Pullman's First Sleeping-Car.
This first sleeping-car, the "Pioneer," embodied many of the features of the modern Pullman, but it was condemned by practically every railroad man in the country as a wild extravagance, for the ordinary sleeping-car of the time cost only four thousand dollars.
The "Pioneer" lay in the train-shed most of the time during the first year of its existence, but whenever it was used the demand for berths in it was promising.
This led James F. Joy, president of the Michigan Central, to give a half-hearted consent to experiments on his road. Pullman took every cent of money he possessed and as much money as he could borrow, and built four cars. They cost twenty-four thousand dollars each, and when Joy learned how much money had been expended on them it amazed him so much that he was on the point of ordering a discontinuance of all experiments.
Joy held up the trial for a month, and then allowed the cars to go out only on condition that each one be accompanied by an old-style car. The old cars were deserted. People preferred to pay two dollars for a berth in a Pullman car, rather than fifty or seventy-five cents for a bunk in the jolting, springless cars.
Still, the railroad men could not see the advisability of investing twenty-five thousand dollars or more—for Pullman's plans grew in expensiveness all the time—in cars, and they steadfastly turned down his requests that they give him orders to build cars and buy the cars when they were finished. This led him to determine to build the cars and rent them.
Investors did not flock to him, but he got together enough to start operations, and the five cars he already had on the rail were earning money. During the first year he did not add any new cars, but the next year he put several out, and they were a huge success—the company that year earning two hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
The big roads centering in Chicago were pushing out in all directions. The transcontinental roads were open for business. The ending of the Civil War had paved the way to railroad extension in the South. All these facts gave new opportunities for Pullman's business.
In the second year the company earned still larger profits, reaching the four-hundred-thousand-dollar mark. Its income went on steadily up to a million dollars, and still on until it passed beyond twenty millions.
Before this stage was attained, however, Pullman found that his factory had outgrown its Chicago quarters, and all the surrounding land was held at prohibitive prices. He determined to break away from the city, so he went out several miles, and for eight hundred thousand dollars purchased a thirty-five-hundred-acre tract. Here he built the city of Pullman, raising the ground from the level of the prairie, so that the mistake Chicago had made would not be repeated, and planning everything on such a scale that no future changes were necessary.