Living to Work & Working to Live

As companies shifted in order to boost efficiency, building homes for workers to live near the job sites was one way to lessen difficulties. One such company that did this was Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois.

“[C]apital will not invest in sentiment, nor for sentimental considerations for the laboring class. But let it once be proved that enterprises of this kind are safe and profitable and we shall see great manufacturing companies develop similar enterprises, and thus a new era will be introduced in the history of labor.” – George Pullman, to the Hour Week Journal of New York, August 5, 1882.

Different types of Pullman workers lived very different lives, some of which can be learned about at the Pullman National Historical Park. Job levels and pay, race and background – where a worker lived and the resources available to them went into determining their place and mobility within this micro-society.