Editing George Pullman (section)

=== Pullman sleeping car ===
[[File:Pullman's Palace Car Comp 1892.JPG|thumb|Share of the Pullman's Palace Car Company, issued April 20, 1892, made out to George M. Pullman]]

Pullman developed a railroad [[sleeping car]], the Pullman sleeper or "palace car". These were designed after the packet boats that travelled the [[Erie Canal]] of his youth in Albion. The first one was finished in 1864.

After President [[Abraham Lincoln]] was assassinated, Pullman arranged to have his body carried from Washington, D.C., to [[Springfield, Illinois|Springfield]] on a sleeper, for which he gained national attention, as hundreds of thousands of people lined the route in homage.{{citation needed|date=July 2018}} Lincoln's body was carried on the [[Funeral and burial of Abraham Lincoln|Presidential train car that]] Lincoln himself had commissioned that year. Pullman had cars in the train, notably for the President's surviving family. Orders for his new car began to pour into his company. The sleeping cars proved successful although each cost more than five times the price of a regular railway car. They were marketed as "luxury for the middle class".

In 1867, Pullman introduced his first "hotel on wheels," the ''President'', a sleeper with an attached kitchen and dining car. The food rivaled the best restaurants of the day and the service was impeccable. A year later in 1868, he launched the ''Delmonico'', the world's first sleeping car devoted to fine cuisine. The ''Delmonico'' menu was prepared by chefs from New York's famed [[Delmonico's Restaurant]].

Both the ''President'' and the ''Delmonico'' and subsequent Pullman sleeping cars offered first-rate service. The company hired African-American [[freedmen]] as Pullman porters. Many of the men had been former domestic slaves in the South. Their new roles required them to act as porters, waiters, valets, and entertainers, all rolled into one person.<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite web |author=Lawrence Tye |url=http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/choosing-servility-staff-americas-trains |title=Choosing Servility To Staff America's Trains &#124; Alicia Patterson Foundation |publisher=Aliciapatterson.org |date=May 5, 2011 |access-date=March 26, 2013 |archive-date=September 21, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130921053613/http://aliciapatterson.org/stories/choosing-servility-staff-americas-trains |url-status=dead }}</ref> As they were paid relatively well and got to travel the country, the position became considered prestigious, and Pullman porters were respected in the black communities.

Pullman believed that if his sleeper cars were to be successful, he needed to provide a wide variety of services to travelers: collecting tickets, selling berths, dispatching wires, fetching sandwiches, mending torn trousers, converting day coaches into sleepers, etc. Pullman believed that former house slaves of the [[plantations in the American South|plantation]] South had the right combination of training to serve the businessmen who would patronize his "Palace Cars". Pullman became the biggest single employer of African Americans in post-Civil War America.<ref name=autogenerated1/>

In 1869, Pullman bought out the Detroit Car and Manufacturing Company. Pullman bought the patents and business of his eastern competitor, the Central Transportation Company in 1870. In the spring of 1871, Pullman, [[Andrew Carnegie]], and others bailed out the financially troubled [[Union Pacific]]; they took positions on its board of directors. By 1875, the Pullman firm owned $100,000 worth of patents, had 700 cars in operation, and had several hundred thousand dollars in the bank.

In 1887, Pullman designed and established the system of "[[vestibuled train]]s," with cars linked by covered gangways instead of open platforms. The [[Gangway connection|vestibules]] were first put in service on the [[Pennsylvania Railroad]] trunk lines.<ref name=appletons>{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Pullman, George Mortimer|year=1900}}</ref>
The French social scientist [[Paul de Rousiers]] (1857–1934), who visited Chicago in 1890, wrote of Pullman's manufacturing complex, "Everything is done in order and with precision. One feels that some brain of superior intelligence, backed by a long technical experience, has thought out every possible detail."<ref>{{citation|page=235 |last=Miller|first=Donald L.|title=City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N0TNXWkIf0wC&pg=PA235 |access-date=July 9, 2017|date=April 3, 1997|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-684-83138-1}}</ref>