Almost daily at this time Mr. Pullman was interviewed on the situation by the real-estate newspaper phalanx—Henry D. Lloyd was then in charge for the Tribune—but "nothing decided," was the stereotyped reply. By and by I discovered that almost invariably if I went at a certain hour, "Colonel Jim" would be largely in evidence about the Pullman headquarters, with an air of doing a "land-office business," and, as it turned out, he was actually doing something very much like it. Slowly I picked up clue after clue, pieced this to that, and one day felt in a position to say to Mr. Pullman that I had located the site. He seemed amused, and laughingly replied that he was pleased to hear it, as it would save the committee on site a lot of trouble; and, as some of them were that very day looking at a Desplaines River site near Riverside—a trip most ostentatiously advertised in advance—he thought he would telegraph them to stop looking, and come back to town.
It was always a pleasure to interview Mr. Pullman, for he had a way of making you feel at ease, and I entered heartily into the humor of his jocularity. But, as in a bantering way, I let out link after link of my chain of evidence, he became more and more serious, and finally—without committing himself, however—took the ground that even if true, in view of the importance of their plans, no paper having the good of Chicago at heart ought by premature publication to interfere with them. He pressed this point more and more, and finally made frank confession that I was on the right track, by acknowledging that they had already bought many hundreds of acres, were negotiating for many hundreds more which would be advanced to prohibitive prices by publication, and the whole scheme would thus be wrecked. On the other hand, if I withheld publication, he promised that I should have the matter exclusively—the whole vast improvement scheme, unique plan of administration, etc. As there was the danger in waiting that one of my rivals might get hold of the facts, exploit them, and thus turn the tables on me, I replied that the matter was of too great moment for me to take the responsibility of holding the news, and that I should have to consult Mr. Storey. It happened that Mr. Storey had invested quite extensively in South Side boulevard property; and, as a great improvement southward could not fail to add to the value of his holding, and there was the further prospect of a more complete exclusive account later than was possible with my skeleton information, he gave a ready assent.
The town of Pullman meant far more in the mind of its founder than a mere industrial establishment. The dreary, water-soaked prairie was raised to high, dry land; an entire town was planned and blocked out following Mr. Pullman's own design. Architects and landscape architects worked together to carry out the plan to a harmonious and pleasing fulfillment. Among the more prominent details of this vast work were included a system by which the sewage of the town was collected and pumped far away to the Pullman produce farm; the equipment of every house and flat regardless of rental with the most modern appliances of water, gas, and plumbing; the establishment of athletic fields; the concentration of the merchandising of the town under the glass roof of the central arcade building, and the construction of a handsome market house, a fine schoolhouse to accommodate a thousand pupils, a library containing over 8,000 volumes, a savings bank and a large and artistically decorated theater. The population of Pullman in January, 1881, counted four souls. In February, 1882, there were 2,084 inhabitants, a total which had increased to 8,203 by September, 1884.
Preparing the steel frame for the upper section of a Pullman sleeping car
Sand blasting the brass trimmings of the car before applying the finish
A contemporary writer closes an enthusiastic description of the town of Pullman with the following paragraph:
Imagine a perfectly equipped town of 12,000 inhabitants, built out from one central thought to a beautiful and harmonious whole. A town that is bordered with bright beds of flowers and green velvety stretches of lawn; that is shaded with trees and dotted with parks and pretty water vistas, and glimpses here and there of artistic sweeps of landscape gardening; a town where the homes, even to the most modest, are bright and wholesome and filled with pure air and light; a town, in a word, where all that is ugly, and discordant, and demoralizing, is eliminated, and all that inspires to self-respect, to thrift and to cleanliness of person and of thought is generously provided. Imagine all this, and try to picture the empty, sodden morass out of which this beautiful vision was reared, and you will then have some idea of the splendid work, in its physical aspects at least, which the far-reaching plan of Mr. Pullman has wrought.[3]