The Town of Pullman

In case it's not obvious, this is Pullman, Chicago, Illinois.

Not Pullman, Washington, home of Digilent Inc. (purveyors of fine FPGA dev boards, the Analog Discovery 2 and other HN-relevant hardware) and of Washington State University, etc.

The US Labor Day holiday was a result of fairly violent interactions between Pullman workers and the Pullman company. One of the workers main concerns was the landlord relationship of their employer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman_Strike#Labor_Day

For those who might be interested, the Behind the Bastards podcast did an episode on Pullman and the issues associated with the Town that led to the strike:

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...

I have a friend who studied anthropology, and one of their courses was all about Pullman. What I found most interesting from their stories of the class was how anal Pullman (the guy) was. If he found a family in the town that weren't living as he would prefer, they were thrown out.

It's interesting that the same houses that rented for $18/month in the 1880s, rent for around $1500/month nowadays, albeit after a lot of modern renovations.

Which after factoring in a qualitative improvement of 2x, suggests that $1 in the mid 1880s is worth $40 today.

I think it's interesting to compare Pullman to another company town just 15 miles to the east: Gary, Indiana. It makes me wonder how different Gary would be today if it had been annexed by Chicago like Pullman was.

Isn't facebook trying to build something like this?