![]() ![]() Seamstresses, which made up the largest category of female employees at the time, made and repaired all of the textiles used in Pullman cars: carpets, drapes, upholstery, bed linens, tablecloths, and mattresses. In the early days, the handful of women who worked at the factory were either seamstresses or embossers in the glass department. Courtesy of the Quiroz familyīut women were also part of the factory operations. ![]() She poses in her uniform in front of her Pullman house on Langley Ave. Rose Szczerbiak Barlog cleaned the inside of cannon shells with steel wool. The pedestrian scale of the neighborhood made it possible for men to have lunch at home and find rest in the domestic environment. In the ShopsĪs Douglas Pearson Hoover suggests in his thesis “ Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman,” the town was planned with the intention that women’s primary role would be “to mother children and raise them in an air of middle class respectability on a working-class family’s budget.” The homes were designed with domestic work in mind-indoor plumbing, garbage outlets, and a “covered arrangement of clotheslines” in the back. Of course, since the beginning, women both defined and defied the social experiment that was Pullman. Pullman resisted hiring women and did his best to keep attention away from the company’s female employees. And in some ways, that’s precisely what Pullman would have wanted. Even Almont Lindsey’s 1939 article, which focuses particularly on the ways in which paternalism guided the design and management of the company town, has nothing specific to say about the Pullman women. Philip Randolph and sharply dressed porters, the work of women at the Pullman company has remained largely invisible. Between images of striking carpenters, painters, and blacksmiths charismatic union leaders like Eugene V. When these stories are told, they tend to center the men. In 1925, they would form the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and in 1937, would become the first African-American labor union to win a contract with a major corporation in the U.S. Or perhaps you know about the Pullman Porters, the African-American employees who provided service to the passengers on the trains, making up the sleeping berths, shining shoes, carrying luggage, and even providing entertainment here and there. If you know something about the history of Pullman, it’s probably related to the strike in 1894, when thousands of factory employees halted operations for nearly three months and inspired a nationwide boycott of Pullman trains orchestrated by the American Railway Union. Pullman, a railroad mogul who had made his fortune building luxury rail cars, embarked on a new social experiment-a town (named for himself) south of Chicago that housed an expansive factory flanked by modern homes and amenities for his workers. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |