The Story of the Pullman Car. Joseph Husband

      It was during these years that George M. Pullman experienced his first night travel and the hardships of the sleeping car accommodations. As Fulton and Watt and Stephenson, in the crude steam engine of their time, saw the locomotive and marine engine of today, so in this bungling sleeper George M. Pullman saw the modern sleeping car and the vast system he was in time to originate. In his mind a score of ideas were immediately presented and on his return to Albion he discussed the possibility of their amplification with Assemblyman Ben Field, a warm friend in these early days.

      The contracting business had increased Pullman's field of observation, it had stimulated his invention, it had accustomed him to the management of men. When the widening of the Erie Canal had been accomplished, the field for his new vocation was practically eliminated; and it was but natural that the ambition of youth could not be satisfied to return to the cabinet-making business. Westward lay the future. In the new town of Chicago, which had in so few years grown up at the foot of Lake Michigan, young men were already building world enterprises. Chicago, named from the wild onion that grew in the marsh lands about the winding river, offered promise of greatness. Its romantic growth seized the imagination of the youthful Albion contractor.

       Naturally his first thought was to profit by his contracting experience, and again a happy chance favored him. Built on the low land behind the sand dunes and south of the sluggish river Chicago suffered from a lack of proper drainage. Mud choked the streets; cellars were wells of water after every rain. In 1855, the year of his arrival, Pullman made a contract to raise the level of certain of the city streets. It was a bold undertaking, but his confidence knew no hesitation, and the work was satisfactorily accomplished. Other contracts followed, and in a short time Pullman had built himself a substantial reputation and had raised a number of blocks of brick and stone buildings, including the famous Tremont House, to the new level.

Chicago in 1858 was a town of 100,000 population. Here Cyrus H. McCormick had built his reaper factory on the banks of the river. Here R. T. Crane was laying the small foundation for the mighty industry of future years. Here Marshall Field and Levi Z. Leiter were rising junior partners in their growing business, and here the future heads of the meat-packing industry were developing their mighty business. To the country boy from a New York village, its muddy streets and rows of frame and brick buildings savored of a metropolis; in its naked newness he sensed the vital energy that was so soon to place it among the cities of the world.