CHAPTER 11Pleasure in New York, Business in Detroit

In 1870, at age forty-two years, Albert Benton Pullman reveled in a fine career and a stable family life. The excursions gave him a growing national reputation and he was in the process of expanding his networks beyond John Drake, Hart L. Stewart, and Ebenezer Jennings to include the likes of Cyrus Pratt, Hannibal Kimball, and Anson Stager. At the beginning of the year, he received a pay increase and a $1,000 bonus, which he put toward further diversifying his business portfolio.¹ He and Emily, his wife of twenty-two years, had a comfortable home on Chicago's West Side with their three daughters, Nellie, Emma, and Allie. His mother, also called Emily, and his sister, confusingly another Emily but always referred to as Emma, were living with them for short stretches. The Albert Pullmans also housed three domestic servants, all in their twenties and all hired to relieve Emily of the need to launder, cook, clean, and perform other household chores.²

Though Albert and George had fine homes and settled domestic arrangements, they both lived primarily through their businesses. The press of commerce meant George, who extolled the joys of being with his mother and siblings, missed the silver wedding anniversary of the Reverend Royal Henry Pullman and Harriet Barmore Pullman. Albert, unusually, did attend, taking Emily and their daughters on a Pullman car to Peoria, Illinois, for the occasion. He read a congratulatory telegram from George, away on business in South Carolina, at that celebration. Brother James, like Royal Henry a Universalist minister and at the time permanent secretary of the Universalist Convention, gave an address. The couple opened gifts, and the family celebrated in the shadow if not the presence of the wealthiest Pullman.³

George's absence was part of a larger pattern of disappearing from some family and most public gatherings. He frequently visited their mother in New York, but the only family assembly he regularly attended was the one he organized himself, the annual summer sojourn to the Thousand Islands. The Thousand Islands, located in the St. Lawrence River straddling the border of the United States and Canada, were a playground for New Yorkers. Beginning in 1863 members of the family camped on an island in the river, and George purchased his own rock in 1870, renaming it Pullman Island and planning his summer vacations around family gatherings there. He built a four-story cottage above a full basement and capped it with an observation tower. The ten bedrooms could all be converted into sitting rooms, reversing the Pullman car model. With fourteen servants to help the family survive “the great inconveniences [and] burdens of … island life,” the Pullmans entertained family and friends in an area dubbed “a modern Venice.”⁴ They socialized with the Hart Stewarts, the Sangers, and other relatives and acquaintances.

FIGURE 3. George Pullman home, Pullman Isle, New York. Library of Congress.

Business was never far away when George vacationed. He invited bankers, financiers, and railroad executives to Pullman Island and, on one occasion, General Ulysses S. Grant. The latter, a shy man of few words who “made silence seem wisdom and calmness strength,” no doubt enjoyed the placid island.⁵ At George's command, the family tried to meet yearly at Pullman Island to celebrate the matriarch's birthday on August 14, though Albert and his family had a habit of arriving late.⁶ For Albert, the islands were not so much a chance to network as a place to relax and enjoy his own friends and family, which allowed eldest daughters Nellie and Emma to court the young men who would become their husbands.⁷

The Pullman clan responded positively to the charm and lure of the Thousand Islands, including usually cynical brother Charley. Writing to William Fluhrer, at the time wooing sister Emma, Charley proclaimed that “the beauties of the place here have not been exaggerated” and offered “magnificent days, & even better nights” because of the pleasant company and excellent fishing. Albert himself was “a familiar figure around the bay, where he promenades with a wide-brimmed straw hat on his silvery hair and a blue corduroy boating coat.”⁸ Like the other brothers, Albert traveled to the annual escape in a Pullman car, taking his family and as many as twenty friends with him.⁹

Albert purchased his own home, Ingleside, on an island a short boat ride away from the rest of the family. “A beautiful little cottage nestling in the luxuriant foliage of the aboriginal shrubbery,” it was adjacent to George Marsh's Melrose Lodge. Marsh was a partner in the firm of Palmer, Fuller, which supplied window sashes to the Pullman Company.¹⁰ The Pullman and Marsh families often vacationed together and attended the weddings of each other's children. George Marsh and Albert were almost exact contemporaries born in upstate New York and raised as Universalists. They had very similar social circles, down to having friends and family in Grand Rapids and Chicago.¹¹

The islands provided a respite from the strains of business, retreats in which Albert and George could put aside work if they so desired. As the company grew, it placed ever greater demands on Albert and especially George. More orders meant George was increasingly called away from Chicago to meet investors and negotiate contracts with railroad company executives. It was fast becoming obvious that Pullman's Palace Car Company (PPCC) could only satisfy growing demand by expanding its manufacturing capacity. The excursions Albert organized were working their magic, and the bulging order book meant the company needed to build the cars itself.

On August 18, 1870, Albert therefore accompanied Henry Pierson to Indianapolis and Detroit. Pierson was serving as interim vice president while George took an extended trip to Europe. Their first stop was to “fix things up” with the Indianapolis & Terre Haute Railroad. They began by explaining to its president, W. R. McKeen, why PPCC was allowing rival Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railroad to operate Pullman sleeping cars between Cincinnati and Council Bluffs through Indianapolis.¹² Having assuaged, or at least listened to, McKeen, Albert and Pierson traveled to Detroit to examine the facilities of the Detroit Car & Manufacturing Company.¹³ This was the final inspection of a plant Pullman officials had earlier identified as ideal for constructing and maintaining their cars. Company executives had checked sites in St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere, but Detroit—with an extant plant and excellent rail and water connections east and west—would allow operations to begin immediately. Pierson and Pullman liked what they saw and approved the $100,000 purchase.

The first railroad car factory to be built west of Albany, New York, the Detroit Car & Manufacturing Company proved a valuable addition to PPCC. Albert immediately sent several cars there for repair, a constant source of business for the shops, and its skilled labor force turned out the first Pullman vehicles not produced on contract with other builders since the original cars in Bloomington and Chicago. The Pullman Company sent one unexceptional car, the Oneida, to Detroit for repairs and rebuilding on three occasions between 1873 and 1874, culminating in work costing $1,489. Pullman cars did have something of a reliability problem, as the mother of New Mexico suffrage activist Nina Otero-Warren discovered when, traveling by train for the first time, the Pullman car carrying her and her husband to their honeymoon in Chicago broke down.¹⁴

Performing routine but important repairs and maintenance at the Detroit works probably saved Pullman millions of dollars over the long run, but profits were made from constructing new cars and putting them into service.¹⁵ The Detroit works became the focal point of Pullman manufacturing for the next decade, freeing the company from its reliance on other firms. Detroit allowed Pullman to expand rapidly, taking much of the work out of Albert's hands because of its sheer scale and complexity, and serving as a jumping-off point for fulfilling new contracts on the East Coast and in Europe. In its original territory from Chicago west, however, Pullman continued to rely on the Burlington to build cars at the company's Aurora, Illinois, shops.

FIGURE 4. PPCC paint shop, Detroit, Michigan, illustrating the skilled, labor-intensive work required at Pullman. Reproduced by permission of the Chicago History Museum, ICHi-026776, Jex Bardwell, photographer.

There was a downside for Albert in the purchase of a plant three hundred miles from Chicago. Albert had been able to travel easily to Aurora to oversee construction and repairs personally. He knew the workers by name and often trained them to the standards required to meet Pullman expectations. For Albert, the interests of company and workforce aligned in a mutualist compact, but efficiency and profitability were increasingly the watchwords of industry. With a labor force reaching seven hundred workers several hundred miles from his office, Albert's mutualist managerial methods became obsolete, as they did for many other owners and managers. Purchasing the Detroit works proved to be a turning point in company labor relations. The consequence of losing personal connections and supervision would become evident for Albert later in the decade and for the company toward the end of the century.

The expansion explained why Albert was promoted to second vice president in June 1871. Henry Pierson resigned when George returned from successfully negotiating a contract to build and operate Pullman cars in England. The company then announced that continued growth made it necessary to fill Pierson's position and to “make further divisions of labor to the management,” so that “Mr. A. B. Pullman, the new 2d. Vice-President, will have especial charge of the construction and equipment of cars, and of such improvements as may be developed.”¹⁶ Such supervision would prove virtually impossible in any meaningful way beyond helping with the design of new cars.

Continuous growth required recruiting leading managers from other railroad companies, of whom Pierson was just one. Marvin Hughitt, the assistant general manager of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, replaced Albert as general superintendent while C. G. Hammond, general superintendent of the Union Pacific Railroad and formerly of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, filled the newly created position of first vice president.¹⁷ It is difficult to gauge whether Albert was being marginalized or whether fewer excursions required adjusting his responsibilities, but the upshot was free time to pursue other interests.

These changes and the appearance of being kicked upstairs were not lost on the Pullman workforce. Employees in the construction division presented Albert with a horse, carriage, and rig in August 1871 “to express our appreciation of the extremely kind and considerate nature of your intercourse with us, officially and personally.” The Railroad Gazette noted that the presentation was “a testimonial of their respect and esteem” for his work and for his managerial style. On his part, Albert thanked the men “especially for the highly flattering and complimentary manner in which you have been pleased to address me” and lamented “sundering the pleasant business relations we have sustained.”¹⁸ The gift proved a boon to the family, cousin Caroline Alice Minton writing joyfully about how Emily and Albert had taken her “out for a long ride with Fritz, the new horse and buggy that was presented to Mr. A.B. by the Employees of the Car Co.”¹⁹

Albert's experience of losing direct contact with the Pullman workforce was being replicated across the country. Changes to corporate law and the accumulation of capital by banks and investment houses after the Civil War encouraged the consolidation of ever larger corporations. Albert benefitted financially from these changes, but his mutualist outlook suffered. Limited liability laws had long encouraged investors like Albert to take risks with their own and other people's money by restricting their exposure to losses should a firm fail. The postwar redefinition of what constituted a corporation provided greater latitude in terminating investments and thus confining losses. Standardized corporate charters increasingly provided investors with legally specific explanations of business functions and clear organizational structures. Charters permitted their holders a degree of freedom of movement at a time when innovation and speed were important elements in creating new companies, as Albert appreciated. Corporate charters also contained easily evaded reporting requirements, creating the appearance of accountability while unintentionally permitting directors to manipulate accounts. Albert and many other nineteenth-century capitalists took advantage of lax oversight to accumulate wealth.²⁰

Even as he found himself being removed from direct contact with the Pullman manufacturing workforce, Albert was beginning to invest in banking, insurance, and other types of business. Recruited by J. C. Fargo, a director along with George Pullman of the Third National Bank of Chicago, Albert bought into the Northwestern Iron & Steel Welding Company, formed to sell a patented welding flux that appears to have been continuously tested but never actually perfected. He eventually abandoned that venture as it meandered slowly into irrelevance, the promised advances in welding proving to be so much hot air. The Northwestern did bring Albert into contact with Charles Fargo, founder of American Express and a Pullman excursionist who joined him in several investments.²¹ Albert's career as an entrepreneur was truly taking off, allowing him to tap into his business networks and to experience the highs and lows of Gilded Age capitalism.