Palace Car Prince · A Biography of George Mortimer Pullman

Palace Car Prince is the first book-length biography of George Pullman (1831-1897), an entrepreneur whose name became synonymous with the golden age of U.S. railroad travel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this impressively researched work, Liston Leyendecker portrays the transformation of a man of vision who ascended to prominence following the Civil War only to lose control of his empire in the face of a rapidly changing world of industrial and labor relations. An adventurous young man, Pullman ventured, westward to Chicago and Colorado from his upstate New York home, eventually leaving a successful store in the Colorado goldfields in 1863 to return to Chicago and form his Palace Car Company, the manufacturer of luxury sleeping cars. Though Pullman's hard work brought him the admiration, power, and wealth he sought, it also tired him and made him increasingly irascible. As the Palace Car Company prospered, Pullman--who initially was regarded as a "hands-on" manager--became removed from the company's daily affairs. He relied more and more on the advice of his brother Albert, and growing isolation continued throughout his career and extended into family matters. The results of Pullman's aloofness became particularly apparent when, during the railroad workers' strike of 1894, he was publicly vilified as the archetypal nineteenth-century robber baron for his stubborn refusal to negotiate with the suffering strikers.