Pullman Company

During a severe economic downturn, the 1894 Pullman Strike by company workers proved to be a transformative moment in American labor history.

At the company's peak in the early 20th century, its cars accommodated 26 million people a year, and it in effect operated "the largest hotel in the world".

A labor union associated with the company, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, founded and organized by A. Philip Randolph, was one of the most powerful African-American political entities of the 20th century.

Pullman established his company[6] in 1862 and built luxury sleeping cars which featured carpeting, draperies, upholstered chairs, libraries, card tables and an unparalleled level of customer service.

The company ceased production after the Amtrak Superliner cars in 1982 and its remaining designs were purchased in 1987 when it was absorbed by Bombardier.

[12] On January 1, 1900, after buying numerous associated and competing companies, it was reorganized as The Pullman Co.,[12] characterized by its trademark phrase, "Travel and Sleep in Safety and Comfort."

[15] In 1943, Pullman Standard established a shipbuilding division and entered wartime small ship design and construction.

Pullman built the boats in 40-ton blocks which were assembled in a fabrication shop on 111th Street and moved to the yard on gondola cars.

Pullman ranked 56th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.

Beginning in 1975, Pullman started delivery of the massive 754 75 ft (23 m) stainless steel subway cars to the New York City Transit Authority.

Pullman also built subway cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which assigned them to the Red Line.

(The most visible result on many railroads, including Union Pacific, was that the Pullman name was removed from the letterboard of all Pullman-owned cars.)

In January 1982, Wheelabrator-Frye merged with M. W. Kellogg Company, a builder of large, cast-in-place smokestacks, silos and chimneys.

Washington Group International is the successor to the Morrison Knudsen civil engineering and contracting corporation, and is also the owner of Montana Rail Link.

[23] By 1996, Pullman Co., with its Clevite subsidiary, was almost solely a supplier of automotive elastomer (rubber) parts, and in July 1996 the company was sold to Tenneco.

Part of its legacy included more powerful unions and a tendency for employers to consider the broader well-being of their employees.

Pullman's objective in building a company town was to attract a superior type of employee and further elevate these individuals by excluding baneful influences.

[25] The company built Pullman, Illinois on 4,000 acres (1,600 ha), 14 mi (23 km) south of Chicago, contracting Solon Spencer Beman for design and Nathan F. Barrett for landscaping.

A foreman from the Pullman Company's Detroit shop, Lee Benson, moved his wife, child, and sister into the town.

[28] When completed, the town included a library, theater, hotel, church, market, sewage farm, park, and many residential buildings.

[29] In the residential section, 150 acres (61 ha) were dedicated to tenements, flats and single-family homes with rents from $0.50 to $0.75 per month ($16 to $24 in 2023 adjusted for inflation).

[30] The residences featured modern conveniences such as gas, running water, indoor sewage plumbing and regular garbage removal.

Though the article offered praise for creating an elevated environment for its workers, it criticized the all-encompassing influence of the company ultimately concluding that "Pullman is un-American" and "benevolent, well-wishing feudalism.

One of these was the Pullman Shops in Richmond, California, which was linked to the mainline tracks of both the Southern Pacific and the Santa Fe, servicing their passenger equipment from throughout the Western US.

This led the company to hire black men (many, if not all, of whom were newly freed chattel slaves) almost exclusively for the porter positions.

Being a Pullman Porter was seen as safe, steady work and allowed tens of thousands of African-Americans access to middle-class life.

In 1925, after decades of discrimination and mistreatment by the passengers and the Pullman company itself, the porters organized and became the first African-American labor union.

At its height the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had a membership of over 18,000 passenger railway workers across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

Nixon, whose duties as a porter often saw him out of town for various lengths of time, had to enlist the help of a young, energetic black minister new to Montgomery to run the boycott in his absence: the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Pullman's streetcar building period lasted from 1891[4][5] until 1951.

[48][49] That city's Pullman trolley buses have far outlasted any others, and as of 2015 about a dozen were still in regular service there,[50] four from the 1952 batch and the others from a larger group built in 1946–48 but partially rebuilt in 1987–88.