In the next ten years similar "bunk" cars were adopted by other railroads, but improvements were negligible and their only justification existed in the ability of the passengers to recline at length during the long night hours. The innovation of bedding furnished by the railroad marked a slight progress, but the rough and none too clean sheets and blankets which the passengers were permitted to select from a closet in the end of the car, must have failed even in that day to give satisfaction to the fastidious.
But in the early fifties these very inconveniences fired the imagination of a young traveler who had bought a ticket on a night train between Buffalo and Westfield, and in his alert mind was inspired, as he tossed sleepless in his bunk, the first vision of a car that would revolutionize the railroad travel of the world and of a system that would present to the traveling public a mighty organization whose first purpose would be to contribute safety, convenience, luxury and a uniform and universal service from coast to coast.
George Mortimer Pullman was born in Brockton, Chautauqua County, New York, March 3, 1831. His early schooling was limited to the country schoolhouse, and at the age of fourteen his education was completed and he obtained employment at a salary of $40 a year in a small store in Westfield, New York, that supplied the neighboring farmers with their simple necessities. But the occupation of a country storekeeper failed to fix the restless mind of the boy, and three years later he packed his few possessions and moved to Albion, New York, where an older brother had developed a cabinet-making business.
Harpers Weekly May 28, 1859.
CONVENIENCE OF THE NEW SLEEPING CARS.
(Timid Old Gent, who takes a berth in the Sleeping Car, listens.)
Brakeman. "Jim, do you think the Millcreek Bridge safe to-night?"
Conductor. "If Joe cracks on the steam, I guess we'll get the Engine and Tender over all right. I'm going forward!"
Here Pullman found a wider field for his natural abilities, and at the same time acquired a knowledge of wood working and construction that was soon to afford the foundation for larger enterprises. During the ten years that followed there were times when the demands on the little shop of the Pullman brothers failed to afford sufficient occupation for the two young cabinet makers, and the younger brother, eager to improve his opportunities, began to accept outside contracts of various sorts. The state of New York had begun to widen the Erie Canal which passed through Albion. Clustered on its banks were numerous warehouses and other buildings, and the young man soon proved his ability to contract successfully for the necessary moving of these buildings back to the new banks of the canal. The venture was successful. An opportunity fortuitously created was seized, and not only was an increased livelihood secured, but the wider scope of this new activity gave the young man an increased confidence in himself on which to enlarge his future activities.
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.