Pullman Company

The Pullman Company was an American manufacturer of railroad cars, founded by George Pullman, that built and operated the luxury sleeping car from the 1860s into the twentieth century. Through mass production and the takeover of rivals it developed a virtual monopoly on the production and ownership of sleeping cars, and at its peak in the early twentieth century its cars carried 26 million people a year. Its workers first lived in the company town of Pullman, now a Chicago neighborhood. After the company cut wages by 25 percent in the downturn that followed the Panic of 1893 without lowering rents, the Pullman Strike of 1894 followed, one of the most consequential strikes in United States labor history. After George Pullman died in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln became president. Sleeper operations ceased on 31 December 1968 and the company was dissolved on 1 January 1969, although a successor continued some work and its remaining designs passed to Bombardier in 1987.