CHAPTER 15Domestic Joy, Corporate Despair

Investing, reputation building, and networking absorbed much but not all of Albert's time. With three daughters, the family paid close attention to matrimonial possibilities. For most Gilded Age women, adulthood meant marriage and childbearing. For the vast majority, despite the ideal of the stay-at-home republican mother raising the next generation of independent Americans, it also meant work. As the offspring of well-to-do parents, however, Albert and Emily's daughters could aspire to marrying into wealth and pursuing lives defined by social obligations and leisure. They would not have to engage in remunerative labor because they could anticipate emulating their mother's routines.

Nellie and Emma Pullman passed their twenty-first birthdays in 1877 and 1878, respectively. As early as September 1875, two fellow members of St. Paul's Universalist Church, Graeme Stewart and Richard W. Rathborne Jr., were courting Emma.¹ In November, her favors fell on Rathborne, the son of a Chicago Board of Trade flour inspector who worked for commodities broker W. P. McLaren & Co.² Stewart—no relation to Albert's business partner Hart L. Stewart—adroitly pivoted to Nellie.³

The oldest of the three girls, Nellie hosted parties at the family's comfortable Ashland Avenue home. Prominent among these gatherings were sociables for members of the church. The “Missies Pullman” joined Stewart and Rathborne at Universalist Church gatherings in Chicago and on outings for young parishioners and their friends. The two men attended as often as they could.⁴ The four youths were linked in newspapers as a consequence of their being so frequently seen together.⁵ The two suitors volunteered to assist at a fundraiser organized by Emily in aid of the Orphan Asylum.⁶ On another occasion, they were all reported to have been dancing into the wee hours before and after a Universalist charity event.⁷ The result of this enduring intimacy was that Emma married Rathborne and Nellie wed Stewart.

First to the alter was middle daughter Emma. Announcing her nuptials in February 1878, she and Rathborne wed in a ceremony at St. Paul's Universalist Church followed by a reception at the Pullman residence and a honeymoon in California. Some 1,500 invitations were mailed for an occasion that had “long been anticipated in fashionable circles in the South and West Sides [of Chicago].” The ushers at the church for the April 4, 1878, event included Pullman officers and family friends. Other guests ranged from the young couple's circle of intimates to Albert's business cronies, with a ceremony presided over by the Reverend Doctor Ryder, the minister at St. Paul's.⁸

The wedding supplied the appropriate display of conspicuous consumption lavishly reported in the newspapers, starting with the bride's dress of satin and silk and the rich outfits worn by bridesmaids, the bride's sisters, and her mother. The many gifts—carefully enumerated in newspaper reports—included a horse and buggy and a family Bible, the latter from Emma's grandmother, and many items containing or made of silver. On the somewhat eccentric side were a mounted “Cobb's patent door-spring,” to which the giver, Zenas Cobb, attached a $100 note, and a statue of Romeo and Juliet from two of Albert's business partners. Any vendor good enough for Pullman cars was good enough for his daughter's wedding, so Eckhardt Catering provided the food while Johnny Hand's Orchestra played at the reception. Following the celebrations, the newlyweds left in a Pullman car for the West Coast, after which they returned to Chicago and moved into an apartment near the bride's childhood home.⁹

Ten months after Emma's wedding, Albert gave away his eldest daughter, Nellie, to wholesale grocer and entrepreneur Graeme Stewart. Like Emma, Nellie had been a regular at social picnics and other festivities, celebrating her sixteenth birthday by visiting suburban idyll Riverside with friends.¹⁰ On February 20, 1879, the twenty-three-year-old heiress married Stewart, two years her senior, in a “large and very stylish wedding.” This time, both ceremony and reception were held at the Pullman residence.¹¹ The eldest Pullman brother, Universalist minister Royal Henry, officiated.¹² No Pullman Company officers served as ushers this time, and the groom accompanied the mother of the bride up the aisle. Rather dampening the festivities was the absence of Graeme Stewart's father, “an aristocratic old English merchant of Chicago,” who refused to attend. Stewart Senior believed his son was marrying beneath himself because Emily Pullman had once sewed caps for a living.¹³ Despite this fracture, the two families had much in common, including friends in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the marriage proved to be a happy one.¹⁴

The groom's mother, unlike his father, did attend the event. As at Emma's reception, Hand's orchestra played, but this time Herbert M. Kinsley, who had performed so often on excursions, catered the event. The wedding dress was once again sumptuous, as were the bridesmaid's dresses; the “very numerous and costly” presents were portrayed as being generally elegant, although neither as ornate nor as expensive as those at Emma's wedding. Unlike her sister, who went west for her honeymoon, Nellie and Graeme took a Pullman car east “to Washington, Baltimore, New York, and other cities.”¹⁵

While the press generally covered the wedding as “a notable event in Chicago,” not everyone was bedazzled by the fabulous wardrobe, luscious meal, lavish presents, and luxurious honeymoon.¹⁶ The Western Rural, a Chicago-based publication critical of the accumulation of wealth by urban industrialists, condemned the unfairness of one young woman being given such an expensive wedding. Beginning with a mock lament about Albert “struggling against such adversity as earning only eight per cent upon invested capital,” the report described the rich decorations and costly dresses in seemingly positive terms. But the tone shifted dramatically as the story turned to the honeymoon, described as a free gift from railroad officials and hinting at venality behind the scenes. Charges of excess, inequality, and corruption came into play: “We presume that ten thousand young ladies will read this article, who are in every way as worthy as Miss Pullman, but whose fathers will not be able to dress them in silks, satins, point lace and diamonds when they shall marry, and who will have no palace car placed at their disposal for their marriage tour. Reason why, their fathers are not owners of palace and sleeping cars which earn only eight per cent.”¹⁷ Dividends, the critique ran, were unearned and therefore immoral.

The Western Rural was not alone in condemning those who got rich on the basis of seemingly unproductive work. Populist politics found an ever-larger audience across the Midwest and the West as the disparity between haves and have-nots became increasingly clear. Dividends were a common object of attack because only a few families benefitted, giving unelected and unaccountable financiers the power to determine the lives of others. Social reformer Frank Parsons condemned wealthy Americans for behaving like sovereigns with the power to tax, regulate, and “decide the destinies of states and cities; make or unmake the fortunes of individuals at their will; and on occasion direct the government and control legislation.” He lambasted “railway potentates” who held “autocratic power over larger masses of men than many a duke or marquis controlled in the olden time” and derided them for accepting royal titles from foreign rulers, as George Pullman did when King Humbert of Italy knighted him.¹⁸ Likewise Canadian author Herbert O. Holderness, who worked out of Chicago for two years as a Pullman conductor, complained that railroad officials wielded virtually unlimited authority. Once called tyranny, “today [it] is known as ‘pull,’ which can by the mere stroke of a pen make or mar, promote or discharge any one of the thousands of the employes [sic] who are all more or less the subjects of his arbitrary will and pleasure.”¹⁹ A British member of Parliament, James Bryce, visited the United States in the 1880s and recorded how any wealthy corporation could act as “a sort of irresponsible tyrant whose resources allow him to overreach the law” and saw monopolies as “the enemy of the ordinary citizen.”²⁰

The wedding of the Pullmans’ youngest daughter, Allie, earned far less press attention and no vitriolic editorials. The family announced her engagement to J. Guy Owsley, “a wealthy real estate dealer of Chicago” three years her senior and the son of Kentuckian John Owsley. Presiding over the ceremony was younger brother James Pullman, a Universalist minister like Royal Henry. Albert and Emily hosted the wedding and the reception at their residence on May 17, 1882. George contrasted Allie's sensible choice with those of her sisters, writing unpleasantly but not unfairly to his wife that “Allie Pullman is to be married this Wednesday and I must try and find something suitable for a wedding present. She marries a young Mr. Owsley and I believe it is considered that she will do much better than either of her sisters.”²¹ Family and friends came from Michigan and Kentucky. The event followed the pattern established by the nuptials of her elder sisters: Hand's Orchestra provided the music and Kinsley the food; lavish gifts arrived from friends, family, and business acquaintances; and the newlyweds rode in a Pullman car to their honeymoon in California. Returned from their West Coast swing, the couple lived a few houses down from the bride's parents.²²

Though Albert and Emily's Ashland Avenue residence was modest in comparison to George and Hattie's Prairie Avenue palace, it was large and comfortable by the standards of the day and certainly an appropriate venue for a wedding and the many parties they hosted.²³ Styled in the press “Another Pullman Palace,” the interior was designed by F. R. Hilger, a fellow Freemason who had decorated the Illinois executive mansion.²⁴ Living with the family at the time of the weddings were two servants, Mitchel Curan, a forty-three-year-old widower from Ireland, and Margaret Sullivan, a twenty-seven-year-old Canadian woman.²⁵ Compared with George's eight servants, their household staff was modest, but the place was, as sister Emma wrote, “a beautiful home, so Albert!”²⁶

Albert and Emily enjoyed a high material standard of living because of the success of Pullman's Palace Car Company (PPCC). In the first eighteen years of its existence, the company paid over $10 million in dividends, with returns as high as 19 percent.²⁷ The brothers worked assiduously to cultivate railroads and extinguish competition, leading to allegations that Pullman had become an exploitative monopoly and was overcharging for its uncontested services. Sections of the press began to accuse Pullman of exerting too much power over sleeping-car deployments. The allegation was perfectly fair: the Pullmans did want to create a monopoly, which was legal at the time, and they did have tremendous influence in the industry. Labeled by the press “one of the most grasping and gigantic monopolies that exists in the present age,” every move the company made elicited complaints. Hiring detectives to keep an eye on employees, requiring $100 bonds from conductors, and charging porters for their uniforms were all interpreted by the company's many critics as means of earning additional revenue by squeezing its own workers for the sake of profit.²⁸

Albert was associated with this excess and sometimes criticized in the press, as the Western Rural story demonstrated. In its rapid expansion and accumulation of capital, the Pullman Company was not unrivaled. The ability of small groups of investors to dominate single markets grew with the changing legal landscape. Concentrated financial power and the sheer quantity of money circulating through corporate coffers facilitated economic inequality. Such growth, along with limited oversight and irregular audits, opened the door to fraud. Defalcations and disappearances were not uncommon in the Gilded Age, as W. F. Endicott of the Central National Bank personified when he took $150,000 of bank funds with him to Europe in 1877. His theft, well planned and cleverly executed, was a reminder that the antebellum business world, an arena “filled with deceit,” had not been left behind.²⁹ Endicott's act of “bank wrecking” was one of at least 228 crimes resulting in the failure of a national bank between 1865 and 1920.³⁰

The year after Endicott's embezzlement, a similar case rocked Pullman. The long-serving company secretary, Charles W. Angell, stole bonds and cash worth approximately $120,000 during the summer of 1878. Angell had been with the firm from the very beginning, and his brother William worked as a purchasing agent, supervised by Albert. George Pullman had known William Angell since at least 1862 as a fellow director of the Eagle Gold Company. Hired as PPCC secretary, Charles attended and recorded every board meeting, allowing him to become familiar with the workings of the company on a level few others could attain. At the Pullman Company, Charles Angell appeared to be above suspicion, having earned through his discretion and reliability the trust of his fellow employees. He also had unfettered access to the vault in Pullman offices where cash and bonds were stored.

Angell exploited his reputation to carry out a simple but effective theft. He used his annual vacation to New York, where he visited Saratoga Springs and stayed in the Adirondacks, as a pretext to cover his tracks. In July 1878, he announced his intention to take three weeks’ off and convinced one of the company cashiers that George Pullman had asked him to transfer money to the New York office. George was in Europe at the time and could not easily be contacted to verify the request. Everyone—except George, it transpired—trusted Angell and the order for him to carry the checks seemed logical because he was traveling east anyway. Such was his spotless reputation that Angell convinced the cashier to wait for proof of payment, which violated company policy. Angell then travelled to New York, but not into the mountains. Following a trail similar to (and perhaps even inspired by) Endicott, he had been slowly stealing bonds from the company safe for three months before departing. Cashing stolen checks and selling some of the bonds at a heavy discount in New York, Angell purchased his passage and crossed the Atlantic. In Europe, he apparently planned to live off the proceeds of his crime.³¹

Pullman Company officials did not discover what became known as the Big Steal until August, when Charles Angell failed to meet George Pullman in New York City upon the latter's return from England. After waiting for a few days, George ordered a search of the books and traveled to Chicago. Checking vault contents against written records revealed the theft, and the highest echelons of the company mobilized to find the missing official. Horace Porter, vice president and the seniormost employee in New York City, signed a poster offering a $5,000 reward along with 10 percent of any money recovered for the “arrest and detention” of Charles Angell. The poster, distributed across the United States, also listed the bond numbers.³² The Pullman Company circulated an article in which George explained what had happened, expressed his surprise and disappointment, and asked for assistance in bringing Angell to justice. The company also dispatched William Angell to the East Coast to search for his brother and hired detectives on both sides of the Atlantic.³³

Porter expounded the company line, telling newspapers the theft was “utterly incomprehensible,” that he was “shocked and grieved,” that Angell was continuing to mourn the death of his wife, and that the secretary must have been “mentally afflicted” by that and other pressures. According to Porter's narrative, the Pullman Company ultimately and most importantly “would not suffer” from the loss.³⁴ George received a letter from one of Angell's sisters telling him family members were “heartbroken” and their mother was “bowed with grief more intense than if he were dead.”³⁵

With news of the theft being broadcast widely and, as George and Porter returned to other business, Albert assumed the role of company spokesperson. In October 1878, he was interviewed about Angell, confirming rumors of Angell's whereabouts but concluding that he “had really little authentic news” to share. Showing no mercy, Albert speculated that when captured, Angell would attempt to claim insanity and would pretend to be contrite, but “it is a trick that will not work at all.” The company, he predicted, would prosecute Angell to the fullest.³⁶

As reporters investigated Angell's personal life, Albert's speculation about an insanity defense gained credibility. The newspapers initially depicted Angell as a dedicated employee trusted by everyone and in whom the directors had every confidence. His theft had come out of the blue and left his fellow employees bewildered and anxious for his health. Albert described him as a family man, an honest person, a meticulous worker who arrived early and stayed late. But the image of a respectable and sober company servant dissolved as gossip and innuendo made their way into the press. Angell, according to this chatter, had “some peculiar idiosyncrasies.” Hints emerged that he had vanished for two months soon after becoming a Pullman employee, claiming insanity and saying that he had no knowledge of where he was or how he got there. An investigation at the time cleared him of wrongdoing, and only a handful of senior executives knew of this odd episode in his career. But doubts about him lingered and George instituted secret checks of his work.³⁷

Angell's mental state came in for close public examination, common at a time when so-called alienists and the art of diagnosing the mind had seeped into popular culture. Reports surfaced of his falling into depression after his wife's death three years before, along with the idea that he had been rejected in a subsequent marriage proposal. Unknown in its details, but rumored in outline, was an episode in 1871 when George had provided Angell with a Pullman car and a check for $500 to help him recover his health after a breakdown.³⁸

As the press dug deeper, they uncovered a dalliance with a prostitute named Sadie who resembled his wife. Procured from a well-known downtown brothel, Angell housed the young woman in a suite at the Palmer House for a month before absconding.³⁹ Other quirks came under the microscope: reports of a drawer full of leather gloves used only once led to the conclusion that Angell was a dandy who dressed well, wore a bouquet, parted his hair carefully, and wanted to be “one of ‘the idols of the day.’” His need for social acceptance and even prominence explained, according to some reports, his theft of Pullman funds. From these traits it was but a short step to a larger critique of the times, for “to the thief and the harlot belong the good things of this world, and the incentive to live honest is apparently banished by the example set by fast men holding responsible positions.”⁴⁰ Angell had hit a cultural nerve.

Extensive publicity and searches in the United States failed to unearth Angell.⁴¹ Tipped off, Pullman officials traveled to see firsthand possible Angell sightings but without finding him. The directors concluded that he must have traveled abroad. They printed posters bearing a photograph and physical description, had it translated into five languages, and sent it to American consuls and police headquarters across Europe. In London, H. S. Roberts, Pullman's superintendent of operations in Britain, met with detectives from Scotland Yard, who told him they had no jurisdiction in the case because it involved embezzlement and not murder or forgery, the only two crimes for which an American could be repatriated.⁴²

No doubt aware that detectives were looking for him on two continents and possibly understanding the intricacies of extradition treaties, Angell assumed a pseudonym. Traveling as an Englishman under the name of Seymour, he settled in Portugal because he believed he would be safe from extradition to the United States.⁴³ Recognized from the posters, however, the police apprehended him. When the American consul in Lisbon reported his capture in November, the company sent Roberts to identify him. Roberts reported that $80,000 of the missing funds had been recovered. The company dispatched an employee from New York with affidavits and extradition papers. Circumventing the absence of a direct extradition treaty thanks to assistance from the Portuguese government, Angell returned to the United States in handcuffs. Although the earliest estimates of the amounts recovered varied from $4,000 to $80,000, Pullman accounts for 1879 claimed a net loss of $48,707 on the case, having salvaged $72,000 in bonds.⁴⁴

Back home, Charles Angell stood trial for larceny and was sentenced to ten years in Joliet Prison. He journeyed there by train on the Alton Road, the first line he had helped equip with Pullman cars a quarter of a century before. Prior to his departure from Chicago to begin his incarceration, George Pullman and William Angell interviewed Charles Angell in his holding cell. True to form, George revealed little about the meeting, stating publicly only that Angell had travelled to South America and thence to Europe and disclosing nothing about his motives. Pullman also claimed that, in Lisbon, Angell had expected to be arrested and had decided to return to the United States because of a guilty conscience.⁴⁵ At the same time, the shock of Angell's actions and the sense of betrayal the long-serving employee fomented ran so deep that mistrust infiltered every quarter of the company. George appointed American accountant John Miller assistant secretary in the London office to supervise finances there after unproven assertions that cash was being stolen from Pullman by its British employees.⁴⁶

Angell's theft did nothing to slow Pullman growth. With the combination of international corporate crisis and bad press threatening the Pullman brand, Albert once again proved his value as a spokesperson for the company. Albert was also, like many everyday entrepreneurs, trying to live off his investments, although with the unusual guarantee of assistance from a wealthy and generous brother to soften the inevitable losses. By the end of the 1870s, as the large majority of working Americans toiled in factories, down mines, along railroads, and in a plethora of unstable wage-earning occupations, the Pullmans of Chicago were busy leaving their origins far behind. Secure in his professional capacity at the Pullman Company and owning homes in Chicago and New York, Albert was not quite a Morgan or a Rockefeller but he could imagine himself joining their exalted ranks.