During the time the steel mills opened, Irish, Scots, English, and Germans employees came to perform great works.
At the time the population in Chicago was about 90 percent Polish.
Visiting this places was very shocking...usually people that visit..even people who live here in Chicago get the "nice view" of the city and not so much the things that have gone wrong or are part of its dark past.
I learned that most of the south side of Chicago's lakefront was occupied with steel mills....it was very shocking to see because i had never been to the lakefront on the south side of the city, i always thought it was very much like the lakefront on the north side...with nice sandy beaches all along.
Something i found so interesting was that the Sears tower (now called The Willis Tower)
and the McCormick place were both built from steel from this factories.
The shocking part wasn't much that there was a lot of factories there..what i found particularly shocking and i guess sad was finding out more about George Pullman and his company.
I read about him yesterday...i also found him a very ignorant man even though many considered him "brilliant"..i have a completely different opinion about him.
I think the way he treated his workers was not right and i think it was very ignorant of him to come up with the conclusion that because of the past of African Americans they would fit the position of car porters best because "they were known to be good servants". (to me that does not sound like the thinking of a bright man).
After his workers started organizing, Pullman thought that by building a "small town" were workers could feel "protected", they would not reveal against him.
Pullman banned alcoholism in this town and he also took over families by building only one church in order to keep people from organizing somewhere else.
This church is still standing today and it's called the "Green stone church"
After building this church Pullman stated that it wasn't built much because of the spiritual aspect or the moral aspect but more because of the "look".
Pullman did not build this town because he really wanted to help the workers...in fact many of the workers did not even live in this town!
he just built it so that the image of his company would not be damaged.
In my opinion..George Pullman was a very greedy man who only cared about himself and nothing else. He did not even provide the workers with health care because he thought that it would not make him any profit...like if this wasn't enough his workers had to work under bad working conditions, dangerous places, and low wages.
After all of this...he still didn't want the workers to fight for any rights...after a while Steel workes began to organize, but this came with consequences...as a result people called them communists and opposed them.
Today The small "town" that George Pullman supposedly built for his workers is still standing.
This places are a very important part of Chicago's history and i also think that it's a bit sad that now nobody wants to use this p[laces for anything so its pretty much, in a way abandoned because the area has no attraction whatsoever. Before, workers would live in the houses, now there is no use for this places and nobody wants to rebuild or move to this side of the city.
Today i learned a lot of new things...Chicago is a great city with a lot of history, and it would not be what it is today if it wasn't for so many workers that paved the way.
Our city continues to grow and even though we try to make it the best that we can by building nice homes and businesses...i learned that there is still a lot of discrimination against workers and that in many places the work conditions might not be the safest...Today also helped me understand that many factory and company owners do not care much about their workers as long as they are living good and making money (which i find very wrong because without this workers they would not be able to live their wealthy lifestyles..so its pretty much at the expense of the mistreated workers that they are able to make a fortune).
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