Pullman Partners

When No. 9, the first Pullman car, left Bloomington, Ill., for Chicago on the evening of Sept. 1, 1859, it carried four passengers. They slept in wooden bunks, were warmed by a wood-burning stove. A brakeman attended to the duties which have since devolved upon the porter. Last year Pullman Co. operated 9,248 luxuriously equipped Pullmans, carried 33,923,920 passengers who were waited upon by 12,000 porters and maids. From its traveling dormitories, Pullman profited to the extent of more than $10,000,000.

In addition to its carrier service (in which it has a virtual monopoly) Pullman also engages in the manufacture and sale of passenger and freight cars. Last week it arranged to strengthen its dominant position in this field by absorbing Standard Steel Car Co. and its affiliated Osgood-Bradley Car Co. From this merger Pullman would diversify its production to include street railway cars, steel forgings, grey iron castings, as well as increase its railroad car production.

But the Pullman-Standard combination was no instance of a powerful, far-reaching giant swallowing up a poor and struggling competitor. Mighty is Pullman, and on its directorate the house of Morgan is well represented. But strong also is Standard Steel, and the house of Mellon is behind its activities. The importance of the Standard-Mellon interest in the consolidation was shown by the fact that J. Frank Drake, President of Standard Steel, will become chairman of Pullman, Inc., the holding company for all the Pullman enterprises, and that Richard K. Mellon will become a Pullman director. In addition to railway and street cars, and a general line of iron and steel products, Standard Steel once manufactured an automobile, the Standard Eight, discontinued in 1923. Osgood-Bradley, best known for its street car equipment, last year delivered an aluminum street car to the Pittsburgh Railway Co.

The Pullman Company was incorporated in 1867 by George Mortimer Pullman, and proved almost an instantaneous success despite the pessimistic opinion of railroad men who thought that the public would never pay the extra charge for Pullman's extra comfort. It was Pullman who substituted folding berths for lumber camp bunks, who introduced shock-absorbing springs, carpeted floors, uniformed attendants. Soon Pullman's Palace Cars had been adopted by the Michigan Central, the Great Western, the New York Central. Although many railroads attempted to install their own sleeping car service, Pullman Palaces, with constantly improved and patented features, were so superior that the roads finally gave up their attempt at competition and came into the Pullman system.

By 1892 Pullman Co. was the largest railroad manufacturing company in the world. It had 14,000 employes, most of whom lived in Mr. Pullman's model city-- Pullman, Ill. In 1894 came the famed Pullman strike, featured by the late Eugene Victor Debs's rise to national prominence and by Mr. Pullman's classic statement: There is nothing to arbitrate. Mr. Pullman died (1897) of angina pectoris.

The present Pullman arrangement with the railroads is extremely simple--Pullman Co. pays to the roads one-third of the Pullman fare. Size of the company is well illustrated by the amount of its laundering operations. Every day one million pieces of linen are washed, either in the company's own laundries or in other laundries that work for Pullman Co. on a contract basis. The company keeps on hand a supply of four million towels. About two million pieces of linen wear out or disappear each year; the annual new linen bill is in the neighborhood of $400,000.

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