HOW IT ALL BEGAN - All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide - page 14

prepared elsewhere, brought aboard the trains, and served cold
to passengers. Then, in 1867, George Pullman introduced a very
early version of what we would come to recognize as a dining car.
Actually, he called it a “hotel car,” and with good reason: since
passengers didn't move back and forth between railcars in those
earlier years, this one car contained cooking facilities, a dining
area, and sleeping accommodations for as many as 40 passengers.
George Pullman may have had a good idea with his hotel
car, but he really hit it big when his Pullman Palace Car Com-
pany in Chicago began turning out luxury sleeping cars that soon
came to be known simply as Pullmans. Not many people know
that the railroads hauling George Pullman's sleeping cars around
the country didn't actually own them. The Pullman Company
retained ownership of the cars and merely leased them to the
various railroads. Even the conductors and porters were Pullman
employees (it was what we would now call a turnkey operation,
several decades ahead of its time). In fact, for many years it was
said that on any given night more people were sleeping in Pullman
car berths than in the beds of the largest hotel chains in the world.
George Pullman went so far as to build a small town for his
workers adjacent to the Chicago plant where his railcars were
built. At its peak, some 12,000 workers lived in the commu-
nity created by their employer—working in his factory, living in
his houses, buying from his stores. Pullman was not so much a
visionary as he was a relentless businessman, for he made a profit
on almost everything his employees bought, including the rent
they paid for their homes.
It all started to come undone in 1893 when the country slid
into a depression. As business declined and profits fell, Pullman
reduced the wages he paid to his employees. He did not, however,
see a corresponding need to reduce the rents they were paying for
their housing. As the depression deepened, unrest among Pullman
Company employees grew, and in 1894 they walked off their jobs