| The Pullman Strike occurred when 50,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers reacted to a 28% wage cut by going on a wildcat strike in Illinois on May 11, 1894, bringing traffic west of Chicago to a halt.[1] The owner of the company, George Pullman was a "welfare capitalist." Firmly believing that labor unrest was caused by the unavailability of decent pay and living conditions, he paid unprecedented wages and built a company town by Lake Calumet (Pullman, Chicago) in what is now the southern part of the city. Instead of living in utilitarian tenements as did many other industrial workers of the day, Pullman workers lived in attractive company-owned houses, complete with indoor plumbing, gas, and sewer systems, in a beautifully landscaped little town with free education through eighth grade and a free public library stocked with an initial gift of 5,000 volumes from Pullman's own personal library. While the company town did make a high-quality life possible, the system of interrelated corporations that owned and operated it all did presuppose that workers would live within their means and practice basic budgetary prudence. Some workers did find themselves locked into a kind of "debt slavery" (one form of truck system), owing more than they earned to the company stores and to the independent sister company that owned and operated the town of Pullman. Money owed was automatically deducted from workers' paychecks, and a worker who had overspent himself might never see his earnings at all. Reference |  |