A modern lear and his daughters: Gender in the model town of Pullman

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 23, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 316-341

  Reiff, Janice L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER ISSUES; INDUSTRIAL DISPUTE; INDUSTRIAL TOWN; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SOCIAL ACTIVISM; URBAN HISTORY;

USA, ILLINOIS, PULLMAN;

EID: 0031401615     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/009614429702300304     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. In Twenty Years at Hull-House (New York, 1912), 214, Addams suggests that nothing in her experience prepared her for the class bitterness that she saw that summer.
2. Jane Addams, "A Modem Lear," in Graham Romeyn Taylor, ed., Satellite Cities (New York, 1915), 68-90.
3. Richard T. Ely, "Pullman: A Social Study," Harper's Monthly 70 (1885), 452-66.
4. New York Sun, October 10, 1885, Chicago Times, September 4, 1886, Pullman Scrap-books, series A, Pullman Archives, Newberry Library, Chicago (hereafter PANL). My forthcoming book discusses how successful Pullman was in exerting his will.
5. New York Sun, October 10, 1885, Chicago Times, September 4, 1886, Pullman Scrap-books, series A, Pullman Archives, Newberry Library, Chicago (hereafter PANL). My forthcoming book discusses how successful Pullman was in exerting his will.
6. For Debs, citizenship, and manhood, see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982). United States Strike Commission's Report on the Chicago Strike of June-July, 1894, Sen. Executive Document No. 7, 53d Congress, 3d sess. (Washington, DC, 1895).
7. For Debs, citizenship, and manhood, see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana, 1982). United States Strike Commission's Report on the Chicago Strike of June-July, 1894, Sen. Executive Document No. 7, 53d Congress, 3d sess. (Washington, DC, 1895).
8. Carl J. Smith, Urban Disorder and the Shape of Belief: The Great Chicago Fire, the Haymarket Bomb and the Model Town of Pullman (Chicago, 1995), 255-8, describes this effort fully.
9. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
10. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
11. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
12. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
13. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
14. In addition to Pullman studies cited elsewhere in the notes, for this tradition see, Almont Lindsey, The Pullman Strike: The Story of a Unique Experiment and of a Great Labor Upheaval (Chicago, 1942), the classic text on the strike itself; Richard Sennett, Authority (New York, 1980), 62-7, for grimmest picture of Pullman; Gerald Zahavi, Workers, Managers and Welfare Capitalism (Urbana, 1988), 3, for Pullman and town as "small, gray, lifeless communities, created and dominated by visions of wealth, power or misguided patriarchy"; James Brady Smithson, "The Incorporation of Community: An Analysis of the Model Town of Pullman, Illinois, as a Social Experiment" (Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1988), for Pullman as an experiment in community; Stanley Buder, Pullman (New York, 1967), goes into the teens and twenties, but with less emphasis or detail than on the model. Only Douglas P. Hoover, "Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman" (M.A. thesis, University of Arizona, 1988), specifically considers women.
15. Eileen Boris, Home to Work (Cambridge, 1994), chap. 1, 21-48, and Alice Kessler-Harris, A Women's Wage (Lexington, 1990), discuss this assumption.
16. Eileen Boris, Home to Work (Cambridge, 1994), chap. 1, 21-48, and Alice Kessler-Harris, A Women's Wage (Lexington, 1990), discuss this assumption.
17. Addams, Twenty Years. Although one must use evidence from a later date cautiously, the portrait of the Rudzikas women in Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle is a vivid portrait of the fate of working-class women and households in turn-of-the-century Chicago.
18. Carroll D. Wright, Pullman: A Joint Report (Boston, 1884), 9-10, and Ely, "Pullman," 461-3.
19. Carroll D. Wright, Pullman: A Joint Report (Boston, 1884), 9-10, and Ely, "Pullman," 461-3.
20. James B. Gilbert, Perfect Cities: Chicago's Utopias of 1893 (Chicago, 1991), 131-68, ties these assumptions to Pullman's experiences, emphasizing Mrs. Pullman's ideas of middleclass families and her wish to apply those ideas to Pullman residents.
21. Buder, Pullman, 120-2, details the prohibition on taverns. However, alcohol was easily accessible to Pullman workers. Beer wagons sold and delivered beer on the town's streets for years. See the testimony of Rev. Morris L. Wickman (and others), United States Strike Commission's Report, 463.
22. Buder, Pullman, 120-2, details the prohibition on taverns. However, alcohol was easily accessible to Pullman workers. Beer wagons sold and delivered beer on the town's streets for years. See the testimony of Rev. Morris L. Wickman (and others), United States Strike Commission's Report, 463.
23. Carwardine emphasized these sentiments in his lecture tours after the strike. Quote from the sermon "A Girl's Choice" preached at the Adams Street Church, the next parish at which he served, on November 12, 1899, and delivered at all his subsequent parishes. A letter from the Pullman Strike Committee included in his papers says, "He is respected by all and loved by many. We heartily indorse [sic] all that he writes about the present strike and town of Pullman and can vouch for the truth of the statements he makes." July 23, 1894, Carwardine Papers, Garrett Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL.
24. See Nancy Fraser and Linda Gordon, "A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State," Signs 19 (Winter 1994), 309-26. In times of economic stress, the workers regularly referred to competing interests of married and single men and thought the Pullman Company gave special privileges to the other.
25. When I presented an earlier version of this article, an audience member explained how her great-grandmother had asked her great-grandfather to leave his job elsewhere in Chicago to move to Pullman for the opportunities for their children. Versions of that story abound among longtime Pullman families, as do stories of people taking the train into Chicago and seeing the beautiful little town and deciding they wanted to live there.
26. Pullman workers regularly used the Chicago press to voice their concerns. An anonymous letter would appear in a newspaper purporting to give a "true" picture of Mr. Pullman's model town. The letter would often provoke a series of exposés on Pullman.
27. May 19, 1886, Town Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. The newspaper is not indicated, but a reference to another article suggests that it appeared in the Sun.
28. Ibid.
29. Although dominated by wives of Pullman officials, wives of businessmen in Kensington and Pullman were also included.
30. A list of requests and services, in the Minutes of the Women's Union, Archives, the Historic Pullman Foundation in Pullman.
31. The only slight variation on the theme raised an even more complex issue. It pointed out that the Pullman Company had a better tenant, "a negro; but what difference did that make the Pullman Company?" J. T.'s letter appeared in Herald, May 7, 1883, Town Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL.
32. The dollar figures appeared in the Arcade Mercantile Journal (Pullman) 1, no. 2 (December 7, 1889), 5. Boarding here clearly meant simply eating. The Journal, edited by town agent Mr. Duane Doty, served as a source of local news, an advertising organ of the Pullman Arcade increasingly challenged by stores in Kensington and Roseland, and a purveyor of uplifting commentary.
33. The dollar figures appeared in the Arcade Mercantile Journal (Pullman) 1, no. 2 (December 7, 1889), 5. Boarding here clearly meant simply eating. The Journal, edited by town agent Mr. Duane Doty, served as a source of local news, an advertising organ of the Pullman Arcade increasingly challenged by stores in Kensington and Roseland, and a purveyor of uplifting commentary.
34. Mrs. Duane Doty, The Town of Pullman. Illustrated. Its Growth with Brief Accounts of Its Industries (Pullman, 1893), estimates that at least 900 families in Pullman took in boarders. Mrs. Doty indicates there were 1,855 tenements in Pullman (p. 51).
35. December 11, 1883, Town Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL.
36. Doty, Town of Pullman, 116.
37. As other jobs, particularly clerical, opened, laundry work became even less desirable, and it disappeared by World War I.
38. May 20, 1888, Town Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL.
39. It is fair to say that some domestic violence in Pullman erupted over imagined or real incidents of marital infidelity with boarders but were not reported as the logical result of boarding.
40. Herald, May 20, 1887, in Town Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL.
41. During the 1994 strike centennial celebrations held in Pullman, an actress played Jennie Curtis and, from the front steps of Curtis's former home, told her story to thousands of visitors.
42. So did a Tribune reporter describe the future mayor in an article on September 20, 1888. Town Scrapbooks, vol. 2, PANL.
43. The Chicago Times reported her presentation on June 13, 1894.
44. W. T. Stead, Chicago To-day: The Labour War in America (New York, 1969), 187-8.
45. The Pullman payrolls document the general decrease in the workforce. The payroll for the first half of May in 1893 held 4,643 names; that for the first half of May in 1894 held 3,289 names. Microfilms of the payrolls in PANL.
46. There were fifty seamstresses in 1893 and thirty-eight in 1894. The other figure included all workers who were not seamstresses. Data from the payrolls cited above. This fact was publicized by Rena Michaels Atchison of the Equal Suffrage Association of Illinois, "Women Sufferers at Pullman," Chicago Evening Post, May 23, 1894. It reported that men's wages fell from 33 to 57 percent, while women's wages fell from 50 to 200 percent [sic].
47. For a complete list of names and needs, see the Minute Books of the Pullman Women's Union. The Chicago papers' lists of the starving during the strike often noted that families were deeply in debt before the strike began.
48. May 17, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL.
49. Not all these publications supported the strike without criticism. But the stories of starvation also noted that the wealthy Pullman Company could probably have done something to alleviate it. There was also a sense of having been "taken." The Brickyard homes - woodenframe shanties - appeared in stories that earlier had only showcased the brick flats and public buildings. Women who had visited Pullman for social events in the past now expressed indignation that they had never see this "other side."
50. This difference between Roseland, Kensington, and Pullman is another important dimension of the strike that will be covered more fully in my book Manufacturing a Community: Pullman Workers and Their Towns, 1880-1981. Estimates at the end of the strike suggested about half of the strikers lived inside Pullman and the rest lived in one of the neighboring communities.
51. Hopkins' first individual gift came during the first week of the strike. See Tribune, May 17, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. Several weeks later Hopkins led the city appeal. See Tribune, June 5, 1894, in Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. The local alderman was also active in seeking the support of the city council. The Chicago Evening Journal reported that city hall contributed $2,000 of the approximately $19,000 contributed to the Pullman Strike Fund by the middle of August. See "How the Case Stands," August 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL. Other gifts came from individuals and agencies. The Chicago Fire Department contributed $909 to the strike fund, and the Grand Crossing police, $46. See [Rev.] William H. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike (Chicago, 1973 edition), 42-3.
52. Hopkins' first individual gift came during the first week of the strike. See Tribune, May 17, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. Several weeks later Hopkins led the city appeal. See Tribune, June 5, 1894, in Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. The local alderman was also active in seeking the support of the city council. The Chicago Evening Journal reported that city hall contributed $2,000 of the approximately $19,000 contributed to the Pullman Strike Fund by the middle of August. See "How the Case Stands," August 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL. Other gifts came from individuals and agencies. The Chicago Fire Department contributed $909 to the strike fund, and the Grand Crossing police, $46. See [Rev.] William H. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike (Chicago, 1973 edition), 42-3.
53. Hopkins' first individual gift came during the first week of the strike. See Tribune, May 17, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. Several weeks later Hopkins led the city appeal. See Tribune, June 5, 1894, in Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL. The local alderman was also active in seeking the support of the city council. The Chicago Evening Journal reported that city hall contributed $2,000 of the approximately $19,000 contributed to the Pullman Strike Fund by the middle of August. See "How the Case Stands," August 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL. Other gifts came from individuals and agencies. The Chicago Fire Department contributed $909 to the strike fund, and the Grand Crossing police, $46. See [Rev.] William H. Carwardine, The Pullman Strike (Chicago, 1973 edition), 42-3.
54. Tribune, June 5, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 1, PANL; Chicago Evening Dispatch, August 22, 1894, reported that county employees had contributed $1,027.28 to the Relief Fund. Two days later, the paper reported that "Chicago, Cook County, and the entire state of Illinois are bending their energies to keep these people [in Pullman] from starving to death." Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
55. Tribune, August 21, 1894, described the fates of Mrs. O'Halloran, Mrs. O'Conner, and Mrs. Lengstone, whose families suffered a particularly grim fate, while the Herald used the governor's visit to inform readers that in Pullman "Larders are Empty," August 21, 1894. Even the largely unsympathetic Evening Journal editorial of August 21 admitted that "In the face of actual starvation, however, there is, of course, no room for argument, and this is particularly the case where the sufferers are innocent women and children." Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
56. Chicago Times, August 24, 1894, reported that the donation of the beef was the result of the efforts of W. J. Bailey, a Kensington butcher. Other papers cited the Swift donation as an example of the greater Chicago effort to aid the starving at Pullman. Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
57. The case of the Dutch workers in the strike had been complicated from the outset because of religious strictures against joining a union. A special Dutch branch had to be organized so that the out-of-work Dutch could also get relief.
58. Evening Post, July 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 6, PANL.
59. July 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 6, PANL.
60. Forty percent is best estimate of how many names on the May (first half) 1895 payroll appeared on the May (first half) 1889, 1893, or 1894 payrolls. Microfilms of payrolls in the PANL.
61. Evening Journal, August 21, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
62. Ibid.; Times, August 16, 1894; Record, August 17, 1894; Tribune, August 26, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
63. Ibid.; Times, August 16, 1894; Record, August 17, 1894; Tribune, August 26, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
64. Ibid.; Times, August 16, 1894; Record, August 17, 1894; Tribune, August 26, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
65. Ibid.; Times, August 16, 1894; Record, August 17, 1894; Tribune, August 26, 1894, Strike Scrapbooks, vol. 8, PANL.
66. Addams, Twenty Years, 218-20, tells of a man still suffering the effects of the blacklist ten years after the strike.
67. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, 1992), and Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York, 1994), have sketched these ideas out quite clearly.
68. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, 1992), and Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935 (New York, 1994), have sketched these ideas out quite clearly.