Modern Pullman steel sleeping car, ready to be made up for the night
Modern Pullman steel sleeping car during the day
Years ago the wearied traveler wrapped his great coat about him for his midnight journey. Later a few "sleeping" cars of primitive construction provided sheets and blankets which were stored in a cupboard in the end of the car. As these were washed only at irregular intervals, it was a lucky passenger who found clean linen for his bed, and if he did not make up the bed himself, it was the brakeman who provided this domestic service. Naturally no one thought of undressing for the night, and when the Pullman car was first introduced it was necessary to print on the back of the tickets and in the employees' rules book the warning that passengers must not retire with their boots on.
Today the Pullman Company to provide clean linen nightly for each passenger, keeps on hand 1,858,178 sheets, which are valued at $980,553.00, and 1,403,354 pillow slips worth $186,475.00. In the twelve months ending April 27, 1916, over two hundred thousand sheets, valued at over one hundred thousand dollars, and nearly two hundred thousand pillow cases, valued at over twenty thousand dollars, were condemned. And during the same period 108,492,359 pieces of linen, including both sheets and pillow cases were washed and ironed. In the matter of condemnation, it is interesting to learn that the slightest tear or stain is considered sufficient cause. These figures are staggering in their immensity, but even more amazing is the system by which these articles are provided, changed, washed, returned in traveling hotels, at times hundreds of miles removed from the nearest supply station.
In the oldtime washroom a roller towel gave satisfaction to travelers less particular than those of the present day. But now how things have changed. Two million seven hundred thousand towels are needed to supply an ever increasing demand. Three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars was their cost and each year seventy million towels is the laundry order. When Brown has shaved in the men's washroom in good American style, he will probably wipe his razor on a towel. It is not his custom at home, but the traveler seems to have scant respect for property. That one little cut will destroy the towel for future service. Pullman towels rarely have a chance to wear out. Over a hundred thousand a year are condemned chiefly because of such usage, and, sad to relate, each year over half a million are "lost." A Pullman towel is a handy wrapping for a pair of shoes, but the annual lost charge amounts to nearly seventy thousand dollars. It is a charge that must be accepted by the company. It will not do to question a passenger's integrity.
All told, the investment by the Pullman Company in car linen amounts to $1,856,708.00, representing 6,597,714 separate pieces. And this is only for sleeping and parlor cars and a relatively small number of buffet and private cars, for the company no longer operates the diners. To provide new linen to replace the lost and condemned costs an annual sum of over four hundred thousand dollars.
But the quantities and the cost of other articles which the company provides are even more impressive. These, for the most part, are expressions of Pullman service over and above the service itself, but it is unquestionably true that by such "over and above" service is the whole service most truly judged. Who would think, for instance, that in one year 5,819,656 women's hats were protected against dust by paper bags provided by the porters. And yet these paper bags represented a total cost of $14,549.00. Smokers in the same period consumed two million boxes of matches, and over forty-two million drinking cups costing nearly eighty thousand dollars gave the modern touch of sanitation to the water coolers. Soap would naturally be considered an essential part of the service, but a soap bill for one year of sixty thousand dollars is a large order for cleanliness. So, too, is the sum of $20,000 for hair brushes and a third of that amount for combs.
Back in the dark ages of blissful ignorance of germs, railroad coaches were hallowed breeding places for sickness. But times have changed, and today it is a pretty safe remark to make that the Pullman car is more healthful than almost any place where people frequently congregate. It does not take many gray hairs to remember the days of sleeping cars furnished with heavy carpets tacked to wooden floors, of stuffy hangings, and plush upholstery, of fancy woodwork rife with cracks and crannies, and of washrooms and toilets that no amount of cleaning could ever maintain entirely innocuous.