CHAPTER 6Drummer in a Palace Car

Albert Pullman made himself into the impresario of excursions. His work managing paper and people in the office or counting passengers and inspecting sleeping cars on the road did not define his world. In so small a firm with such limited resources, it was inevitable that everyone would do everything, and Albert showed he could plan and host excursion runs. He turned this task to his advantage: from glad handing and chatting it was, for Albert, a small step to creating business networks based on the circulation of his name in association with the excursions. It was a perfect virtuous circle, and Albert circumnavigated it with consummate ease.

The Pullman specials began with Albert and George sending complimentary tickets to railroad officials, politicians, business leaders, journalists, and others who might publicize and later pay to ride in Pullman cars. For the Pullman Company, the trips became a source of vital publicity and public approbation; for Albert, they were the foundation of a national business network. At a time when the press needed material and the line between journalism and advertising was blurry, Albert supplied key details and often full accounts to his contacts in the newspaper world. For excursionists, the usually free trips included meals, frequently accompanied by alcohol and almost always concluding with a champagne toast. They proved irresistible to the people the Pullmans most wanted to influence. Pullman did not invent the excursion, but the brothers elevated the special railroad trip to an art form. Albert was central to that process.

Excursions had been around for as long as rail travel existed. The first recorded excursion was memorable not because of the rolling stock or its destination or even for its meaning for the future, but because of speed and death. It occurred in England in September 1830. William Huskisson, an aging and infirm British politician, failed in his desperate attempt to clamber aboard a passenger car at the end of the new line and was knocked down and dragged several yards by an oncoming locomotive. That machine, George Stephenson's famous Rocket, was then uncoupled from the train it was pulling. Huskisson, mortally wounded by his brush with the engine, was put onto a carriage and taken to a nearby town where a local physician tried but failed to save him. Thus, the opening of the world's first passenger railway, the Liverpool & Manchester, was marked by the world's first passenger fatality.

American railroads followed the British example by operating special trains to inaugurate new lines—usually without killing the guests—for investors and dignitaries. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad officially commenced operations with a train from Baltimore to Frederick, Maryland, carrying company officials and politicians. Along for the ride on that occasion was the governor of Maryland, traveling in his personal, and customarily horse-drawn, carriage tied onto a flat railroad car.¹ Nature's wonders often formed the destination for commemorative trips, nowhere more frequently than Niagara Falls. Like many others, that site of natural beauty was the end point for new owners of the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine Railroad, who took investors, friends, and politicians with them on a thousand-mile round trip from Indianapolis, the Indiana capital, in July 1853. In a practice the Pullman brothers would perfect, the Bellefontaine directors invited newspaper editors and journalists to travel free of charge, the editor of one newspaper commending the railroad to his diary for making “everything free as air, from our railroad bills down to our omnibus bills.” Unsurprisingly, positive coverage ensued.²

Pullman & Field sought a similar outcome from excursion runs. While they could not initially offer quite as long a journey as the Indianapolis & Bellefontaine, the partnership did provide prominent Chicagoans with thorough introductions to new cars. The first recorded Pullman excursion operated on August 15, 1859, from Chicago to Summit, a journey of twelve miles over Illinois Central Railroad tracks. The invited guests included newspaper editors, railroad executives, and a government land agent. Jubilant press reports extolled the elegant interiors, with “saloons and closets that would do credit to a steamboat.” The ventilation system gave passengers “free access to clear air,” particularly valuable at a time when locomotive smoke and cinders infiltrated carriages and settled on everything and everyone. George demonstrated the workings of the new bunk, which, press reports conceded, resembled the contrivance used by his competitors. Regional pride shone through in statements proclaiming that the car was “an Illinois institution throughout and entirely from wheel to roof a credit to the builders.”³ There is no record of Albert's presence, but it is hard to believe he was not there, taking mental notes and chatting with invited luminaries.⁴

The Summit excursion was the first of many such trips, most of which Albert coordinated and hosted. Early Pullman outings introduced new cars and demonstrated their amenities, but as the business grew, Pullman rented or lent cars for celebratory trips. Railroad companies used Pullmans to commemorate the opening of a new line, provide free or discounted travel to conventions, offer days out for charities, or take would-be investors and buyers to see real-estate developments. A uniform pattern quickly emerged. Prominent invited passengers became part of the spectacle, and a deluge of company-generated free publicity followed. Press coverage was essential, and Albert proved particularly adept at garnering it.⁵ He convinced newspapers to report on the sleeping cars in glowing, if rote, terms by regularly visiting editors and providing copy for publication.

The Civil War interrupted the excursions, as it did so much else across the country, so not until after the war did another major run occur: on May 19, 1866, when politicians, journalists, and railroad executives enjoyed a “Complimentary Excursion for the Introduction of Modern Sleeping Cars.” This day-long run between Chicago and Aurora, Illinois, where the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad was building Pullmans under contract, included a meal catered by restaurateur Herbert M. Kinsley, whose food and drink featured on subsequent Pullman trips. Albert probably met Kinsley while lifting the Tremont House, where the caterer had a restaurant. By the time of the May trip, Kinsley had moved to Crosby's Opera House and made a name for himself by selling oysters, candy, and ice cream to Chicago elites and visiting tourists.⁶ On this excursion, he served four courses and a wide selection of wines. Offering a fine dinner made the event “irresistible” and almost guaranteed positive newspaper reports. On this occasion Kinsley ran out of chicken-salad sandwiches and the waiters had to satisfy passengers’ hunger with his famous ice cream.

The May 1866 trip used five Pullman day cars (that is, cars with seats but no beds or tables) and a sleeper, through which passengers were shepherded to enable Albert to show off its amenities. These provisions included plush cushions; sliding windows; an unusually smooth ride; and a ventilation system drawing fresh air into the carriages while eliminating most of the smoke, soot, and sparks emitted by the chugging locomotive up front. As became standard on these runs, Albert demonstrated the mechanism for converting chairs into beds, a process one reporter likened to loading a musket, an easily understood simile in the wake of the Civil War.⁷ Champagne, the beverage that would “flow like water” at elite gatherings, once again lubricated proceedings.⁸ The Pullman brand flaunted its extravagance.

The fifteen years following the conclusion of the Civil War were a fecund period for Pullman excursions. Unlike those operated by the railroad companies, which owned their own lines and for which the destination was the point of the trip, the journey was the whole raison d’être for Albert's excursions.⁹ A Pullman excursion conveyed the message that taking a trip in a Pullman car was in and of itself a reason to travel. The importance of these outings to the company's business was signaled by a painting in George's office depicting an excursion train on the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad. A sign on the frame proclaimed it, erroneously, “the first party of ‘railroad excursionists’ that the new world ever saw.”¹⁰ Here, as so often in George's world, the truth could not be allowed to interfere with a good story.

Excursions met numerous needs, including generating goodwill. Deploying sleeping cars for charitable causes brought positive publicity and networking opportunities. Albert's first contribution to the world of philanthropy was serving as “auctioneer” for the sleeping-car committee of the 1865 Northwestern Sanitary Fair.¹¹ This was the third such event, the first of which made national headlines and by raising over $100,000 to assist Union soldiers and their families when Abraham Lincoln sent “his personal copy of the Emancipation Proclamation.”¹² Managed by local businessmen divided into committees, one of them chaired by George, the fair generated enormous interest. Agents traveling through the North solicited donations as lakefront buildings sprang up to house the event. A newspaper, The Voice of the Fair, chronicled activities. Two thousand people attended a benefit performance at Crosby's Opera House, where Kinsley's ice cream naturally featured. Generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman visited. Raffled and auctioned food, drink, clothes, clocks, and other wares raised over $270,000 for injured Union soldiers and the widows and children of those killed in the war. The fair brought Chicago “an enviable fame in this country and Europe.”¹³

In 1867, the name “Soldiers Aid Fair” replaced “Northwestern Sanitary Fair,” but the aim remained the same.¹⁴ Organizers divided Chicago into districts and assigned canvassers to solicit donations from businesses and households. Urging people to contribute money or goods “sufficient for a ton of coal, a box of shoes, a barrel of flour, a quarter of beef, a pair of blankets, a piece of cloth, or a bed and bedding,” they visited shopowners, held picnics and oyster suppers, hosted billiards tournaments, staged a charity baseball game, and contacted churches and synagogues.¹⁵ Voluntary societies and professional groups subscribed to the fund, and businesses provided merchandise to be auctioned. The weeklong fair opened on November 13, 1867, with speeches and a parade, and merchandise went on sale the next day.¹⁶ This fair earned around $20,000, which the organizers began dispersing in late November.¹⁷ Albert used his access to Pullman cars to transport dignitaries to the fair, introducing him to General O. L. Mann, with whom he would later cooperate on similar causes. Charity broadened Albert's networks and opened doors to investments.

Providing Pullman cars to carry prestigious delegations to Chicago became a regular source of business. In 1866, Albert organized and hosted the first of what would be many such trips. As the country recovered from the ravages of war, he worked as a volunteer for the General Reception Committee appointed to host a group of Southerners being rewarded for their loyalty to the Union with a tour of the country. Traveling from their convention in Philadelphia, Albert provided “one of Pullman's magnificent sleeping palaces” decorated with fresh flowers. An organist accompanied Chicago glee club members entertaining the Southerners as they traversed Indiana.¹⁸

Publicizing new Pullman cars provided an almost constant stream of excursions, often involving journalists. In January 1867, Albert hosted newspaper reporters on a trip from Alton to Monticello, Illinois, demonstrating two new cars built for the Alton Railroad, the Missouri and the Illinois. As usual, newspapers mentioned the smooth ride afforded by each car's sixteen wheels, the excellent ventilation, and the comfortable seating. Reports included references to the sumptuous interiors, “finished in the most elaborate style of oiled walnut, decorated with ebony, gilt and silver-plated metal, furnished with Wilton velvet carpet, richly upholstered cushions, French plate-glass mirrors [and] gorgeous chandeliers.”¹⁹ Albert also led a Chicago & Great Eastern Railroad journey to Cincinnati, Ohio, to introduce the Indiana and the Ohio. This outing carried hotel owners and the usual complement of reporters, investors, politicians (including Benjamin Field, renewing old acquaintances), and railroad officials. Kinsley and “his miniature army of assistants” served breakfast at Crown Point, lunch at Logansport, and dinner at Anderson, Indiana. Shortly before this trip Kinsley, recognizing the profits to be made in catering, sold his restaurant.²⁰

Albert, for whom music was a favorite pastime, added cabinet organs to the Pullman repertoire.²¹ He regularly played the instrument on Pullman excursions, accompanied occasionally by the singing of his eldest daughter, Nellie.²² As the organs wore out, though, they were not replaced. Travel over rough roads took their toll, with one tactful reporter recording that they were “in as good order as jarring will permit.”²³ Before the organs expired, however, Albert earned praise for performing musical arrangements to accompany the views on Pullman excursions.²⁴

Successful excursions burnished Albert's reputation as a convivial host. Chicago-based members of a ticket agents’ outing concluded their 1867 trip to Niagara Falls, organized by Albert, by recording, “there is no need or chance of improvement in the manner in which [A. B. Pullman] takes care of those under his charge, and for his personal efforts on this occasion to conduce to the pleasure of the party he shall have the plaudit of ‘Well done.’” The agents, employed by railroad companies to recommend routes and sell tickets to travelers, were a vital source of business. They also marketed discounted travel to groups. The agents journeyed in a train of new Pullman cars and concluded the trip by praising “the liberality and enterprise displayed in providing for the comfort of the patrons of the line,” resolving to recommend Pullman cars to “the traveling public.” This type of publicity helped expand the demand for Pullmans and contributed to Albert's burgeoning reputation as a genial host.²⁵

Excursions often operated in close sequence. Returning to Chicago from the Niagara-bound ticket-agent outing, Albert immediately went west to the Rocky Mountains with members of the Illinois Editorial Association. The purpose of this trip was to provide publicity for Pullman by carrying newspaper employees and their bosses across the country and to show off two new cars, Denver and Central City (the connection between these towns and George Pullman's early career was no coincidence).²⁶ The constant travel exacerbated Albert's negligence in correspondence, a recurring theme in family letters. Emma made no mention of Albert—the only family member omitted—in one long missive reporting on everyone else's activities, writing of their mother that she was “happy as she always is with Henry.”²⁷ The implications were clear: Royal Henry, the eldest son, was a favorite while Albert remained out of sight.

Earning publicity and praise required ingenuity, a quality the Pullman brothers possessed in abundance. The company no longer used letters or numbers to identify cars, as was the convention, but instead gave them names. That practice began with Pioneer, although other companies soon followed suit. Easily remembered names astutely identified cars with specific cities or states through which they operated. Thus, two cars constructed to run from St. Louis, Missouri, to Massachusetts through Michigan were christened City of Detroit and Mayflower.²⁸ Pullman also publicized the advantages of overnight travel. A new run from Keokuk, Iowa, to St. Louis arrived “in the morning in time to take any of the trains or boats leaving the city, or before business hours.”²⁹ Pullman plaudits played up the fact that the cars came from the supposedly unrefined frontier regions, shocking Easterners that “such a specimen of art could be achieved at the West.”³⁰ Other competitive advantages included Kinsley's catering, which always drew positive comments, and the installation on selected cars of a barber, evidence of luxury and ideally of a smooth ride.³¹

Preparing excursion runs required careful planning. To obtain the cooperation of the railroads (Pullman, after all, owned neither tracks nor locomotives), officials of the companies would be invited to travel on trips over their lines. This served the dual purpose of gaining access to rights of way while allowing Albert to forge relationships with key railroad executives. Politicians formed another important segment of the market, as early efforts to attract Illinois legislators traveling between Springfield and Chicago demonstrated. The logistics included securing passengers, ensuring adequate supplies of food and drink, and providing a comfortable ride. Most important, newspaper reports of excursions had to be disseminated through the Pullman target area, which expanded from Chicago to the nation with surprising speed. Though gaining much needed exposure through the media, the frequency of the trips meant some members of the fourth estate grew jaded. One reporter wrote of a day out to Albany that the long journey “was spent in the way customary on excursions, to wit: in attempts at reading; in failures in thinking; in great defeats in writing; but a perfect success in playing cards, which seem to be the only proper railway literature.”³²

Journalists were a crucial audience for these runs, and Albert was a regular visitor to newspaper offices. Pullman publicity circulated across the country because, at the height of the excursion era, “the source of most of the news published in American newspapers was other American newspapers.”³³ Newspapers and wire services like the Associated Press expanded dramatically during the Gilded Age, and Pullman needed journalists as allies to spread the word about luxury travel.³⁴ After the Civil War, the press slowly shifted away from overt political partisanship and toward coverage designed to promote economic growth and national strength. Pullman excursions played directly into the broadening appeal of nonpartisan, patriotic consumerism.³⁵

In dealing with the press, hyperbole was the order of the day for Albert. He proved to be a master of the art, and the frequency with which key phrases appeared in the reports suggests he provided journalists and wire services with copy.³⁶ Descriptions of the types of wood, the provenance of the mirrors, the comfort of the seating, the smoothness of the rides, the lushness of the carpets, and the excellence of the ventilation were regular refrains in these stories. Each new Pullman car, the newspapers reported, represented a generational leap in comfort and amenities. As one article put it, “all previous splendid efforts have been eclipsed”; lest the traveling public mistakenly believe older vehicles had become obsolete, they were assured that, “while Pullman's cars have been the best heretofore, they are still better now.”³⁷ For some cars, however, the price of progress was obsolescence. Barely fifteen years after its maiden excursion, the first Pullman sleeping car had been converted into a vehicle for track-maintenance laborers.³⁸

The majority of early Pullman excursions operated in Illinois, but not exclusively. One trip explored the possibility of building Pullman cars at a factory in Indiana for railroads oriented to the east. Operating through Indiana to the Ohio River, this trip took a new car, the North Star, to Jeffersonville in southern Indiana, for inspection by officials of the Ohio Falls Car Company. George considered using the Ohio Falls firm to manufacture sleeping cars under license. This did not pan out, but one railroad experimented by operating a through Pullman car from Jeffersonville to New York City over the tracks of several small lines. Like many such trials, this one proved short lived, but it helped to spread the gospel of luxury travel according to Pullman.³⁹

As the Pullman Company gained widespread recognition, Albert's standing as a national figure grew. Positive reputations were vital for creating and maintaining business networks, which thrived on knowledge about people. A solid reputation established trust and served as a means of reducing risk.⁴⁰ His high-profile and widely covered excursion work made Albert into the most recognized member of the Pullman family, publicly surpassing his sibling partly because of their contrasting personalities. Delegating excursion planning to Albert demonstrated George's trust in his older brother. Albert's ability to organize and host excursions allowed George to retreat into the background, his preferred location, where he could secure financing in quiet offices and plush clubs. Building a national reputation fueled Albert's entrepreneurial ambitions even as the company envisioned reaching the West Coast along the first transcontinental railroad.