To Quiet the Roar of the Mob

This chapter examines the saga of George M. Pullman's “model town,” which he originally envisioned as a way to reform the senses of the working classes and achieve a peaceful and sustainable solution to the labor problem. With his construction of a model town, Pullman believed he could tame the sensory values of his workers by promoting “self-restraint” and the refinement of “coarse tastes.” In the end, however, Pullman's effort to regulate workers' sensory lives yielded resentment that culminated in a railroad strike in 1894. This chapter first discusses the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and how it raised concerns about a radical mob bent on stifling—even reversing—Chicago's economic modernization. It then considers Pullman's ambitious plan to build a corporate town south of the city that would retrain workers' senses to ease the conflict between labor and capital without sacrificing the bottomline of his Palace Car Company. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Pullman Strike of 1894 sparked by suffering and discontent in the model town.