?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
(LABOR UNIONS.) BROTHERHOOD OF SLEEPING CAR PORTERS. A Magnificent collection of material relative to the Pullman Car Porter and his work. Included: a white dining car jacket and matching towel, a heavy metal tray with four stainless steel "Thermos" bottles for hot and cold water, a Porter's summer cap with the original brass Pullman badge; a Pullman whiskey glass, deck of cards, ashtray, brush, pencil, and a box of wooden matches. Two manuals: "Instructions to Porters, Attendants and Bus Boys" (1952), "Commissary Instructions, Broiler-Buffet-Club and Lounge Car Service," (1939) The original metal step stool used to board passengers; three early silver print "real photo postcards" of Pullman Porters, circa 1910-1920; #'s 14 through 17 of a series of 8 x 10 photo illustrations of Pullman Porters at work, probably produced by the Pullman Company, a 1949 press photo of Pullman Porters marching in a "R.R Fair Parade," two original color booklets: "Pullman, On Dress Parade," and "Go Pullman, by Day. . .by Night" (circa 1950's). Vp, circa 1910-1950's
a large and rare representative collection of pullman porter memorabilia. Following the Civil War, the United States underwent a period of rebuilding, expansion and significant shifts in population. Rail lines stretching from New York to Chicago, to points West, meant longer and longer and more exhausting train trips. In 1867 George Pullman formed the Pullman Palace Car Company, which began producing "sleeping cars" that could accommodate passengers for long overnight trips across the country. In 1900, after buying out virtually all of the competing companies, Pullman reorganized it all as "The Pullman Company," characterized by its trademark slogan "Travel and Sleep in Safety and Comfort." African Americans were not immediately used as porters, for the same reason they had difficulty finding any job in the post war economy. But after George Pullman's death in 1897, Robert Todd Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, became the company's president and began to hire African Americans. Not through any particular altruistic motive, but rather the image of the African American as "servant" was more and more the choice to serve the company's first class white travelers, and their wages were significantly below the average. Additionally Pullman porters were for many years treated as menial labor, and abused with long hours and harsh working conditions. But in 1925, the porters were finally organized under the leadership of A. Philip Randolph as The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They became the model for many unions, white and black for years to come.
