George M.
Pullman has ever been deemed the dominant factor in that vast and
profitable enterprise." This belief was declared an error, and the
writer went on: "Field is, and for years has been, in almost absolute
control. Pullman was little more than a figurehead. Such men as Robert
T. Lincoln, the president of the company, and Norman B. Ream are but
representatives of Marshall Field, whose name has never been identified
with the property he so largely owns and controls." That fulsome writer,
with the usual inaccuracies and turgid exaggerations of "popular
writers," omitted to say that although Field was long the controlling
figure in the management of the Pullman works, yet other powerful
American multimillionaires, such as the Vanderbilts, had also become
large stockholders.

The Pullman Company, Moody states, employed in 1904, in all departments
of its various factories at different places, nearly 20,000 employees,
and controlled 85 per cent of the entire industry.[179] As at least a
part of the methods of the company have been the subject of official
investigation, certain facts are available.

To give a brief survey, the Pullman Company was organized in 1867 to
build sleeping cars of a feasible type officially patented by Pullman.
In 1880 it bought five hundred acres of land near Chicago. Upon three
hundred of these it built its plant, and proceeded, with much show and
advertisement of benevolence, to build what is called a model town for
the benefit of its workers. Brick tenements, churches, a library, and
athletic grounds were the main features, with sundry miscellaneous
accessories. This project was heralded far and wide as a notable
achievement, a conspicuous example of the growing altruism of business.

THE NATURE OF A MODEL TOWN.

Time soon revealed the inner nature of the enterprise. The "model town,"
as was the case with imitative towns, proved to be a cunning device with
two barbs. It militated to hold the workers to their jobs in a state of
quasi serfdom, and it gave the company additional avenues of exploiting
its workers beyond the ordinary and usual limits of wages and profits.
In reality, it was one of the forerunners of an incoming feudalistic
sway, without the advantages to the wage worker that the lowly possessed
under medieval feudalism. It was also an apparent polished improvement,
but nothing more, over the processes at the coal mines in Pennsylvania,
Illinois and other States where the mi