That’s WSU History Professor Karen Phoenix, who is a historian of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in the United States. Prof. Phoenix’s essay is part of Past as Prologue, a partnership between NWPB and Washington State University’s History Department. Hear this and other Past as Prologue essays at NWPB.org.

About the Author:

Photo of Karen Phoenix Dr. Phoenix specializes in the U.S. in the World during the Progressive Era and interwar period. She has a B.A. and M.A. from Brandeis University, and completed her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in May 2010. Her doctoral work used the U.S. Young Women’s Christian Association as a case study to explore U.S. attempts at cultural imperialism in India, the Philippines, Argentina, and Nigeria. She is currently adding post-WWI Poland for the book manuscript. Her article “A Social Gospel for India” was published in a special issue on Transnational Women’s and Gender History in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, in Spring 2014. She has presented papers at national conferences such as the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.