"Sir: I examined the conditions at Pullman yesterday, visited even the kitchens and bedrooms of many of the people. Two representatives of your company were with me and we found the distress as great as it was represented. The men are hungry and the women and children are actually suffering. They have been living on charity for a number of months and it is exhausted. Men who have worked for your company for more than ten years had to apply to the relief society in two weeks after the work stopped. I learn from your manager that last spring there were 3,260 people on the pay roll; yesterday there were 2,220 at work, but over 600 of these are new men, so that only about 1,600 of the old employes have been taken back, thus leaving over 1,000 of the old employes who have not been taken back. A few hundred have left. The remainder have nearly all applied for work, but were told that they were not needed. These are utterly destitute. The relief committee last Saturday gave out two pounds of oatmeal and two pounds of cornmeal to each family, but even the relief committee has exhausted its resources. Something must be done at once. The case differs from instances of destitution found elsewhere, for generally there is somebody in the neighborhood able to give relief. This is not the case at Pullman. Even those who have gone to work are so exhausted that they cannot help their neighbors if they would. I repeat now that it seems to me your company cannot afford to have me appeal to the charity and humanity of the state to save the lives of your old employes. Four-fifths of those people are women and children. No matter what caused this distress it must be met.
"If you will allow me I will make this suggestion: If you had shut down your works last fall when you say business was poor you would not have expected to get any rent from your tenants. Now, while a dollar is a large sum to each of these people all the rent now due you is a comparatively small matter to you. If you will cancel all rent to Oct. 1, you will be as well off as if you had shut down. This would enable those at work to meet their most pressing wants. Then if you cannot give work to all, work some half time so that all can at least get something to eat for their families. This will give immediate relief to the whole situation and then by degrees assist as many to go elsewhere as desire to do so and all to whom you cannot give work. In this way something like a normal condition could be re-established at Pullman before winter and you would not be out any more than you would have been had you shut down a year ago. I will be at the Unity block for several hours and will be glad to see you if you care to make any reply.
"Yours respectfully,
"John P. Altgeld."
Mr. Pullman replied as follows:
The Pullman's Palace Car Company,
Office of the President
"Chicago, Ill., Aug. 21, 1894.
"Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of this date, giving your impressions derived from your visit to the town of Pullman yesterday. In pursuance of the invitation contained in your telegram of the 19th inst. I caused Mr. Wickes, a vice president of this company, who is thoroughly acquainted with its affairs at Pullman, to call upon you and offer you every assistance in his power or which could be offered by any officer of the company in making your proposed personal investigation. Mr. Wickes offered to accompany you to Pullman for this purpose, and I regret that you did not appear to consider that he could be of service to you. As an indication of the importance of the aid of local knowledge in making essential discriminations I may say to you that I have the best reason for believing that the husband of a wife who is published as representing her family to you yesterday as in need of help, drew more than $1,300 of his savings from a bank July 2 last for the purpose as he said of buying lots.
"While it has not been represented to the officers of this company by any persons concerned that there was any such extended distress at Pullman, as was represented for the first time by the extraordinary method of a published telegram to you in your official capacity, I do not doubt that there are many cases of need caused by the refusal of the employes for more than two and one-half months to earn offered wages of more than $300,000; and that such cases have been increased and made more severe by the persistence of more than 650 of our employes, of whom about 350 live in Pullman, in refusing to apply for their old places after the strike was practically over and after they were publicly invited, July 16, to resume their work, until by the gradual coming in of new men during the whole month their places have been filled and the full force engaged for all work in hand. In addition to this there is, no doubt, need among the old employes living in Pullman, a considerable number of whom have persistently refused to apply for work at all, many of them it is understood, considering themselves to be still engaged in a strike.
"I mention these things so that the responsibility for the existing situation, whatever it is may not be improperly placed. The situation, however, is one which must be dealt with without regard to what has caused it, and I shall give it the consideration which is due from the company. I do not, however, anticipate, as you appear to do, that those employes who have resumed their work will be limited to the satisfaction of their most pressing wants, and as to those who are not at work the cancelling of their rents is not, I venture to suggest, a question to which attention should first be given at the present juncture if their pressing needs are as you suppose them to be. The company will continue in its efforts to secure work in order to employ as many men as possible, and in that way relieve the situation as far as practicable.
"Your suggestion that the work should be divided so that a sufficient number of our present employes should be put on half time in order to give at least half time work for all was tried last winter. The result has been that the gross earnings of various individual employes were last winter so small as to give an erroneous impression with reference to the sufficiency of the rate of wages. The policy of the company is now to employ only as many men as it is possible to furnish work for on full time.