The oasis., 1894-08-30
PULLMAN PHILANTHROPY.

cOmmlSSlOn recently dppoinueu Oy unc
 president, is showing up the far famed
 Pullman philanthropy in anything but
 pleasant light, and the details, given
 under oath, of the heartlessness and cruelty of the men conducting that concern are sufficient to draw upon their heads the generations of all men
 who have hearts in their bosoms. And
 when to this is added the stony refusal of Mir. Pullman, in reply to the re- quest of the governor of Illinois, who
 visited the place and investigated for himself, to do anything to alleviate the sufferings of 5000 people, many of them women and children. in his mod el town, who are positivly starving, the indignation contemplation of such supreme selfishness and porcine indif- ference arouses in the ordinary mind is sufficient to make a socialist, if not an anarchist, of the most law abiding American citizen who has any heart.
 We are told that this is the age of the Christian dispensation, and all teachers assure us that society pro- fesses belief in the golden rule and the sublime doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount. Perhapsl But what is wanted is little less profession and little more practice.
 When the model town of Pullman, built with the great car works and factories there established, was first | projected and while the plans of the ! projectors were materializing in brick | and stone and cement, and for a long l time since, the newspapers and maga- | zines of the country teemed with flat tering description of this great phil l anthropic founded city-a municipal ity of homes, where had been solved | the labor problem of the nineteenth | century, where the great philanthropy ist had built all his operatives lovely | homes, with modern improvements, amid pleasant surroundings, with pub lie baths, free reading rooms, churches, lectures, and all that goes to raise the intellectual and moral status of the | workingman, his wife and children. In this Utopia with plenty of work at | good wages, all his material wants satisfied, and his leisure occupied with elevating and ennobling pursuits, he was to stand in the world as man, fully erect, in the image of his Great or, instead of the misshapen, distort- ed specimens of manhood who make the population of so many manufact- uring towns.
 The foregoing has been the picture of Pullman as seen in the public mind many years. When the strike came, and out of sympathy for the impover- ished and down trodden people at Pull man the entire railroad system of the country was tied up, it began to dawn upon the public that this Utopia was not all it was painted. Now the in- yestigation has proved it, and has proved what a merciless machine for grinding the poor the greatly lauded Pullman philanthropy really is. Men testify that no matter how hard the times, slack the work and deep the re- duction of wages, rents of houses in Pullman lowned by philanthropist, of cOurse) never came down; and the rents charged are nearly double what is charged for similar dwellings in sur rounding suburbs Of Chicago-sl7 be- ing the price at Pullman for what goes for S9 in adjacent suburban towns This rent was taken out of their wages each month, and what was left was generally insufficient to feed the fami-