Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1897 — PULLMAN IS NO MORE. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PULLMAN IS NO MORE.

PALACE CAR MAGNATE DIES OF HEART FAILURE. End Cornea Suddenly In the Early Morning-Started a Poor Lad at S4O a Year and at Death Was Reputed Worth $40,000,000. Career Is Closed. George M. Pullman, president of the Pullman Palace Car Company, died at 5:30 o’clock Tuesday morning, at his home in Chicago. Death was sudden, and is attributed to heart failure. Monday night Mr. Pullman retired at 11 o’clock, after entertaining a party of friends at his home. At that time he made no particular complaint regarding his health. During the past month Mr. Pullman had been ailing, but the trouble was not sufficient to interfere with his business, and Monday he was at his office as usual. Early Tuesday morning a friend, who was stopping with Mr. Pullman, heard a slight noise from his host’s bedchamber and entered to see Mr. Pullman make his way to a safe, where he fell gasping for breath. Physicians were summoned, but the sick man had expired before a doctor could reach his side.—His very sudden death came as a shock to his relatives and friends, and as it became known throughout the city formed the chief topic of conversation in business circles. Mrs. Pullman was in New Y’ork at the time of her husband’s demise. Founder of a City. George Mortimer Pullman, one of Chicago’s most distinguished citizens and founder of the city which bears his name, was born in Chautauqua County, N. Y., March 3, 1831. At the age of 14 he was

a clerk in a country store at S4O a year and his board. Three years later he went to Albion, N. Y., where he was employed as a cabinetmaker. During the following ten years he was engaged in contract work of various kinds. In 1859 he went to Chicago. Between 1859 and 1862 he remodeled several passenger coaches into sleeping cars. These .cars were first run over the Chicago and Alton and Galena and Chicago railroads. In 1865 the first complete sleeping ear, “The Pioneer,” was finished at a cost of SIB,OOO. He then organized the Pullman Palace Car Company and established the plant at the town of Pullman, which was a plan of his own creation, and has grown to splendid proportions and is known the world over as a model city. At the time of his death Mr. Pullman is reputed to have been worth $40,000,000. The Pullman Palace Car Company ia the largest railroad manufacturing interest in the world. It employs a capital of $40,000,000 and has assets exceeding $45,000,000. About the time of the World’s Columbian exposition it had in its service 2,239 ears and employed 13,885 persons, whose annual wages aggregated $3,331,527, being an average of $6lO per capita. At present, however, both the number of employes and their wages are lower than then. But, although Mr. Pullman was the moving spirit of this vast enterprise, his capacity for business was not fully satisfied in any single venture. Among the important interests with which he was identified were the Eagleton iron -works of New York, and the New York Loan and Improvement Company, which he organized and which built the Metropolitan Elevated Railway on Second and Sixth avenues. He had also been interested in the Nicaragua canal plan since its inception. At the time it was constructed, in 1884, the Pullman office building, where the business headquarters of the car company are maintained, was probably the finest business and apartment block in Chicago, and it does not stand behind many to this day. His home, a mansion of brown stone on Prairie avenue and Eighteenth street, is one of the finest appointed residences in Chicago. In business Mr. Pullman was prompt but never hasty. Socially, he was courtly in manner, but his formality was not such as to make him unapproachable. In 1867 he married Miss Hattie A. Sanger, daughter of James T. Sanger of Chicago. Their four children are Florence, Harriet, George M. and Walter, the last two being twins.

GEORGE M. PULLMAN.