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Labo r: Studies in Working-Cla ss History of the Americas, Volume 5, Issue 3
DOI 10.1215/15476715-200 8-004 © 200 8 by Alan Der ickson
13
“ Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”:
Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters
Alan Derickson
During hearings of the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations in , commis-
sion chair Frank Walsh asked railway sleeping car porter G. H. Sylvester about oppor-
tunities to sleep on his overnight run on the Twentieth Century Limited from New
York to Chicago. Sylvester was responsible for preparing the berths for a carload of
passengers and for meeting their many needs related to getting a full, comfortable
night’s rest. But he had no such expectations for himself or his coworkers. Sylvester’s
employer, the Pullman Company, which held a virtual monopoly on the sleep services
business on the nation’s railroads, chose not to staff its cars in a way that assured por-
ters a reasonable amount of sleep. Sylvester told Walsh that he was on duty continu-
ously from the mid-afternoon departure from New York until arrival the following
mid-morning in Chicago and that he had a similar schedule for the return trip the
next day. The twenty-year Pullman veteran put it succinctly: “You ain’t supposed to
get any sleep.” Porters on the Twentieth Century Limited had no choice but to try to
deliver attentive personal service to passengers despite a severe lack of sleep.1
In all probability, the plight of the porters was far from unique. Although his-
torians have not examined the sleep-related issues that have confronted the American
working class during the past two centuries, the existing literature gives suggestive
glimpses of some facets of the problem. Especially in manufacturing and transporta-
tion during the industrializing era, extraordinarily long hours on the job undoubtedly
reduced the time left for sleep. Cynthia Shelton found that in Philadelphia’s cotton
mills, when employees of all ages, even those younger than ten, persevered through
twelve-hour shifts, “children would often fall asleep at their jobs and had to be struck
I am happy to acknowledge the helpful criticism and encouragement provided by Eric Arnesen, Leon Fink,
Bill Kojola, Dan Letwin, David McBride, Peg Spear, Pam Susi, Jim Weeks, and the journal’s anonymous
reviewers.
. G. H. Sylvester, “Testimony,” in U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations (hereafter cited as CIR),
Final Report and Testimony, vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofce, ), :;
Walter Burton, “Testimony,” ibid., – ; John Bourke, “Testimony,” ibid., .
“ Asleep and Awake at the Same Time”:
Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters
LABOR
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. Cynthia Shelton, “The Role of Labor in Early Industrialization: Philadelphia, – ,” Jour-
na l of th e Ea rly Re publ ic (Winter ): (quotation), – ; John Laslett, Labor and the Left: A Study
of Socialist and Radical Inuences in the American Labor Movement (New York: Basic Books, ),
(quotati on); Philip Foner, “S ongs of the Eight-H our Movement,” Labor History (Fall ): (quot a-
ti on); T imot hy Mes ser-K rus e, “E ight H ours , Gre enbac ks, a nd ‘C hin amen’: Wend ell P hill ips, Ira S tewar d,
and the Fate of Labor Reform in Massachusetts,” Labor History (May ): ; David Roediger and
Philip Foner, Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day (New York: Verso, );
Joseph Zeisel, “The Workweek in American Industry, – ,” Monthly Labor Review (January
): – ; Jeremy Atack and Fred Bateman, “How Long Was the Workday in ?” Journal of Eco-
nomic History (March ): – ; Charles Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America’s
Hospital System ( New York: Basic Books, ), , ; Susan Reverby, Ord ered to Care: The Dilemma of
American Nursing, 1850 – 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), – , , , , , ;
David Brody, Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), – ,
– , – , – ; Walter Trattner, Crusade for the Children: A History of the National Child Labor
Committee (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, ), , – ; Daniel Bender, Sweated Work, Weak Bodies:
Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns and Languages of Labor (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, ),
– , , , , ; Thaddeus Russell, Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American
Working Class ( Phi ladel phia : Temp le Uni versit y Pre ss, ) , , ; Fay e Dud den, S erv ing Wo men: Hou se-
hold Service in Nineteenth-Century America (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, ), – ,
; David Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in Industrializing America (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, ), – ; Gregory Downey, Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology,
and Geography, 1850 – 1950 (New York: Routledge, ), , ; Stephen Norwood, Labor’s Flaming Youth:
Telephone Operators and Worker Militancy, 1878 – 1923 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), – .
or strapped to be kept awake” in the s. Night work and other types of shift work
were well-known aspects of employment in health care, communications, and other
industries. These biologically unnatural schedules almost invariably cut into employ-
ees’ chances of obtaining an adequate amount of quiet and restorative rest. Accord-
ing to John Laslett, traditional methods of making beer involved late-night operations
and long stretches on duty, which sometimes left workers “so tired that they simply
threw themselves down on the hop sacks in the brewery for the few hours before
work began again.” Many workers had to try to rest in noisy or uncomfortable spaces
not conducive to sound sleep. Western Union prevailed upon telegraph messenger
boys to spend the night on benches in the ofce, so that they could resume deliveries
early in the morning. Domestic servants were sometimes consigned to drafty attics or
to a spot on the kitchen oor. Taking into account the extent to which much of the
working class struggled to cope with insufcient and low-quality sleep should deepen
our understanding of struggles to reduce and regularize working time by reminding
us that these were, in part, efforts to address the most basic human needs. (If noth-
ing else, studying sleeplessness will help explain why the most famous song of the
nineteenth-century movement for shorter work time called for “eight hours for work,
eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will.”) Investigating sleep patterns should
also broaden our understanding of the routine day-to-day (and night-to-night) experi-
ence and quality of life of American workers.2
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 15
. On occupational diseases, see, among others, David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, eds., Dying for
Work: Workers’ Safety and Health in Twentieth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
); Ro nald Bayer, ed., The Health and Safety of Workers: Case Studies in the Politics of Professional Respon-
sibility (New York: Oxford Unive rsity Press , ); Chr istopher S eller s, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial
Disease to Environmental Health Science (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ); Claudia
Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910 – 1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, ); Ross Mullner, Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy (Washington, DC:
American Public Health Association, ); Allard Dembe, Occupation and Disease: How Social Factors
Affect the Conception of Work-Related Disorders (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ); Barbara
Ellen Smith, Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, ); Alan Derickson, Black Lung: Anatomy of a Public Health Di saster (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, ); Christian Warren, Brush with Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, ); Richard Gillespie, “Accounting for Lead Poison-
ing: The Medical Politics of Occupational Health,” Jour nal of So cia l His tor y (Oct. ): – ; Richard
Greenwald, “Work, Health, and Community: Danbury, Connecticut’s Struggle with an Industrial Dis-
eas e,” Labor’s Heritage (July ): – ; Charles Levenstein, Gregory DeLaurier, and Mary Dunn, The
Cotton Dust Papers: Science, Politics, and Power in the “Discover y” of Byssinosis in the U.S. (Amityville, NY:
Baywood Publishing, ); David Lilienfeld, “The Silence: The Asbestos Industry and Early Occupa-
tional Cancer Research — A Case Study,” Ame rican Journ al of Pub lic Health (June ): – ; Ger-
ald Markowitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley:
University of California Press, ); David Michaels, “Waiting for the Body Count: Corporate Decision
Making and Bladder Cancer in the U.S. Dye Industry,” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, n.s., (Septem-
ber ): – ; David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupa-
tional Disease in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ); Alan Der-
ickson, Workers’ Health, Workers’ Democracy: The Western Miners’ Struggle, 1891 – 1925 (Ith aca, NY: Co rnel l
University Press, ). On occupational injuries, see, among others, Mark Aldrich, Death Rode the Rails:
American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828 – 1965 (Ba ltimo re, M D: Jo hns Hopki ns Un iversi ty Pr ess, )
and Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Safety, 1870 –1939 (Bal-
timore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, ); Carl Gersuny, Work Hazards and Industrial Conict
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, ); William Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety in the Pro-
gr essi ve Pe riod (Le xing ton : Unive rsit y Pres s of K entu cky, ) ; Walte r Lic ht, Working for the Railroad: The
Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), – ;
Andrew Prouty, More Dangerous Than War: Pacic Coast Logging, 1827 –1981 (New York: Garland Pub-
lishing, ); David Von Drehle, Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (New York: Atlantic Monthly
Press, ); James Whiteside, Regulating Danger: The Struggle for Mine Safety in the Rocky Mountain Coal
Industry (L inco ln: U nivers ity o f Nebr aska Press , ).
Thus far, workers’ sleeplessness and its health implications have not awakened
any historian’s interest. Instead, the historiography of workplace health and safety
in the United States has concentrated on discrete, well-dened medical conditions
with relatively clear-cut causation and distinctive manifestations. Over the past twenty
years, a wealth of scholarship has appeared on classic occupational diseases — lead,
radium, and mercury poisoning; silicosis, byssinosis, and the other dust-induced respi-
ratory disorders; and various cancers. Historians have also shed light on the traumatic
injuries rampant in manufacturing, transportation, and mining.3
Thus far, there has been much less investigation of work-related (as opposed to
strictly occupational) injuries and illnesses in which complex causality and nonspecic
LABOR
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. For the distinction between occupational disease and work-related disease, see World Health
Organization, Identication and Control of Work-related Diseases: Report of a WHO Expert Committee, Te c h -
nical Report Series (Geneva: World Health Organization, ). On tuberculosis, see Bender, Sweated
Work, Weak Bodies; Tera Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the
Ci vil Wa r (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), – ; Randall Packard, White Plague,
Black Labor: Tuberculosis and the Political Economy of Health and Disease in South Africa (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, ). On fatigue, see A. J. McIvor, “Manual Work, Technology, and Industrial
Health, – ,” Medical History (April ): – ; A. J. McIvor, “Employers, the Government,
and Industrial Fatigue in Britain, – ,” British Journal of Industrial Medicine (November ):
– ; Richard Gillespie, “Industrial Fatigue and the Discipline of Physiology,” in Physi olog y in the A mer-
ican Context, 1850 – 1940 (Bethesda, MD: American Physiological Society, ), – ; Alan Derickson,
“Physiological Science and Scientic Management in the Progressive Era: Frederic S. Lee and the Com-
mittee on Industrial Fatigue,” Business History Review (Winter ): – . Other relevant works
include Edward Beardsley, A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the Twentieth-
Century South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, ); George Rosen, “Urbanization, Occupa-
tion, and Disease in the United States, – : The Case of New York City,” Journal of the History of
Medicine and Allied Sciences (Oct. ): – ; Allison Hepler, Women in Labor: Mothers, Medicine,
and Occupational Health in the United States, 1890 – 1980 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, );
Michelle Murphy, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Techno-
sc ienc e, an d Wome n Work ers ( Durh am, NC: D uke Un iversity P ress , ).
outcomes have led to both innocent misunderstanding and less-than-innocent obfus-
cation. Recent projects have begun to complement the more tightly focused studies,
however. Exploration of the multiplicity of factors that made tuberculosis the leading
killer of American workers during the industrializing era has expanded the horizons
in this eld. Studies of fatigue have probed the many causes and effects of overwork.
But no one has taken up employee sleeplessness and its deleterious impact.4
The main purpose of this essay is to help broaden the scope of historical
inquiry into workers’ health by offering a case study of sleeplessness among Pullman
porters. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, porters endured a mis-
erable combination of extremely long hours, biorhythmically jarring schedules, and
too-frequent departures from any regular work schedule, all virtually guaranteeing
the deleterious denial of rest. Focusing on this particular group serves to illuminate
the ways in which terms of employment, such as hours and scheduling (as opposed to
more narrowly dened dangerous working conditions like toxic chemicals or biologi-
cal agents), in and of themselves constituted real hazards capable of inicting physi-
cal and psychological damage. I argue that African American sleeping car employees
and their union leaders shared a keen awareness of the risks posed by inadequate and
disrupted rest. This awareness arose before the elds of sleep science and sleep med-
icine existed as established areas of expert inquiry. Yet by close observation of their
own predicament and that of their coworkers, the Pullman porters, like other groups
of workers with no training in the biomedical sciences, detected fatigue-related pat-
terns of illness prevalent in their occupation. Porters called attention to respiratory
infections, heart disease, mental health ailments, and what is now known as shift-
work sleep disorder, which leading experts have characterized as “a level of excessive
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 17
. Charles Czeisler, “Modanil for Excessive Sleepiness Associated with Shift-Work Sleep Disorder,”
New England Journal of Medicine (August , ): (quotation), – ; Robert Basner, “Shift-Work
Sleep Disorder — The Glass Is More Than Half Empty,” ibid., – ; Meir H. Kryger, Thomas Roth, and
William C. Dement, eds., Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, th ed. (Philadelphia: Elsevier/Saun-
ders, ); Clete A. Kushida, ed., Sleep Deprivation: Clinical Issues, Pharmacology, and Sleep Loss Effects
(N ew York: M arc el De kker, ) ; C. L. D rake, T. Ro ehr s, G. Rich ards on, J. K. Wal sh, a nd T. Ro th,“ Shif t
Work Sleep Disorder: Prevalence and Consequences beyond That of Symptomatic Day Workers,” Sleep
(December , ): – ; Anders Knuttson, “Shift Work and Coronary Heart Disease,” Scan-
dinavian Journal of Social Medicine supp. (): – ; Anders Knuttson, “Health Disorders of Shift
Wor ker s,” Occupational Medicine (March ): – . On the limits of current awareness, see Roger
Rosa, “Toward Better Sleep for Workers: Impressions of Some Needs,” Industrial Health (January ):
– . On the evolution of sleep science, see William C. Dement, “History of Sleep Physiology and Med-
icine,” in Kryger, Roth, and Dement, Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, – ; Peretz Lavie, The
Enchanted World of Sleep, trans. Anthony Berris (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ). On lay rec-
ognition of work-related disease, see United Auto Workers, T he Ca se of the Wo rk plac e Kil lers : A Ma nual for
Cancer Detectives on the Job (Detroit: UAW, ); Smith, Digging Graves, , , – ; Derickson, Black
Lung, , – , – , – , – . On occupational stress, see Daniel Walkowitz and Peter Eisenstadt,
“The Psychology of Work: Work and Mental Health in Historical Perspective,” R adi cal Hi sto ry Re vie w
(): – ; Steven Sauter and Joseph Hurrell Jr., “Occupational Health Psychology: Origins, Content,
and Direction,” Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (April ): – ; Cary Cooper and
Philip Dewe, Stress: A Brief History (O xfor d: Blackwe ll, ) .
. Volumes that have claried many facets of the rise of the BSCP but have not emphasized the cen-
trality of discontent over hours and rest include Brailsford Brazeal, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters:
Its Ori gin s and Deve lop men t (New York: Harper and Brothers, ); William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith:
A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925 – 37 (Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, ); Beth Tompkins Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black
A m e r i c a , 1 9 2 5 – 1 9 4 5 (Chapel Hill: Univers ity of Nort h Caro lina Press , ); Jack Santin o, Miles of Smiles,
Years of Struggle: Stories of Black Pullman Porters (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ); Larry Tye, Ris-
ing from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class (New York: Henry Holt, );
Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ).
An derso n doe s not e bot h th at a re duct ion i n work tim e was the prim ary d eman d of t he po rter s’ com pany-
sleepiness during night work and insomnia when attempting to sleep in the daytime.”
Moreover, they recognized job stress as an important mediating factor in sleep-related
disorders. This body of lay knowledge accords well with current state-of-the-art sci-
entic ndings.5
Of course, the porters’ primary aim was not to add to society’s fund of knowl-
edge but rather to exert a measure of control over this particular threat. The rst
step, many of them came to believe, was to build a union. Indeed, dissatisfaction with
unhealthful terms and conditions of employment was one of the driving forces in the
founding and early development of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP).
This motivation has thus far received relatively little notice from the union’s histo-
rians. By mounting a searching critique that helped undermine the Pullman Com-
pany’s carefully devised image of benevolent paternalism, the BSCP succeeded in
establishing rest as a legitimate health concern. More important, though it could not
eradicate sleep irregularities and shortfalls, the black brotherhood did make impor-
tant substantive gains in this area.6
LABOR
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un ion re pres enta tives duri ng th e neg otia tion s and that Milt on Webs ter b elie ved th at Pu llm an’s re jec-
tion of this demand marked the real beginning of the BSCP. However, his treatment of subsequent orga-
nizing does not emphasize the unionists’ pursuit of this priority. See Anderson, Randolph, – .
. For this ubiquitous terminology, see, among others, Kryger, Roth, and Dement, Principles and
Practice of Sleep Medicine; Kushida, Sleep Deprivation; William Dement and Christopher Vaughan, The
Pro mis e of S leep: A Pio nee r in S leep Medi cine Exp lore s the Vita l Con nect ion b etwe en He alth , Hap pine ss, and a
Good Night’s Sleep (New York: D ell P ubl ishi ng, ) ; Jam es B . Maa s wit h Me gan L . Wh erry, Power Sleep:
The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance (New York: Harper Perennial,
); Paul Naitoh, Tamsin Kelly, and Carl Englund, “Health Effects of Sleep Deprivation,” Occupational
Med ici ne: St ate of th e Art Revi ews (April – June ): – .
. Michael O’Malley, Keeping Watch: A History of American Time (New York: Viking, ), – ;
Licht, Workin g for the R ailro ad, – ; Carlene Stephens, “ ‘The Most Reliable Time’: William Bond, the
New England Railroads, and Time Awareness in Nineteenth-Century America,” Technology and Culture
(January ): – ; Mark M. Smith, “Old South Time in Comparative Perspective,” American Histori-
cal Review (December ): – ; Mark M. Smith, Mastered by the Clock: Time, Slavery, and Free-
do m in t he Am eri can S outh (Chapel Hill : Universi ty of Nort h Car olin a Pres s, ).
This essay advances one new concept. Scientists, physicians, and other spe-
cialists investigating sleep disorders commonly employ the terms “sleep loss,” “sleep
deprivation,” “sleep debt,” and “sleep decit” to denote deciencies in unconscious
rest. (Because historians have not studied the sleep behavior of American workers,
we have no historical terminology to scrutinize.) For all their descriptive value, these
terms obscure the source of sleep shortages. “Sleep denial” more accurately describes
the situation of the Pullman porters and, probably, that of many other overworked
employees, past and present. More than any other factor, managers’ decisions caused
the porters to suffer chronic shortfalls of sleep. An emphasis on management’s role
captures the essential conict at stake and thus helps explain why rest time became
the object of recurrent struggle.7
Working for Pullman
Employment relations at the Pullman Company developed within the larger context
of the rail industry. Railroad corporations, perhaps more than any other force, cre-
ated the time discipline crucial to industrializing American capitalism from the mid-
nineteenth century onward. Close coordination of movements of equipment, espe-
cially in single-track routes where catastrophic head-on collisions were a constant
threat, demanded precise timing by operating crews and those who assisted them.
The advent of continuous operations further intensied pressures on workers and
managers. During the formative years of industrialism, the ever-expanding rail sys-
tem spread an obsession with clock-based management into more recesses of Ameri-
can society than did manufacturing enterprises. The railways led the campaign for
nationwide standardization of time in the s. Pullman sleeping car workers toiled
in an industry long preoccupied with thoroughgoing control of employees’ time.8
The railroads also practiced occupational segregation by race and gender.
Women occupied extremely marginal roles at all times except during world wars.
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 19
. Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), ; Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Work-
ers and the Struggle for Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). Because of a lack of
extant evidence, this essay can offer little insight into the maids’ situation. Chateauvert laments that “maids
did not articulate a separate set of grievances, despite sexually discriminatory work rules.” See Marching
Tog eth er, (q uota tion) .
. Hungerford, “Testimony,” in CIR, Final Report, : – ; Messenger, August , ; Pull-
ma n News , May , ; Susan Hirsch, “No Victory at the Workplace: Women and Minorities at Pullman
during World War II,” in The War in American Culture: Society and Consciousness during World War II, ed.
Lewis Erenberg and Susan Hirsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), – , esp. ; San-
tino, Miles of Smiles, – ; Joseph Husband, The Story of the Pullman Car (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, ),
– ; Lucius Beebe, Mr. Pullman’s Elegant Palace Car: The Railway Carriage That Established a New
Dimension of Luxury and Entered the National Lexicon as a Symbol of Splendor (Garden City, NY: Doubl e-
day, ); Chateauvert, Marching Together, .
Men of color held a few of the coveted skilled jobs in the early days of railroading.
However, as Eric Arnesen has demonstrated, after the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury there were even fewer opportunities for black remen and other train operators.
Increasingly, African Americans got only the most menial service work — as wait-
ers in dining cars, as red caps hauling bags in stations, and as porters and maids on
sleeping cars.9
From its founding in , Pullman hired only African American porters
for its sleeping cars. Maid jobs were reserved exclusively for black women until the
rm took on a small number of women of Chinese ancestry on the West Coast in
the s. Of course, by employing men and women of color in car-service jobs, Pull-
man aimed to obtain cheap and docile labor. This practice also gave customers a
comforting sense of superiority, an integral part of the joy of patronizing a luxury
hotel on wheels. George Pullman considered former slaves particularly appropriate
candidates for jobs involving innumerable forms of personal service — making beds,
shining shoes, fetching drinks in the middle of the night, polishing spittoons, and so
forth. A half century after it began recruiting freedmen, the company still preferred
southern blacks who had experience as house servants or steamboat porters over the
growing supply of migrants to the northern cities in which its business was concen-
trated. Despite the transparency of its strategy of racial segregation and subordination,
Pullman offered a comparatively attractive employment alternative for many African
Americans. The company employed more than ten thousand porters and approxi-
mately two hundred maids in . With sizable numbers of blacks also laboring
in its manufacturing and maintenance facilities (where the color bar also kept them
from skilled and managerial jobs), Pullman was the nation’s largest private employer
of African Americans in the s.10
Racial employment practices t comfortably within an overarching policy of
paternalism. From the construction of Pullman, Illinois, as a model community in
the late nineteenth century through the development of monetized benets such as
pensions in the early twentieth century, the company stood out as a paragon of wel-
LABOR
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. Harris, Keeping the Faith, ( quot atio n); St anl ey Bu der, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order
and Community Planning, 1880 – 1930 (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Richard T. Ely, “Pull-
man: A Social Study,” Har per’s New M onth ly Mag azin e, February , – ; Bates, Pullman Porters and
th e Ris e of P rote st Po liti cs, – ; Arnesen, Bro ther hoo ds of Colo r, – . One facet of the rm’s paternalism
was a monthly newsletter, which carried numerous articles encouraging employees to curtail fatigue and
sleep loss by altering their behavior and attitudes. See Pullman News, November , ; October ,
inside back cover; December , inside back cover; July , inside back cover; March , back cover;
Apr il , ins ide ba ck cov er; M arch , b ack c over; Janua ry , .
. Brazeal, Brotherhood, ; Tye, Rising, . On arbitrary control of working time under slavery,
see Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, ),
– , – ; Robert Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press,
), – . For signs that slaveholders tried to ensure that slaves got adequate sleep in order to be more
productive workers, see James Breeden, Advice among Masters: The Ideal in Slave Management in the Old
South (Westport, CT: Greenwood, ), – . On the effects of overwork, see Philip Buell and Lester
Breslow, “Mortality from Coronary Heart Disease in California Men Who Work Long Hours,” Journal of
Chronic Disease (June ): – ; Cary Cooper, Yitzhak Fried, Arie Shirom, and Kate Sparks, “The
Effects of Hours of Work on Health: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Journal of Occupational and Organizational
Psychology (December , ): – ; Anne Spurgeon, Working Time: Its Impact on Safety and Health
(S eoul : Inte rnat iona l Lab or Of ce a nd Ko rean Occu pati onal Safe ty an d Hea lth R esea rch I nsti tute , );
Claire C. Caruso, Edward M. Hitchcock, Robert B. Dick, John M. Russo, and Jennifer M. Schmit, Over-
tim e and Exte nded Work Shift s: Recent Findi ngs on Illne sses, Injuri es, an d Heal th Beh avio rs (Cincinnati, OH:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, ); Claire C. Caruso, Tim Bushnell, Donald
Eg gert h, A nneke Heit man n, Bi ll Ko jola , Kat har ine N ewma n, Ro ger R . Ros a, St even L . Sa uter, a nd Br yan
Vila, “Long Working Hours, Safety, and Health: Toward a National Research Agenda,” American Jour-
na l of In dus tria l Med icin e (November ): – ; A. E. Dembe, “The Impact of Overtime and Long
Work Hours on Occupational Injuries and Illnesses: New Evidence from the United States,” Occupational
and Environmental Medicine (September ): – ; D. Loomis, “Long Work Hours and Occupa-
ti onal Injur ies: New Evi dence on Upst ream Caus es,” i bid. , .
fare capitalism. But within the Pullman family structure, William Harris considered
blacks “stepchildren at best.” African American employees could not advance above
the lowest rungs of the job ladder. Yet the rm’s leaders believed that they were per-
forming a benefaction by hiring, training, and supervising large numbers of African
Americans, who should be grateful for secure positions with a reputable employer.11
Overwork and Sleep Denial in the Nonunion Era
Prior to unionization, porters endured extraordinarily long hours on duty compared
with the average American wage earner. Such excessive time on the job virtually
guaranteed sleep denial. When George Pullman rst employed newly emancipated
slaves, he took advantage of individuals who had had scant restrictions on their work-
ing time. Accordingly, as with other servants in the late nineteenth century, there
were initially no specied limits on sleeping car workers’ hours. Porters and maids
received a xed monthly salary with no provision for overtime compensation. Dur-
ing Pullman’s rst half century of operations, service workers put in approximately
four hundred hours per month. This was, in and of itself, a signicant risk to the
employees’ health.12
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 21
. Tye, Rising, ; Brazeal, Brotherhood, , ; U.S. Railroad Administration, Supplement No. 2
to General Order No. 27 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofce, ); A. Philip Randolph,
“Pullman Porters Have Grievances,” Nation, S ept. , , .
. C. F. Anderson, Freemen Yet Slaves under “Abe” Lincoln’s Son; or, Service and Wages of Pullman Por-
ters (Chicago: Press of the Enterprise Printing House, ), – (quotation), – (quotation), – , ;
Sylvester, “Testimony,” :; Burton, “Testimony,” : – ; Bourke, “Testimony, :.”
During World War I, the U.S. Railroad Administration set a meaningless
limit on the service obligation on Pullman cars. Whereas the members of operat-
ing crews received government-mandated overtime pay after eight hours on duty, a
potent incentive for management to restrict working time, the porters’ stint took the
form of miles traveled. Railroad Administrator Director General William McAdoo
defended the exclusion from eight-hour protection by referring to the peculiar rest
benets that Pullman employees supposedly received. McAdoo made eleven thousand
miles per month the basic term of service. Mileage above that level entitled employ-
ees to overtime pay, not compensatory time off. Computing workload on a mileage
basis left workers unpaid for the substantial amount of preparatory and boarding
time served while a train was not moving. The eleven-thousand-mile standard had
no practical effect: porters and maids remained at their tasks for up to four hundred
hours a month.13
Such lengthy working time entailed considerable denial of sleep. Particularly
demanding were longer runs on which management scheduled little rest time. G. H.
Sylvester’s experience on the Twentieth Century Limited was not exceptional in its
disregard for the need to sleep on the rst night on the rails. On the ve-day, four-
night Chicago-to-Oakland run, C. F. Anderson spent the entire rst night on duty.
Anderson received ve hours off on the second and third nights, but no rest allowance
on the nal night prior to arrival. He maintained that “it frequently happens that we
are on duty forty-eight or even sixty hours without rest, and yet we are expected to
look fresh and be just as attentive as if we had taken our regular rest, as our all-wise
Creator intended.” According to Anderson, “Porters have actually fainted and fallen
in their cars while enroute, because of the awful strain on the constitution, occasioned
by long hours of continuous service without sleep or rest, and insufcient nourish-
ment.” Pullman expected porters to rest up on their own time both in advance of
their assignment and at its conclusion.14
The ready availability of car-service employees for extended hours allowed
Pullman to engage freely in “doubling back” or “doubling out.” Under this practice,
management, without prior notice, ordered a porter nishing his scheduled run to
immediately make another trip. In some instances, the second trip was followed by
a third, or more. The experience of a porter who used the pseudonym A. Sagittarius
resembled that of a human pinball, careening around the eastern U.S. in . Sag-
ittarius’s normal schedule called for six consecutive overnight round trips between
New York and Buffalo, followed by two relief days, during which he was supposed
to reduce his accumulated sleep decit. But after completing his twelve-day stint,
LABOR
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. Black Worker, February , (Sagittarius [Thomas T. Patterson?] quotation), – ; Anderson,
Freemen Yet Slaves, , ; T. T. Patterson, untitled address, in Joseph F. Wilson, Tearing Down the Color
Bar: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (New York: Columbia
Uni versit y Pre ss, ), ; Benja min Stol berg, “Th e Pul lma n Peo n: A S tudy in In dust rial Race Exp loita -
tio n,” Nation, April , , . On the extended assignments of porters on excursion trains, see Robert E.
Tu r ne r , Memories of a Retired Pullman Porter (New York: Exposition, ), – .
. Herbert Holderness, The Reminiscences of a Pullman Conductor; or, Character Sketches of Life in a
Pullman Car (Chicago: n.p., ), (quotation), ; Pullman Pa lace Car Company, Regulations for the
Pullman sent Sagittarius on this itinerary, spanning an additional eleven days on the
road: New York City to West Point, New York, to Washington, DC, back to West
Point, to Syracuse, to Boston, back to New York City, to Cleveland, to Buffalo, and
nally home to New York, only after defying an order to take another car to Boston.
After twenty-three days of uninterrupted service, the porter was completely exhausted
and “quite sick.” Similarly, on one occasion in , C. F. Anderson accumulated
enough extra assignments following a Chicago-Oakland round trip to spend thirty-
one consecutive days on the road. Doubling back often entailed irregular working
time, which further diminished the quality of sleep by disrupting the porter’s daily
routine.15
Pullman’s early policy regarding on-board sleep regressed after the turn of the
century. Rules set in granted porters a rest period from p.m. to a.m., but this
regulation had loopholes for station stops and did not excuse porters from such night-
time chores as answering passengers’ calls for assistance or tending the wood stoves
then used to heat cars. In , Pullman conductor Herbert Holderness marveled at
the many, varied tasks performed by the porter and, “above all, the ability to keep
wide awake when he is a living corpse from want of sleep.” Holderness estimated that
porters got four or fewer hours sleep per night, not the supposed ve. Nonetheless,
in , management cut the nominal sleep allowance by ten minutes. Eleven years
later, the company dropped any pretense of guaranteed rest time, leaving the matter
to the discretion of local ofcials. For a brief interval during World War I, porters
again enjoyed a right to a specic rest allowance, albeit only three hours, on orders
of the U.S. Railroad Administration. After the war, control over rest time reverted
to management. The company’s governing consideration was that some employee be
awake and vigilant at all times to guard against thieves and other villains. This usu-
ally meant a division of responsibility between the porter and the conductor. During
the porter’s share of the night watch, he was required to sit on a stool in the aisle at
the end of his car to protect the customers, their belongings, and the company’s prop-
erty. Even though these stools were so unsteady and uncomfortable as to merit the
nickname “broncos,” some porters managed to catch naps on them. A study of several
hundred porters in the s discovered widespread sleep denial, with only percent
of those surveyed sleeping more than three hours per day and percent getting no
regular sleep on the rails. From these ndings and other information on opportunities
to sleep, it appears that while on the job in the early twentieth century, porters aver-
aged less than half the normal eight hours of sleep needed by most adults.16
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 23
Guidance of Conductors and Porters, Approved January 1, 1874 (Chicago: C. H. Blakely, ), ; Pullman
News, June , ; Pullman Company, Instructions for Employees on Cars of the Pullman Company (Chi-
cago: Rogers, ), , and Instructions for Employees on Cars of the Pullman Company (n.p., ), – ;
Brazeal, Brotherhood, ; Messenger, Oct. , ; Pullman Company, Instructions for Employees on Cars
of the Pullman Company (n.p., ), , and Instructions for Porters Employed on Cars of the Pullman Com-
pany (n.p., ), – ; New Yo rk Ti mes, March , , . On the bronco stools, see anonymous Pullman
employee to CIR, September , , in CIR, Final Report, :. For surreptitious napping while rid-
ing the bronco, see Sylvester, “Testimony,” ibid., , . Some runs did make use of a “swing porter” or
“relief porter,” who allowed both the porter and conductor to sleep at the same time. See W. H. Brewster,
“Tes timo ny,” ib id., .
. Anderson, Freemen Yet Slaves, (quotation), – ; Hungerford, “Testimony,” in CIR, Final
Report, : (quotation), – ; Robert Lincoln, “Testimony,” ibid., ; Walter Burton, “Testimony”
ibid., – ; Pullman Company, Instructions (), – , ; Holderness, Reminiscences, ; Pullman
Company, “Transcript of [Disciplinary] Record” (for numerous porters), n.d. [], Pullman Company
Arc hive s, Re cord G roup , sub group , se r. , b ox , fo lder , R oger a nd Ju lie B aske s Dep art ment o f Sp ecia l
Collections, Newberry Library, Chicago (hereafter Pullman Archives); Santino, Mile s of S mile s, .
Failure to perform one’s job — whether rested or sleep-deprived — carried seri-
ous consequences. By the turn of the century, Pullman had a formal system of pro-
gressive discipline for dealing with those caught sleeping while on duty or in pro-
scribed places. Offenders received warnings or, more often, suspensions that could
range from ve to thirty days. Undercover inspectors (“spotters”) and dissatised pas-
sengers reported the unconscious transgressors. Company disciplinary proceedings
usually resulted in ten- or fteen-day suspensions for falling asleep on the job and
leaving a car unguarded. Repeated violations could lead to discharge. Incurring a dis-
ciplinary sanction meant that an employee lost any chance for a sizable annual cash
bonus for good behavior. In , C. F. Anderson protested strict enforcement of the
rule against sleeping on duty: “Since the Pullman Company seems to think it the por-
ter’s duty to live up to every rule and regulation prescribed for his guidance, no matter
what the circumstances, we feel it is the duty of the company to be considerate enough
to make only such rules as it is possible for us to live up to without a too serious vio-
lation of the laws of health.” Managers could, however, exercise paternal indulgence.
Robert Lincoln, chairman of Pullman’s board of directors and the Great Emanci-
pator’s son, assured the Commission on Industrial Relations that the prohibition of
sleeping during working time went largely unenforced, but left unexplained the dis-
juncture between policy and practice. General Manager L. S. Hungerford contended
that the company carefully distinguished between those who surreptitiously retired to
an empty drawing room or berth with a pillow and blanket and those who nodded
out while trying to maintain their posts. Hungerford told the federal commissioners
that porters who unintentionally fell asleep during the day at their work stations were
in no danger of punishment, but acknowledged that this was a grey area: “There are
no instructions that they can go to sleep, but we do know they go to sleep.” Under this
variant of paternalism, management could assess which employees were doing their
best to avoid losing consciousness, but could not put enough porters and maids on the
cars to ensure that all employees got a reasonable amount of sleep.17
LABOR
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24
. Pullman News, May , (Simmons quotation); Harris, Keeping the Faith, – ; Brazeal,
Brotherhood, – ; Leonard Lecht, Experience under Railway Labor Legislation (New York: Columbia
University Press, ), ; Representatives of the Porters and Maids and Representatives of the Manage-
ment of the Pullman Company, “Minutes of the Conference,” March , , – , , and March , ,
– , Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , box , folder ; Pullman Company and James
Sexton et al., “Agreement between the Pullman Company and Its Porters and Maids, Effective April ,
,” March , (unpaginated — see Rule ), Pullman Archives, ibid., folder ; Pullman Company,
Instructions (), – .
In the twenties, Pullman set up a new system for determining car-service
employees’ terms of employment. After the world war, the company saw union orga-
nizing among porters and maids as a threat. Railroad operating crews had long
enjoyed union rights. Pullman conductors had recently formed the Order of Sleeping
Car Conductors and successfully bargained with the rm. Some porters had taken
steps toward self-organization during the war by joining the Railway Men’s Interna-
tional Benevolent Industrial Association, an umbrella group for black rail employ-
ees. More ominous still from the company’s perspective was the creation in of
the Pullman Porters and Maids Protective Association. In response, management
founded and funded a Plan of Employee Representation. As signs of discontent per-
sisted, Pullman entered into formal negotiations on porters’ and maids’ conditions in
early . Porter negotiators raised three sleep-related issues. First, they requested a
three-hour rest period on all overnight runs, i.e., a return to the wartime benet. Sec-
ond, reecting the porters’ assumption that the best way to get a good night’s sleep
was to sleep in one’s own bed, their representatives pressed for guaranteed relief days,
a safeguard against doubling out. Third, they proposed calculating service in hours
on duty, not miles traveled, with hours to constitute a full month’s work. The
agreement reached in March struck a compromise. Management promised a
minimum of four full days off duty at home per month. However, it conceded neither
a denite rest period on overnight duty nor any monthly limit on hours worked. Pull-
man executive F. L. Simmons reported that all involved “expressed their happiness in
reaching a mutually satisfactory agreement in such a friendly manner.”18
Organizing for the Right to Sleep
Discussion of sleep denial at Pullman changed profoundly in . Dissident por-
ters created a real union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. The brotherhood
selected as its chief organizer and leader A. Philip Randolph, a well-known New
York socialist agitator. Porters saw Randolph’s independence from the Pullman Com-
pany (i.e., his invulnerability to discharge) as an asset that outweighed his lack of expe-
rience working in sleeping cars. Along with activists based in numerous rail hubs,
Randolph set out to build a national union of black workers. To this end, he and other
BSCP leaders drew upon widespread dissatisfaction with the terms and conditions of
employment as a recruiting and mobilizing issue in challenging Pullman and its Plan
of Employee Representation. According to Ashley Totten, one of the New York por-
ters who had rst approached Randolph, “harsh working conditions” constituted the
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 25
. Ashley Totten, “Why Pullman Porters Organized,” Interracial Review (November ):
(quotations), – ; International Ladies’ Auxiliary, BSCP, “Proceedings of the First [sic — S e c o n d] B i e n -
nial Convention, ,” (third Totten quotation), in William H. Harris, ed., Records of the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters, Series A: Holdings of the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library,
1925 –1969; Part 2: Records of the Ladies Auxiliary of the BSCP, 1931 – 1968 ( Bethesd a, MD: Un iversit y Pub -
lications of America, ) (hereafter Records of the BSCP; Part 2), reel , frame ; Harris, Keeping the
Faith, – ; Brazeal, Brotherhood, – ; Anderson, Randolph, – ; Andrew Kersten, A. Philip Ran-
do lph: A Life in th e Vang uard (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littleeld, ), – .
. Messenger, August , (Randolph quotations), – ; September , (BSCP adver-
tisement quotation), (Randolph quotation), (cartoon quotation); November – December , ;
Jan uary , .
main impetus for organization. Totten portrayed the pre-BSCP sleep-denial predica-
ment as one fraught with long hours and brief, uncertain, and frequently interrupted
rests. In his view, the company required porters to be “asleep and awake at the same
time.” He noted that sleep denial had become so much associated with this type of
work that car-service employees were commonly called “sleepy porters,” rather than
sleeping car porters. The edgling union raised fresh objections to the negative effects
of overwork and sleep denial and offered a variety of corrective measures.19
BSCP founders immediately elevated overwork and its ramications to prom-
inence. In a wide-ranging attack on Pullman paternalism on the eve of the decision
to launch an independent union, Randolph excoriated the company’s misplaced pri-
ority of promoting porters’ musical abilities to entertain passengers. This amounted,
in Randolph’s astringent assessment, to nothing more than a degrading distraction:
“So long as they can keep the porters singing, laughing, and dancing, they will be
able to underpay and overwork them.” Pullman’s sponsorship of a band was toler-
able only “providing you have also the fundamental things, namely one’s manhood,
adequate wages, humane hours of work, etc.” A notice in the September issue of
Randolph’s magazine, the Messenger, urged the unorganized to commit themselves
to the newly founded brotherhood “if you are tired of being treated like children
instead of men; you think you should work shorter hours; you think your wages
should be larger; you are tired of doubling back; you are sick of Company tyranny;
you have a backbone instead of a wishbone.” In the same issue, Randolph observed
that “many a porter is doing duty though he has not slept in a bed for two or three
days at a time.” Inserted in the middle of Randolph’s indictment was a cartoon in
which a Pullman supervisor chased a porter down the station platform, demanding
that he double back. The scowling porter replied: “I’ve had no sleep for three nights,
am nearly starved, and I have to wash up.” The union thus seized on onerous condi-
tions as a core concern from the very outset of its recruitment campaign.20
An emphasis on health hazards in general and hours in particular aided the
BSCP’s attempts to enlist outside support during the initial stage of the drive. Inu-
ential Americans, black and white, who lent their moral support to the car-service
workers commonly cited the need for improvements in this area. Not long after its
editor, Oswald Garrison Villard, embraced the brotherhood and decried the por-
LABOR
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. Messenger, June , (Celler quotation), ; May , (Methodist Federation quotation,
repr. from Social Service Bulletin, April , ); January , ; February , – ; March , , ;
October , ; Stolberg, “The Pullman Peon,” , ; Pittsburgh Courier, May , , ; B oston Citi -
zens’ Committee, The P ullm an Po rte rs’ St rug gle (Boston: Boston Citizens’ Committee, ). On the larger
ef fort t o forg e cros s-c lass and o ther alli anc es, e spec ial ly wit h th e Afr ican Amer ica n midd le cl ass, see Bates ,
Pul lman Po rter s and the R ise of Prote st Po liti cs, – ; Chateauvert, Marching Together, – , – .
. Messenger, August , ; BSCP, Pullman Porter (New York: BSCP, ), ; L. S. Hungerford,
“Testimony,” in CIR, Final Report, :; Harris, Keeping the Faith, ; Chateauvert, Marching Together,
– .
ters’ lack of sleep, the Nation published an article critical of both inadequate sleep
allowances and doubling out. The union publicized a resolution introduced into the
House of Representatives in April by Emanuel Celler. The New York congress-
man called for an investigation of the porters’ grievances, including “conditions and
hours of labor . . . such as to menace their health and efciency, allowing them only
three hours of sleep a night on the average run.” The Pittsburgh Courier ran a front-
page article on Celler’s initiative. In May , the Messenger approvingly reported
this appraisal by the Methodist Federation for Social Service: “At present provision
for sleep is very inadequate; this is one of the most pressing of the porters’ problems.”
Similar expressions of support poured in from civil-rights organizations, unions, Afri-
can American fraternal and religious groups, and prominent progressive individu-
als. Elite allies’ gestures helped the union-building project gain momentum at a cru-
cial juncture. Winning public expressions of sympathy also helped to create a sense
among the porters that they were engaged in a monumental, righteous battle. Thus
reinforced, the pro-union side was better able to withstand the pressure exerted by
both Pullman and its many allies in the African American community, particularly
in the clergy and the press.21
Improving conditions took on added urgency because car-service workers
expected to remain in their positions for the duration of their employment at Pull-
man. Neither porters nor maids had any prospects for advancement. The natural pro-
motional step for porters was to sleeping car conductor, overseeing porters and taking
more responsibility in dealing with passengers. However, by company policy whites
held all conductors’ positions throughout the rst half of the twentieth century. Simi-
larly, in unprejudiced circumstances African American maids might have lled open-
ings for porters or even moved into the supervisory position of conductor. In America
in the s, such moves were unthinkable. Collective actions to ameliorate conditions
or quitting work were the only viable options for aggrieved sleeping car workers.22
To build internal solidarity and external support, the BSCP attempted to
reframe the discussion of employment at Pullman. Randolph and his comrades coun-
tered management’s master frame of fatherly benevolence with assertions of the essen-
tial rights of Americans, emphasizing restoration of the porters’ (but, obviously, not
the maids’) diminished manhood. In , Randolph contended that “the Pullman
porter has no rights which the Pullman Company is bound to respect. So far as his
manhood is concerned, in the eyes of the Company, the porter is not supposed to have
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 27
. Messenger, S eptember , (Ran dolph qu otation); May , ( BSCP q uotat ion); D ecem -
ber , ; March , – ; December , ; Bla ck Work er, November , , , ; Husband,
Story, – ; Randolph, “Pullman Porters Have Grievances,” ; Santino, Miles of Smiles, . On the w ide
range of personal services delivered by porters, see Pullman, Instructions (), esp. ; Pullman, Instruc-
tions ( ), es p. ; E . D. Nixon , un titl ed in terv iew, in Stu ds Terkel , Har d Tim es: A n Ora l His tor y of t he G reat
Depression (New York: Pantheon Books, ), – ; Husband, Story, ; Santino, Miles of Smiles, ;
David Peralta, Those Pullman Blues: An Oral History of the African American Railroad Attendant (New York:
Twayne, ), xxiv – xxv. On servility as a pose, see Bernard Mergen, “The Pullman Porter: From ‘George’
to Brotherhood,” South Atlantic Quarterly (Spring ): – .
For differing interpretations of the strengths, weaknesses, and extent of masculinism in the porters’
union, see Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics, esp. – , , – , – , – ;
Chateauvert, Marching Together, esp. – , , – ; Amy Richter, Home on the Rails: Women, the Rail-
road, and the Rise of Public Domesticity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), – ;
Leon Fink, Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, ), – , esp. – , – , – . On manhood and manhood rights more
generally, see Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Cen-
tury (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), – , , – , ; Marlon Ross, Manning
the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era (New York: New York University Press, ); Steve
Estes, I A m a Ma n! Ra ce, Ma nho od, a nd th e Civ il Ri ghts Move men t (Ch apel H ill : Unive rsity of Nor th C aro-
li na Pre ss, ).
. Messenger, July , (Randolph quotations); October , (Bradley quotation); November –
December , ; November , ; Fink, Progressive Intellectuals, .
any.” The underlying task at hand was to make the performance of personal services
by black men for white customers a worthy role and not a slavish one. To this end, a
organizing appeal asserted that the ideal unionized porter was “manly, courte-
ous and respectful, but never cringing or servile.” The BSCP rebels were not prepared
to demand that white passengers treat them respectfully, but they were demanding
that their employer acknowledge their manhood by granting them some of the same
terms and conditions enjoyed by their white male co-workers.23
Union proponents challenged porters to summon the courage to ght for bet-
ter conditions. In its most provocative moments, the BSCP resorted to a version of
victim-blaming that taunted prospective recruits to alleviate onerous conditions. Very
early in the BSCP’s organizing drive, Randolph declared that “the cause is in our-
selves that we are overworked” and that the current situation stemmed from a “sheer
downright lack of manhood, of stamina, of guts and spirit on the part of the Pullman
porters for the last fty years.” “If we are real, red-blooded he-men,” he continued,
“we should not whine and cry over our lot, for it is within our own power to change
it.” Proving one’s manhood by organizing and collectively remedying conditions of
employment would blunt any potential criticism about physical or moral weakness. In
much the same vein, St. Louis activist E. J. Bradley urged his fellow porters to pursue
their interests more aggressively: “Our people have been taught how to protect other
people . . . , but they have never been taught how to live and how to procure some of
the better things of life, which can only be realized through a better salary and a lon-
ger rest period.” The tactic of using masculinist rhetoric to prod unorganized workers
to claim their rightful rest became a mainstay of the BSCP’s recruitment drive.24
LABOR
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28
. Bla ck Wo rke r, February , , – (quotation), ; November , , , ; December , ,
; January , , ; March , , ; May , , – ; July , – ; A. Philip Randolph, “Porters
Fight Paternalism,” American Federationist, June , (quotation), ; Messenger, October , .
On the Pullman safety program, see Chateauvert, Marching Together, , ; Pullman News, January ,
, November , , November , , June , – ; E. F. Carry to Members of the Pullman
Family, April , , Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , vol. . On the rm’s ef-
ciency concerns, see Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics, ; Pullman News, June , .
For othe r face ts of the u nea sy rel atio nshi p bet ween safet y an d ef cien cy, se e Don ald S tab ile, “The DuPo nt
Experiments in Scientic Management: Efciency and Safety, – ,” Business History Review
(Autumn ): – . On respectability, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The
Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880 –1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
), – , – ; Gaines, Upli ftin g the Rac e, esp. – , – . Allan Spear and James Grossman have
characterized Pullman porters as middle class, mainly because of their relatively well-off status in the
African American community in the early twentieth century; Kevin Gaines has argued that this was fun-
damentally a proletarian occupation; Beth Bates has explored most deeply the relations between status
and class. See Allan Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890 –1920 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, ), n; James Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great
Migration (Chic ago: University of Chicago Press, ), ; Gaines, Uplifting the Race, ; Bates, Pullman
Porte rs an d the Ris e of Prot est P olitics, – .
The brotherhood took advantage of Pullman’s failure to meet its own stan-
dards. By the s, the company had an extensive safety program. The union por-
trayed doubling out and other causes of inadequate rest as safety hazards for porters,
who took seriously their responsibility for both the well-being of customers and the
protection of their employer’s assets. In , one dissident noted the contradiction in
forcing a porter to attend a safety meeting after nishing a twenty-four-hour run and
before immediately sending him out for another twenty-four-hour run. Randolph
used this report to editorialize on the corporate priority of safeguarding protability
over that of preserving human life. He also announced the initiation of a regular fea-
ture in the union newspaper on “Scientic Service and Safety Efciency.” The main
theme of this feature was that higher efciency depended upon safety, which, in turn,
depended upon well-rested workers. An installment in the series in argued that
“efcient service requires . . . that a porter when off duty take the proper rest and
sleep in order that he may be able to perform his work when on duty. Of course, in
order to get the necessary sleep, porters need the hour work month; and they will
only be able to get this through the Brotherhood.” At the same time, Randolph drew
a sharp conclusion from porters’ sleep-denied plight: “Every time the company dou-
bles a porter, it nullies its preachments about ‘safety rst,’ for an overworked porter is
not only less safe to passengers but to himself. It is a well-recognized principle in psy-
chological physiology that fatigue destroys efciency and lessens productivity.” Even
as it took an adversarial stance, the union endeavored to nd common ground with
management through a mutual interest in operating efciency. Combining solicitude
for the company’s business interests with opposition to overwork and sleep denial,
the union wove together working-class militancy and a largely middle-class quest for
respectability. This nuanced approach confounded the company’s attempts to charac-
terize the BSCP as simply anticompany. It also undoubtedly appealed to more con-
servative porters leery of Randolph’s well-known radicalism.25
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 29
. A. Philip Randolph, “Statement of Pullman Porters’ Position in Fight for Recognition, Living
Wage, and Better Working Rules with Pullman Company,” August , , in William H. Harris, ed.,
Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Series A: Holdings of the Chicago Historical Society and the
Newberry Library, 1925 –1969; Part 1: Records of the BSCP, 1925 –1969 (Bet hesda , MD: Univers ity Pub lica-
tions of America, ) (hereafter Records of the BSCP; Part 1), reel , frames – ; Messenger, August
, – ; October – November , ; January , ; October , ; April , ; June
, ; Black Worker, November , , ; Pullman Company and Order of Sleeping Car Conductors,
Agreement, 1922 (n.p ., ), ; BS CP, Pullman Porter, , – . For Frank Walsh’s earlier critique of the loss
of rest indirectly due to tipping and his interest in ending the practice, see CIR, Final Report, :.
. Messenger, July , (Randolph quotation); November , (Schuyler quotat ions); Sep-
tember , – ; February , ; October , ; BSCP, “Digest of an Argument by the Broth-
erhood of Sleeping Car Porters in Support of Their Recognition by the Pullman Company . . . ,” n.d.
[ca . ], (quo tati on), A . Phi lip R ando lph Pap ers ( here after Ra ndolp h Pape rs), b ox , folder : Pu llma n
Porters and Maids Digest and Argument for Working Agreement, Manuscript Division, Library of Con-
gre ss, Washi ngto n, D C.
The brotherhood initially demanded a -hour month, a substantial reduc-
tion from the roughly -hour obligation. Insistence on racial equality guided this
demand for the same monthly working time that the Order of Sleeping Car Conduc-
tors had won for its all-white membership. Activists condemned the prevailing sys-
tem as an inhuman grind that left porters and maids exhausted. They rebutted the
company’s claim that their work was intermittent, pointing out that they were never
truly off duty when a passenger’s call bell could summon them at any moment. The
union also dealt with Pullman’s contention that long hours redounded to the por-
ters’ advantage by enabling them to remain on duty to the end of long runs, allow-
ing them to collect tips which passengers were much more likely to dispense at their
destination. Based not only on a desire for more reasonable hours but also on exas-
peration with the obsequiousness that dependence on gratuities promoted, the union
demanded increased monthly wages and abolition of the tipping system. Indeed, a
sizable share of porters’ compensation had always come from gratuities, dispensed at
the discretion of individual customers. In its formative organizing phase, the BSCP
made a special target of the much-resented degrading custom and linked it to delete-
rious sleep loss.26
The BSCP condemned doubling back. Its critique stressed the serious, if ill-
dened, health effects of the practice. In , Randolph denounced doubling out as
“a hardship . . . [that] wears the porter out. It undermines and wrecks his health.” He
maintained that after the company wore out an employee through repeatedly deny-
ing needed recovery time at home, it callously replaced him. The union held that it
was giving voice to the long-standing consensus view among porters that doubling
caused “a drain on their health.” To be sure, not all objections rested on health consid-
erations. The decision of the Pullman board to grant shareholders an extra dividend
in outraged one union supporter. Black journalist George Schuyler commented
that investors had not earned their reward by having been “doubled back without
rest” and instead “lived a life of luxury and pleasure.”27
LABOR
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30
. Messenger, July , (Randolph quotat ion); February , ; Randolph, “Pullman Porters
Have Grievances,” (quotation); BSCP, Pullman Porter, (quotation), (quotation).
. Messenger, October , (anonymous porter quotation), , February , (Randolph
quotation), February , (anonymous Minneapolis porter quotation); Pullman and Sleeping Car Con-
ductors, Agreement, 1922, ; BSCP, Pullman Porter, ; BSCP, “ Dige st of an Ar gume nt,” .
Initially, the union’s proposed solutions suggested both a determination to
resolve this grievance and the unsettled state of its agenda. On the eve of the found-
ing of the BSCP, Randolph was receptive to monetary terms that would only discour-
age this practice: “Doubling back . . . must be abolished or paid for at the rate of time
and a half or double time.” However, two months later, in his new capacity as gen-
eral organizer, he declared the brotherhood’s unequivocal intention to “abolish the
doubling-out evil,” which was “undermining the porter’s health and preventing him
from giving efcient service to the public.” The following year, a widely distributed
BSCP pamphlet repeated the charge that doubling was “detrimental to the health of
the porter” but only vaguely demanded an “adjustment” in the practice. The uncer-
tainty in the union’s position perhaps reected an understanding that a certain share
of service workers welcomed any additional opportunities to earn money, even those
entailing protracted wakefulness. Because maids had less layover time than porters
due to doubling, Randolph argued that maids and porters were entitled to home lay-
overs of equal duration and frequency.28
The brotherhood sought improvements in the minimal on-board rest peri-
ods. Conductors enjoyed relatively generous sleeping allowances of up to six hours per
night. In , a Chicago-based porter demanded parity: “Lack of sleep and expo-
sure kill more porters than anything else. A porter should have at least six hours rest
period.” The BSCP leadership took a less aggressive position, seeking four hours off
on the rst night of trips and six on all subsequent nights. The union initially con-
ceded the company’s right to subtract rest time from credited hours of service. Ran-
dolph recommended a way to make longer rests a reality: “Special provision should
be made for the sleep of the porters. This could be arranged through a system of relief
porters.” Although not even the most militant activist demanded the right to a normal
night’s rest, one early union supporter in Minneapolis did complain that “we are too
far from eight hours sleep, eight hours work and eight hours recreation per day.”29
Growing discontent over rest allowances awakened the company union, which
Pullman continued to promote. In the round of negotiations, porter represen-
tatives again called for restoration of the three-hour respite on overnight shifts. In
response, the company gave car-service workers on overnight runs “approximately a
three hour rest period where the train schedules of station stops and other operating
conditions will, in the judgment of the management, permit.” Obviously, this provi-
sion did not commit management to assign enough porters and maids to its sleep-
ing cars so that each employee could always sleep for three hours. The revised agree-
ment also made a minimal concession on doubling-out, requiring the company to pay
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 31
. Pullman Company [and Plan of Employee Representation], Agreement, Effective June 1, 1929 (n.p.,
), (quotation), ; Porters and Maids Wage Conference, “Minutes,” June , , (Simmons quota-
tion), , May , , , May , , – , May , , – , Pullman Archives, Record Group , sub-
group , ser. , box A, folder ; Brazeal, Brotherhood, .
. Black Worker, February , , (Sagittarius quotations), ; November , , ; December ,
, ; Marc h , , .
. Messenger, O ctob er , ( anony mous port er quo tati ons); Rand olph , “Por ters F ight P atern al-
ism,” , . Dining car workers often had to try to sleep on dining tables. See Arnesen, Brotherhoods of
Color, .
twenty-ve cents per hour for any labor performed during designated time off. F. L.
Simmons, head of the management bargaining team, agreed with his company-union
counterpart that this contract had achieved “an ideal set of working conditions.”30
BSCP activists were unimpressed. Not long after the amended contract took
effect, the union’s newspaper, the Black Worker, reported the dismissal of a porter who
refused a third consecutive assignment because he was too exhausted. In this instance,
management told the worker that he should have been able to catch naps during the
day. Sagittarius observed that the agreement did not prevent doubling that still fre-
quently resulted in stints lasting up to eighty hours, with little or no rest along the
way. Sagittarius asserted that doubling led to heart disease by forcing “the reluctant
blood through a system depleted for want of proper rest and food.” He contended
that those who administered this system “may not be burdened with a high sense of
human rights.”31
In the wake of the settlement, the brotherhood more intently criticized
not just the denial of sleep time but also the inadequacies of the resting places assigned
to porters and maids. Because management had done nothing to address this mat-
ter, the BSCP had an opening to agitate for reform. At this juncture, it might have
chosen to heed a suggestion offered in by an aggrieved porter. This unnamed
worker objected to being sent off “to the smoking room next to the lavatory, there to
relax on a narrow lounge seat provided for passengers with a light shining in his face
to rob him of such sleep that he might get.” Because this predicament “stop[ped] his
blood from circulating,” the man had urged Randolph to pressure Pullman to build
cars with real berths set aside for the porters. However, in spelling out its position
on this issue in , the union only sought some denite place to sleep rather than a
guaranteed berth.32
A similar tentativeness marked the brotherhood’s early stance regarding the
well-known and widely resented deciencies in the sleeping spaces used during lay-
overs. While conductors rested in decent hotels and YMCAs, Pullman’s black employ-
ees held over in distant cities often faced uncertain and degrading alternatives. These
included damp basements in apartment buildings, dubious boarding houses, cheap
hotels, and other quarters likely to be overcrowded and seldom quiet. In Salt Lake
City, porters had to make do in a decrepit hotel. The inadequate number of beds
available in this condemned building forced laidover workers to resort to the “hot
LABOR
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32
. Pittsburgh Courier, February , , (Lancaster quotation); anonymous Pullman employee to
CIR, Oct. , , in CIR, Final Report, : – ; R. W. Bell, “Testimony,” in ibid., ; Pu llma n New s,
September , – ; October , ; Turner, Memories, –; Tye, Rising, , , , , ; Black
Worker, December , , ; August , , ; BSCP, Pullman Porter, ; BS CP, “Dig est of an Arg umen t,”
, ; Chateauvert, Marching Together, , ; Anderson, Randolph, – . On segregation in public trans-
portation, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, com memo rativ e ed. (New Yo rk: O xford
University Press, ), , – , – , – .
. Harris, Keeping the Faith, – ; Brazeal, Brotherhood, – , – ; Lecht, Experience,
– ; Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, – .
bed” system of resting in shifts. In the Jim Crow South, sleeping car employees some-
times had to sleep on park benches. The segregationist code also dictated that even
after all passengers had left the train which porters were required to “guard” in the
rail yard, the African American workers were forbidden to sleep in any berth except
the upper berth at the end of the car, which tended to be noisier and hotter than
other vacant spaces. With so many other compelling grievances to address and lim-
ited leverage, the edgling brotherhood did not press Pullman management system-
atically on the question of sleeping places. The union did, however, criticize the inad-
equacies of company-provided housing at some locations. Organizer Roy Lancaster
called Pullman’s arrangements an insult to any self-respecting employee. Lancaster
characterized the layover facilities in Washington, DC, where “sixty men are required
to sleep in one ill-ventilated room,” as typical. He urged the unorganized to unite to
achieve unspecied improvements. In a few communities, women led efforts to cre-
ate better lodging for porters and maids through the union itself. In Oakland, orga-
nizer Morris “Dad” Moore rented out a few rooms above the saloon where the BSCP
maintained its ofce.33
Bargaining with Pullman
The BSCP barely survived a perilous decline from the late twenties through the early
thirties. But by the midthirties, as was the case with American organized labor in
general, the organization was resurgent. Of perhaps greater importance, New Deal
policy promoted union recognition and collective bargaining rights for porters and
maids. Amendments in brought car-service employees within the scope of the
Railway Labor Act and set the stage for the BSCP to win a crucial representation
election in June . A month later, after a decade of dodging, the Pullman Com-
pany was forced to enter into contract negotiations with the brotherhood. Sleep-
related issues gured prominently in the bargaining that played out over the next
two years.34
The BSCP’s opening proposals to Pullman in mid- sought to cur-
tail sleep denial and overwork. Although working time had declined somewhat
in the decade since the union rst raised this issue, it remained onerous. A
union-commissioned study had found that porters were still working hours a
month, or almost hours a week. The union reiterated its position that hours,
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 33
. [BSCP], “Proposed Agreement between the Pullman [Company], Incorporated, and the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters to Take Effect October , ,” n.d. [ca. July ], , , C. L. Dellums Papers,
carton , folder: Agreement Data, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter Dellums
Papers); H. R. Lary, “History of the Mediation Dispute betwe en the Pullman Company and the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters,” n.d. [ca. June , ], in William H. Harris, ed., Records of the Brother-
hood of Sleeping Car Porters, Series A: Holdings of the Chicago Historical Society and the Newberry Library,
1925 –1969; Part 3: Records of the BSCP Relations with the Pullman Company, 1925 –1968 (Bethesda, MD:
University Publications of America, ) (hereafter Records of the BSCP; Part 3), reel , frame ; New
York Times, Ma rch , , .
. H. R. Lary, “Minutes of Proceedings,” April , , (quotation), “Minutes of Proceedings,”
April , , – , and “Minutes of Proceedings,” April , – , all in Records of the BSCP; Part 3, reel ,
frames , – , and – , respectively.
. R. F. Cole, “Compromise Proposal,” April , , [H. R. Lary], untitled minutes, April ,
, – , Pullman Company and BSCP, “Agreement, Effective October , ,” , August , , all in
Re cord s of t he BS CP; Par t 3, reel , frames – , – , and , respectively.
not eleven thousand miles, should constitute a full month’s service. The brotherhood
demanded that service workers receive a percent premium in pay for any hours
beyond . Under this proposal, credited time began when workers arrived at work,
not when the train left the station.35
As expected, Pullman strongly opposed the -hour proposition. After an
impasse on the miles-versus-hours question, in the spring of federal mediator
Robert Cole persuaded the management side to accept time as the basis for calculat-
ing service. Pullman negotiators held that hours per month constituted a reason-
able standard because porters and maids actually performed work only intermittently
and had many opportunities to rest during frequent pauses while on duty. Although
Tayloristic techniques of time study and other detailed forms of job analysis had been
in use in American business since the turn of the century, the company offered no
quantitative analysis of how service workers spent their time. Instead, management
negotiators relied on nebulous claims that workers had at their disposal “a very con-
siderable amount of idle time.” The company wanted to subtract from credited work
time not only a nighttime rest period but a portion of this “idle time” as well.36
Management did not convince mediator Cole. In April , he began to press
Pullman to accede to the same hour limit that conductors had enjoyed for many years.
He recommended no deductions from hours worked other than for a designated
rest period. Cole apparently gave no credence to the assertions that car-service work-
ers — burdened with myriad tasks, including mental chores such as anticipating pas-
sengers’ needs and remembering their station stops — had much true leisure on the
job. Only with great reluctance did the company give in to the union’s demand in
the agreement reached in August . Although this left Pullman employees with
almost a sixty-hour workweek, it still represented a major advance in the struggle
against overwork.37
Settling the question of rest allowances proved to be less than straightforward.
With most porters lucky to sleep half the normal eight hours per day, one might have
LABOR
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. C. L. Dellums to A. Philip Randolph, April , (quotation), Dellums Papers, carton , folder:
Outgoing, Randolph, A. Philip, – ; BSCP, “Proposed Agreement . . . ,” n.d. [ca. July ], ,
Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , box , folder ; Pullman Company, untitled
timesheets, December , ibid., folder ; [H. R. Lary], untitled minutes, May and May , ,
Re cord s of t he BS CP; Par t 3, r eel , fra mes , .
expected the BSCP to push for long rest periods. However, the union sought only a
three-hour interval off duty. Randolph explained to his adversaries that sleep taken
in railroad cars was never very restful. Accordingly, the crux of the union’s demand
was that rest time not be deducted from working time unless management provided
a relief worker to cover for the resting worker. On April , , California union
leader C. L. Dellums told Randolph to hold his ground. “Hours of service,” Dellums
insisted, “should include all time in which the employee is subject to the jurisdiction
[of] or responsible to the company.” In his view, the company’s proposal to maintain
the status quo left the porter with “no protection against his sleeping thirty minutes
and being requested to get up for a few minutes, retiring again and then being called
after another thirty or forty minutes’ rest, which would break up his sleep period in
such a way that he would get no value from it whatever.”38
Management rejected the union demand for onboard rest and went on the
offensive. Pullman pursued sleep deductions from work time of up to eight hours per
day. Negotiator Champ Carry contended that this position reected a commitment
to seeing that employees received a normal amount of sleep. However, the company
indicated that the way for men and women in its service to attain this end was not by
taking a guaranteed full night’s sleep but rather by supplementing a short sleep period
at night with mandatory unpaid rests during the less busy times of the morning and
afternoon. The union considered this plan for daytime napping an inammatory
provocation. It was obvious that porters and maids had even less probability of obtain-
ing much genuine rest during daylight, amid the increased noise that accompanied
daytime operations. Randolph denounced this as an unhealthful stretch-out system,
dangerous to both employees and passengers. With both sides dug in, sleep time was
one of the last issues resolved. Management clung to its demand for daytime rests; the
union remained opposed to deductions, especially during the day. The parties nally
came to a compromise. Management was forbidden from making any deduction for
periods of less than two hours. On overnight runs, designated sleep periods were to
be determined by the length of the run and remained deductible. On night runs of
twelve hours or less, for example, porters received a sleep allowance of three hours or
less. On runs of forty to forty-eight hours, a deduction of up to ten hours of rest was
permitted. Maids got nightly rests of up to seven hours, enabling Pullman to extract
more working hours from these employees. Notwithstanding its acquiescence in the
inequitable treatment of the maids (whose numbers had dwindled to around fty by
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 35
. [H. R. Lary], untitled minutes, May and May , ; Lary, “History,” – , , H. R. Lary to
J. F. L ane, Ju ly , , La ry to L ane, July , , Ro bert C ole, “Medi ator Co le’s Fina l Compromise Pro -
posal,” July , , B. H. Vroman et al. to Champ Carry, July , , [Pullman negotiator], untitled min-
utes, July , , Pullman and BSCP, “Agreement, ,” – , all in Records of the BSCP; Part 3, reel ,
frames , – , – and , , , , , , and – , respectively; [Pullman negotiator],
“Credits for Hours Worked,” June , , Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , box ,
folder ; Chateauvert, Marching Together, .
. [BSCP], “Proposed Agreement . . . ,” Dellums Papers, carton , folder: Agreement Data, ;
Dellums to Randolph, April , , ibid., carton , folder: Outgoing, Randolph, A. Philip, – ; Lary,
“History,” , R ecor ds of the B SCP, Pa rt 3, frame ; Cole, “Mediator Cole’s Final Compromise Proposal,”
ibi d., f rame ; P ull man a nd B SCP, “Agre emen t, ,” , ibid ., frame .
. [Lary], minutes, May , (Cole quotation); Lary, “History,” ; W. L. Merriam to Champ Carry,
August , ; Pullman and BSCP, “Agreement, ,” , all in Rec ord s of th e BSC P; Par t 3, re el , fram es
, , , and , respectively.
the late thirties), the BSCP had wrung a signicant concession from Pullman man-
agement in conning deductions to the nighttime hours.39
The brotherhood sought to eliminate doubling out on overnight runs by
requiring that car-service workers receive some time off following every overnight
trip. The union won concessions on layovers, but nothing so generous as it wanted.
As recommended by Cole, the agreement guaranteed a day off after every
four one-night roundtrips. In addition, the parties accepted the mediator’s proposal
that workers assigned exclusively to overnight runs got a day off after every second
roundtrip.40
The BSCP made a minor advance in upgrading the sleeping spaces avail-
able to its members on the trains. Throughout the negotiations, management sternly
opposed making any commitment at all regarding the quality or nature of on-board
resting places. Nonetheless, porters gained the right to be assigned to space in the dor-
mitory cars used by other rail crew members, as well as retaining the possibility of
taking an upper-end sleeping car berth. However, the contract did sanction continued
use of the detested smoking room sofa, which appears to have remained the primary
spot to which management sent porters.41
Despite its limitations, this contract represented a landmark in the struggle
against overwork and sleep denial. In particular, reducing working time by more
than one quarter in one fell swoop stands out as a notable accomplishment. Moreover,
the union had advanced signicantly the larger process of recasting the issues of sleep
denial and overwork as health risks. They had rejected the fanciful proposition that
they somehow got a decent amount of rest while located in the midst of passengers’
conversations and while subject to numerous interruptions to provide services. The
BSCP had undermined the legitimacy of corporate paternalists who overlooked basic
human needs while perpetuating the notion that they knew and represented workers’
interests better than the workers could themselves. It is not entirely clear why Pull-
LABOR
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36
. For glimpses of the bargaining process, see Harris, Keeping the Faith, – ; Bates, Pullman
Por ters a nd the Rise o f Protest Politics, ; Brazeal, Brotherhood, ; Tye, Rising, – . On the favorable
context, see, among others, Sidney Fine, Sit-Down: The General Motors Strike of 1936 – 1937 (Ann Arbor:
Univ ersit y of M ichig an Pr ess, ) ; Bruc e Nel son, Workers on the Waterfront: Seamen, Longshoremen, and
Unionism in the 1930s ( Urban a: Un iversi ty of Ill inoi s Pres s, ); R ober t Zi eger, The CIO, 1935 – 1955 (Cha-
pel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), – ; Dana Frank, “Girl Strikers Occupy Chain Store,
Wi n Big : The Detr oit Woo lwort h’s S trik e of ,” in H oward Zin n, Da na Fra nk, and Ro bin D. G. K elle y,
Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Boston: Beacon,
), – ; Christopher Tomlins, “AFL Unions in the s: Their Performance in Historical Perspec-
tive ,” Journal of American History (March ): – .
. Oakland Division, BSCP, minutes, September , , Dellums Papers, carton , untitled vol.;
A. Phil ip Ra ndolp h to B enja min M cLau rin , Aug ust , , Brot herho od o f Sle eping Car P orter s Rec ords ,
box , folder: Agreements, Pullman, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (here-
after BSCP Records – DC); M. B. Osburn and A. Philip Randolph, “Supplemental Agreement,” August
man ended up giving as much ground as it did on these matters in . Company
records disclose no belated recognition that reliance on exhausted employees undercut
the high quality of service promised to passengers. Instead, the union’s gains appear
to have resulted from its ability to convey to its adversaries and to the federal medi-
ator that sleep-related concerns held enough priority with its members to justify a
strike. In all probability, Pullman also knew that membership in the brother hood had
grown by roughly percent over the course of the negotiations. At this juncture, the
BSCP also undoubtedly beneted from the surge of momentum generally enjoyed
by the labor movement.42
Union-Building after 1937
The agreement unquestionably put the BSCP on a rmer footing in dealing
with its managerial adversaries. It did not, however, mark the end of union-building
activity. Because the contract contained neither a closed-shop provision nor any other
guarantee of union security, the organizing process was far from nished. The broth-
erhood had to win the allegiance of each individual car-service worker, as well as to
retain the loyalty of its members. Overwork and sleep issues were vital to the ongoing
process of forging solidarity. Demands to reduce hours and improve sleeping arrange-
ments served to mobilize the rank and le. The union incrementally extended the
gains in these areas during the s and s.
Demands for shorter hours sparked recurrent battles. Especially after the Fair
Labor Standards Act of set the forty-hour week as a national benchmark but
exempted railroad employees, working time stood out as an essential piece of unn-
ished business. With no protective legislation in sight, it was left to the BSCP alone
to address the long hours of its members. By , rank-and-le porters were seek-
ing the -hour month, the rough equivalent of the forty-hour week. Ten years later,
the BSCP won a decrease to hours a month, the equivalent of the forty-seven-
hour week, just as other rail unions were attaining forty hours. Only in did the
brother hood nally reach its goal of the forty-hour week.43
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 37
, , , ibid., box , folder: Agreements, Pullman (); Eastern, Western, and Southeastern Carriers’
Conference and Employees’ National Conference Committee, “Agreement,” March , , , ibid., box
, folder: Agreements; T. D. McNeal to Ofcers and Members, Southwestern Zone, BSCP, December
, , ibid., box , folder: Shorter Work Month Movement; Pullman Company and BSCP, “Agree-
ment . . . , Revised Ef fective July , ,” December , , , Records of the BSCP; Part 1, reel , frame
. On the Fair Labor Standards Act and its many exemptions, including that for railroad employees, see
United States Statutes at Large, vol. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Ofce, ), – ,
esp. – ; Irving Bernstein, A Caring Society: The New Deal, the Worker, and the Great Depression (Bos-
ton: Houghton Mifin, ), – , esp. – , ; Marc Linder, The Autocratically Flexible Workplace:
A Hi sto ry of Ove rtim e Regul atio n in t he Un ited Stat es (Iowa City: Fanpihua, ), – .
. Halena Wilson to Dear Sister, January , (quotation), Records of the BSCP; Part 2, reel ,
frame ; BSCP, Report of Proceedings of Third Biennial Convention and Seventeenth Anniversary Celebra-
tion, 1942 (St. Louis, MO: Advocate, n.d.), (Spokane Division quotations), – ; Lucas Fisher et al. to
Mr. Dellums, September , (quotation), Dellums Papers, carton , folder: Southern Pacic Agree-
ment, ; Bla ck Work er, January , ; April , ; BSCP, Report of Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial
Convention and Twenty-First Anniversary Celebration, 1946 (n.p., n.d.), , , , – ; BSCP, Report of
Proceedings of the Sixth Biennial Convention and Twenty-Third Anniversary Celebration, 1948 (n.p., n.d.),
, ; BSCP, Report of Proceedings of the Seventh Biennial Convention and Silver Jubilee Celebration, 1950
(n.p., n.d.), ; A. Philip Randolph, address, , in Wilson, Tearing, – ; BSCP, Report of Proceedings
of t he Se con d Trien nial Conve ntio n and Thir ty-Fi rst Anniver sary , 1956 (n .p., n.d.) , ; BSCP, “ Pull man Por-
ters Seek Shorter Work Month,” March , , BSCP Records – DC, box , folder: Shorter Work Month
Movement; U.S. Emergency Board No. , Report to the President (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Pri nti ng Of ce, ) , .
Health considerations continued to play a signicant part in justifying shorter
hours. In , Ladies’ Auxiliary President Halena Wilson rallied porters’ wives with
the reminder that it was “essential to the workers’ health that they have shorter hours.”
Two years later, Spokane porters argued that the eight-hour day served to “protect the
health and very life of the worker.” They maintained that under the current sched-
ules, “the physical resistance of our brothers is being destroyed and will result in a
general physical breakdown and loss of manpower.” In , a group of Los Angeles
porters sought shorter hours because lack of rest lowered their resistance to infections,
so that they were “continually ghting colds.” After , however, the primary fac-
tor in the employment situation was not an overwork-induced shortage of car-service
workers but rather a growing surplus of them, due to declining business. Commercial
aviation and the interstate highway system doomed long-distance passenger rail ser-
vice. Naturally, the union saw reduced hours primarily as a way to share more widely
the shrinking amount of work. In these dire straits, the health rationale receded but
did not disappear. Federal mediators who in recommended the forty-hour week
appear to have accepted the BSCP’s health argument. Their report to President Ken-
nedy warned that porters’ “long hours are not only physically wearing but also inter-
fere with if not prevent a normal home life.” 4 4
The sleep-allowances clause in the contract was sufciently ambiguous
and inconvenient to management to assure that the union would have to monitor
carefully its enforcement. Within a month of the implementation of the agreement,
LABOR
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38
. Bl ack Wor ker, November , ; January , , ; February , ; April , , ; October
, ; Southwestern Zone, BSCP, “Report of Proceedings,” April , , – , Records of the BSCP;
Part 1, reel , frame ; Fact Finding Committee, New York Division, BSCP, “Report,” n.d. [ca. ],
, ibid ., ree l , f rame ; uni dent ied port ers, “Memo rand um to Mr. M. P. Web ster,” Novemb er , ,
ibid., frame ; H. A. Rock to D. LaRoche, September , , Randolph Papers, box , folder: Agree-
ments, ; BSCP, Proceedings, 1946, ; P. A. Smith to S[idney] Melton, October , , and Melton to
Sm ith, Dece mber , , bot h in Pul lman Arch ives, Reco rd Gro up , subgr oup , ser. , box , fol der ;
C. L. Dellums to A. Philip R andolph, January , [sic — ], and Randolph to Dellums, January ,
, both in Dellums Papers, carton , folder: Outgoing, Randolph, A. Philip, – ; Oakland Division,
BSCP, minutes, March , , ibid., carton , untitled vol.; Dellums to H. C. Lincoln, December , ,
and Lincoln to Dellums, February , , both in ibid., carton , folder: Pullman Time Sheets, .
. Fact Finding Committee, New York Division, BSCP, “Report,” n.d. [ca. ], I (quotation), I – V,
Randolph Papers, box , folder: Agreements, ; Pullman Company, In str ucti ons for C ar Se rvi ce Em ploy-
ees (Chicago: Pullman, ), . For the classic analysis of the stressful nature of this type of situation, see
Robert Karasek Jr., “Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Rede-
sign,” Administrative Sciences Quarterly (June ): – .
the Bl ack Wo rk er began to advise the rank and le on how to assert their new rights
to rest. In the same vein, in the Southwest the brotherhood distributed twenty-ve
hundred copies of a booklet that instructed porters and maids how to compute their
working time. In this region, the union set up a time sheet committee to scrutinize
the often-complicated arrangements governing rest allowances and to teach rank-and-
le members how to identify chiseling. Contract enforcement brought absurdities to
light. Union investigators in New York City discovered in that Pullman sched-
uled porters for a rest period that ended at : a.m. on an overnight run that reached
its destination at : a.m. Skirmishing over Pullman administrators’ errors, intended
or unintended, contributed to the ongoing unionization project.45
Nothing in the bargaining agreement eliminated the sleep-denying implica-
tions of employees’ wide-ranging duties. Management still required car-service work-
ers to be at the beck and call of passengers virtually without restriction, unless a
coworker was double-covering for a resting worker. As a result, porters released for
their sleep periods often suffered interrupted rest. Well before occupational stress
received scientic recognition, rank-and-le activists in the New York Division iden-
tied as highly stressful the combination of unrelenting demands for service, unrea-
sonable scheduling, and difculties in recovering pay lost for diminished rest time.
These lay observers objected to the “mental hazard” that this situation too commonly
represented for conscientious porters.46
The union generally tried to limit the scope of time commitments, not the
scope of duties. Exactions for nighttime rest continued to stir resentment, given that
the company’s discretionary powers still allowed it to assign co-workers to cover for
those on sleep breaks. Porters argued that a doubled workload fully made up for
an equal amount of time off to sleep. Interviews with about of his co-workers
led T. Walter Jones to conclude that “the men are absolutely and positively against
the application of sleep periods.” Jones conveyed the sense of injustice that pervaded
the ranks: “A watches B’s car for four hours and in turn B watches A’s car for four
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 39
. T. W. Jones to D. LaRoche, June , (quotations), Randolph Papers, box , folder: Agree-
ments, ; C. S. Wells to [International] Executive Board, BSCP, June , , Dellums Papers, carton ,
folder: National Executive Board; Pullman Company and BSCP, “Agreement . . . , Revised Effective June ,
,” April , , BSCP Records – DC, box , folder: Agreements, Pullman (); Pullman Company and
BSCP, “Supplemental Agreement,” August , , , ibid.; BSCP, “Bulletin on Revision of Agreement,”
n.d. [ca. April , ], , ibid., box , folder: Agreements, Pullman Company; BSCP, Pr ocee ding s, 194 2,
; BSCP, Report of Proceedings of the Fourth Biennial Convention and Nineteenth Anniversary Celebration,
1944 (n .p., n.d .), ; BSCP, Report of Proceedings of the First Triennial Convention and Twenty-Eighth Anni-
ve rsar y, 1953 (n.p., n.d.), ; BSCP, Proceedings, 1956, ; M. P. Ayers to Milton P. Webster, April , ,
Re cord s of t he BS CP; Par t 1, reel , frame ; Pullman Company and BSCP, “Agreement,” n.d. [ca. July ,
], – , ibid., reel , frame .
. Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Company, “Injury — Porter C. E. Bigbee —
Portland,” n.d. [ca. April ] (quotation), Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , box
, folder ; BSCP, Proceedings, 1944, (Jacksonville Division quotation), – ; Safety and Com-
hours[,] making a total of eight hours work that the Pullman Company gets without
payment.” Sharpening this point, Jones observed that making up for deducted time
forced porters to make too many trips per month, a workload so demanding that
they then had to miss scheduled runs “for health preservation.” But these recupera-
tive respites were not sufcient to maintain family life: “Without an exception
men stated that their wives and children complain of lack of companionship, espe-
cially the wives[,] for the men are so utterly exhausted that rest and sleep are impera-
tive.” To address this perverse consequence of attempts to ameliorate conditions, the
BSCP convention voted to seek the abolition of all sleep deductions. With the
issue still unresolved three years later, C. S. Wells, president of the Cleveland Divi-
sion, underscored Jones’s concerns that the system of deductions cut deeply into por-
ters’ layover time at home, where they could get better rest and spend time with their
families. The union made progress on this front but never succeeded in making sleep
periods nondeductible.47
After , the spatial aspects of rest presented as many challenges as did the
temporal ones. Although lodging at distant terminals remained a catch-as-catch-can
proposition for many of its members, the BSCP concentrated instead on improv-
ing onboard accommodations. The main targets for reform were the smoking room
couch and its replacement on trains lacking a smoking room, the men’s washroom
couch. In both these spaces, management forced porters to inhabit a contaminated
environment, separated from passengers only by a curtain. Compared with sleeping
in a berth surrounded by bedding and other cushioned materials, these couches also
exacerbated the safety hazards associated with train accidents. Derailments and col-
lisions sent a number of porters ying into peril. Pullman had to compensate C. E.
Bigbee, who lost ten weeks of work in due to neck and back injuries weeks after
“being thrown off couch against the washbasin.” In , Jacksonville porters com-
plained that inability to sleep because of smoking room noise and other disturbing
factors left workers sleepless for three or four nights in a row, “causing a hardship on
the porters’ health.” However, full trains meant that setting aside berth space for por-
ters would cut revenue.48
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pensation Department, Pullman Company, “Injury — Porter Elmer Brown — Chicago Eastern District,”
n.d. [ca. April ], ibid., box , folder ; Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Com-
pany, “Injury — Porter J. C. LeSeuer — Milwaukee Agency,” n.d. [ca. October ], ibid., box , folder
; Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Company, “Injury — Porter C. R. Collins — New
Orleans,” n.d. [ca. February ], ibid., folder ; Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Com-
pany, “Injury — Porter E. Patterson — Penn Terminal,” n.d. [ca. August ], ibid., folder ; Safety and
Compensation Department, Pullman Company, “Injury — Porter James Curruthers — Chicago North,”
n.d. [ca. October ], ibid., box , folder ; Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Company,
“Injury — Porter I. Hammond — Washington,” n.d. [ca. January ], ibid., box , folder ; Black Worker,
February , , ; July , ; Arnold Cherry, “Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Questionnaire,”
n.d. [ca. ], Dellums Papers, carton , folder: Questionnaire Returns; Clarence Jackson, “Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters Questionnaire,” n.d. [ca. ], ibid.; Arthur McWatt, “ ‘A Greater Victory’: The
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in St. Paul,” Minnesota History (Spring ): ; G. R. Ross et
al. to Fact Finding Committee, New York Division, BSCP, n.d. [ca. ], Randolph Papers, box , folder:
Agreements, ; Pullman Company, Instructions for Employees on Cars of the Pullman Company (n.p.,
), – ; Portland Division to C. L. Dellums, n.d. [ca. ], Dellums Papers, carton , folder: Con-
tract Negotiations of . At about this time, dining car employees organized under the Hotel and Res-
tau rant Empl oyees Inter nati onal All ianc e neg otia ted ab olit ion o f the odio us pr acti ce of sleep ing o n din ing
tables without any mattress. See Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, , .
. BSCP, Proceedings, 1948, (Los Angeles Division quotation), – ; BSCP, Proceedings, 1946,
– ; Pullman Company and BSCP, “Agreement . . . , Effective January , ,” November , , ,
Pu llma n Arch ives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , box , folder ; G. W. Bo hannon t o A. J. Uttic h,
January , , ibid., folder ; Bla ck Wo rke r, Ap ril , .
Pullman held out against eliminating the smoking room sofa. The company
met union protests with promises that it would try to avoid assignment to that space.
However, in the Los Angeles BSCP branch told the national leadership not to
trust soft assurances regarding the “unsanitary, noisy, and degrading” smoking room
but instead to get a guarantee of its elimination written into the next agreement. Only
with the contract that took effect in did the brotherhood put an end to sleep-
ing in the smoking room. In celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in , the BSCP
named abolition of the requirement to sleep on the smoker couch as one of its major
accomplishments.49
Three decades of union advocacy substantially improved sleeping car work-
ers’ chances to obtain an adequate amount of sleep. The African American union’s
accomplishments stand out as especially remarkable in view of the racism that hin-
dered advances at every turn. The BSCP fought uphill against embedded cultural
assumptions about Africans Americans’ proper place in the workforce. In the pre-
vailing racial order, black jobs were supposed to be bad jobs, with onerous terms and
conditions only natural. The segregated American labor market made porters’ posi-
tions coveted ones, so that Pullman had a ready supply of job applicants and contin-
gent “extras” to chill assertiveness. Coordinated bargaining or an inclusive alliance
of their industry’s craft organizations might well have given the BSCP the leverage
it lacked to improve rest time and sleeping conditions. But the lily-white rail broth-
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 41
. On racism in the rail unions, see Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color; Brazeal, Brotherhood, , .
For unions adopting a political strategy for ameliorating health and safety conditions, see Robert Asher,
“Organized Labor and the Origins of the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” Labor’s Heritage ( Janu-
ary ): – ; Greenwald, “Work, Health, and Community,” – ; Rochelle Frounfelker, “Workers’
Health and the Spray Machine Debate,” American Journal of Public Health (February ): – ;
William Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety in the Progressive Period: The Political Economy of Reform (Lexing-
ton: University Press of Kentucky, ), – ; Joseph Tripp, “An Instance of Labor and Business Coop-
eration: Workmen’s Compensation in Washington State (),” Labor History (Fall ): – ; Irwin
Yel l ow it z , Labor and the Progressive Movement in New York State, 1897 – 1916 (Ithaca, N Y: Corne ll Unive r-
sity Press, ), – ; Derickson, Black Lung; Rosner and Markowitz, Deadly Dust, – , – ,
– . For union involvement in initiatives that were primarily private, see David Rosner and Gerald
Ma rkowit z, “ Safe ty a nd Hea lth on th e Job a s a C lass Issue : The Workers ’ Hea lth B ureau of A meric a in the
s,” Science and Society (Winter – ): – ; Robert Asher, “Industrial Safety and Labor Rela-
tions in the United States, – ,” in Lif e and Lab or: D ime nsio ns o f Am eri can Wo rkin g-Cl ass H ist ory, ed.
Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher (Albany: State University of New York Press, ), – , – .
. Harry Guilbert to My Valentine, Feb. , , Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup ,
ser. , vol. . On the discriminatory nature of the health system during the period under consideration, see
W. Michael Byrd a nd Linda A. Clayton, An Am erican Dile mma: Vol. 2, Race, Me dicine and He alth Care in
the United States, 1900 – 2000 (New York: Routledge, ), – ; David McBride, From TB to AID S: Epi -
demics among Urban Blacks since 1900 (Albany: State University of New York Press, ), – ; Edward
Be ards ley, A History of Neglect: Health Care for Blacks and Mill Workers in the Twentieth-Century South
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, ), – , – . For a case study of disease invisibility in
the Jim Crow era, see Keith Wailoo, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race
an d Heal th (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, ), – .
erhoods, with constitutional color bars, rejected any form of industrywide solidar-
ity that would have encompassed the sleeping car workers. The economic setting in
which the porters’ organization had to function was always hostile.50
Similarly, this contest arose in an inhospitable context in terms of biomedical
knowledge and other health resources. As previously noted, the elds of sleep science
and sleep medicine did not exist. The union lacked the wherewithal to retain any
medical expertise of its own. As peripatetic workers of African descent, porters and
maids had limited access to high-quality professional services during the era of health
care segregation. Hence, the chances of obtaining any authoritative validation of their
sleep-related illnesses and injuries were minimal. Moreover, these workers served
an employer who rejected any association between sleep denial and adverse effects.
Instead of investigating its employees’ litany of complaints, Pullman management
promoted victim-blaming. Consider this Valentine’s Day message from the company
safety director: “Roses are red / Violets are blue / If you get hurt / I’m through with
you.” Under these daunting circumstances, it is remarkable that the BSCP made as
much progress as it did.51
Beyond its concrete gains in limiting working time and improving sleeping
arrangements, the organized car-service workers made a valuable contribution merely
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. Safety and Compensation Department, Pullman Company, “File Record of Disability Payments,
– ,” Pullman Archives, Record Group , subgroup , ser. , boxes – , folders – ; Safety and Com-
pensation Department, Pullman Company, injury reports, – , ibid., subgroup , ser. , boxes – .
For insights into the experience and meanings of illnesses involving exhaustion, see Arthur Kleinman,
The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition (New York: Basic Books, ), esp.
– ; Robert Aronowitz, Making Sense of Illness: Science, Society, and Disease (New York: Cambridge
University Press, ), – . On historians’ inattention to working-class male bodies, see Ava Baron,
“Masculinity, the Embodied Male Worker, and the Historian’s Gaze,” International Labor and Working-
Class History (Spring ): – . On the ascendance of the respectable breadwinner role and its part
in replacing producerist with consumerist masculinity, see Martin Summers, Manliness and Its Discon-
tents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900 – 1930 (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, ); Paul Taillon, “ ‘What We Want Is Good, Sober Men’: Masculinity, Respect-
ability, and Temperance in the Railroad Brotherhoods, c. – ,” Journal of Social History (Win-
ter ): – , esp. – ; cf. Michael McCoyer, “ ‘Rough Mens’ in ‘the Toughest Places I Ever Seen’:
The Construction and Ramications of Black Masculine Identity in the Mississippi Delta’s Levee Camps,
– ,” International Labor and Working-Class History (Spring ): – . On white stereotyping
of black physicality, see Mark Smith, How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Sen ses (Chapel Hill:
Uni versit y of N orth Caro lina Pres s, ) .
by bringing to light problems that were widespread within its ranks yet underrecog-
nized in the pre-union era. A salient feature of the BSCP’s understanding of health,
as expressed in its observations on fatigue and sleeplessness, was its holistic perspec-
tive, encompassing both physical and mental well-being. This breadth of vision was
achieved, in part, by elevating certain kinds of ills while discounting others. Not-
withstanding occasional comments on the cardiovascular and respiratory systems,
the union’s critique lacked corporeal specicity. Yet it appears that porters suffered
not only the traumatic injuries resulting from being hurled off the smoker sofa, but
also high rates of back problems and respiratory disorders that were, in all probabil-
ity, to some extent attributable to having to try to rest in drafty, uncomfortable places.
The numerous ulcers and injuries from falls incurred by sleeping car workers may
well have been, in part, consequences of chronic sleep denial. Perhaps the quest for
respectability led porters and their leaders to downplay particular esh-and-blood
complaints in favor of vaguer concerns about strain, stamina, deterioration, and over-
all health status. Such attempts to bolster a deracinated, disembodied image of the
porter could help to defuse whites’ fearful stereotype of the carnal black man. This
was a conception of health in which the dangerous African American male body all
but disappeared. It was a conception, nonetheless, that raised a fundamental chal-
lenge to paternalism. The brotherhood demolished the notion that Pullman workers
could somehow devote boundless energy and time to service without suffering seri-
ous consequences.52
Derickson / Sleep Denial among Pullman Porters 43
. Kathleen Barry, “ ‘Too Glamorous to Be Considered Workers’: Flight Attendants’ Attitudes and
Pink-Collar Activism in Mid-Twentieth-Century America,” Labor (Fa ll ): ; Joan Beifu ss, At the
River I Stand, nd ed. (Memphis, TN: St. Lukes, ), – , , , , , , ; Estes, I Am a Man!
– ; Leon Fink, The Maya of Morganton: Work and Community in the Nuevo New South (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, ), – , – , – , , ; Human Rights Watch, Blood,
Sweat, an d Fear: Workers’ Rights in U.S. Meat and Poultry Plant s (New York: Human Rights Watch, ),
esp. – ; Steven Lopez, Reorganizing the Rust Belt: An Inside Study of the American Labor Movement
(Berkeley: University of California Press, ), xviii, – , – , – ; Fred Brooks, “New Turf for
Organizing: Family Child Care Providers,” La bor S tudi es Jo urn al (Winter ): – ; Katherine Sci-
acchitano, “Finding the Community in the Union and the Union in the Community: The First-Contract
Campaign at Steeltech,” in Organizing to Win: New Research on Union Strategies, ed. Kate Bronfenbrenner
(Ithaca, NY: ILR, ), – . For an illuminating Canadian study of stress as a spur to unionization,
see Joan Sangster, “The Bell Telephone Strike: Organizing Women Workers,” Labour/Le Travailleur
(): – , esp. , – , – . On organizing for respect, see Kate Bronfenbrenner, “The Role
of Union Strategies in NLRB Certication Elections,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review (January
): – .
Health Hazards and Respect — Past and Present
The BCSP’s sleep-denial critique clearly resonated with the rank and le from the
outset of the marathon campaign to build a viable organization. Besides its validity
on its own terms, the issue of overwork attracted car-service workers to the BSCP and
helped hold their allegiance through difcult times because it tapped into a larger
desire for respect in the workplace. The union helped to channel and to reinforce
employees’ sense that Pullman’s refusal to grant them a reasonable amount of rest
constituted not only a hazard to their health but an affront to their human dignity.
Other organizing campaigns by various groups of American workers over the course
of the past century have drawn on the intertwined themes of workplace risks and
disrespect. Flight attendants unionized at midcentury in part because they saw their
long and irregular hours as an indignity. Two on-the-job fatalities sparked the
struggle of sanitation workers in Memphis for representation in the American Fed-
eration of State, County and Municipal Employees, uniting behind the rallying cry
“I am a man.” In the more recent past, campaigns in meat processing, health care,
and other industries have taken on poor working conditions as evidence of employer
disrespect.53
The prospects for further engagement on this terrain are promising. Indeed,
workplace health and safety currently ranks as the most important consideration in
U.S. workers’ decisions to support union representation. Accordingly, some efforts to
advance social movement unionism are devoting more attention to workplace health
grievances, both with regard to recruiting new members and activating the rank and
le. In , the AFL-CIO launched an initiative to assist unions in using health
grievances in organizing. Its guide for organizers construed the issue as one of fun-
damental values: “An ultimate measure of dignity and respect on the job is the degree
LABOR
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. Department of Occupational Safety and Health, AFL-CIO, and National Labor College, Safety
and Health for Union Organizers: Facilitator’s Guide (Washington, DC: AFL-CIO, ), (quotation);
Department of Occupational Safety and Health, AFL-CIO, and National Labor College, Safety and
Health for Union Organizers: Resource Guide (Washington, DC: AFL-CIO, ), esp. – ; Stephen
Hirschfeld, “New Poll Shows Many Americans Are Convinced Unions Are Key to Improving Work-
ing Conditions,” September , , www.employmentlawalliance.com/pdf/ELAUnionsD__
.pdf (accessed November , ); Peter D. Hart Research Associates, “Working Women’s View of the
Economy, Unions, and Public Policy,” in Not Your Father’s Union Movement: Inside the AFL-CIO, ed. Jo-
Ann Mort (New York: Verso, ), , ; Toney Pecinovsky, “UNITE’s Current Campaign,” Z Maga-
zine, November , – ; Pam Tau Lee and Niklas Krause, “The Impact of a Worker Health Study
on Working Conditions,” Journal of Public Health Policy (): – , esp. , . On contempo-
rary scheduling patterns and working time, see National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health,
The Changing Organization of Work and the Safety and Health of Working People (Cincinnati, OH: NIOSH,
); Paul Landsbergis, “The Changing Organization of Work and the Safety and Health of Working
People: A Commentary,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (January ): – ;
Lo nnie Golde n and Barb ara W iens-Tuers , “Ove rdoin g It? O verti me Work, Worke r Happ iness , and Well
Being,” paper presented at Eastern Economics Association Conference, February , , Philadelphia;
Rick Fantasia and Kim Voss, Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement (Berkeley: University
of California Press, ), – , – ; Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline
of L eis ure ( New York : Ba sic Bo oks , ); Joh n de G raaf , ed. , Take B ack Yo ur Ti me: Fi ghtin g Ov erwo rk an d
Time Poverty in America (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, ). On the current disparities in exposure to
occupational risks, see AFL-CIO, Immigrant Workers at Risk: The Urgent Need for Improved Workplace
Safety and Health Policies and Programs (Was hing ton , DC: AFL -CIO , ); Lind a Rae Murr ay, “Si ck an d
Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Scientic Evidence, Methods, and Research Implications for Racial and
Ethnic Disparities in Occupational Health,” Ame rica n Jou rna l of Pu blic Heal th (February ): – ;
Rafael Moure-Eraso and George Friedman-Jimenez, “Occupational Health among Latino Workers in the
Urban Setting,” in Health Issues in the Latino Community, ed. Marilyn Aguirre-Molina, Carlos W. Molina,
and Ruth Enid Zambrana (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, ), – ; Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The
Dark Side of the All-American Meal (Boston: Houghton Mifin, ), – . For historical studies, see
Martin Cherniack, The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, ); Laura Pulido, Environmentalism and Economic Justice: Two Chicano Struggles in the
Southwest (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, ), – .
to which workers are provided with a work environment that will not rob them of
their health, their limbs or their lives.” With the prevalence of mandatory overtime
and the continuing growth of nonstandard employment arrangements, with their
sleep- denying demands for “exibility,” there appear to be abundant opportunities for
mobilizing around overwork in particular. This should be especially the case among
the unorganized workers of color, who most often face the greatest risks under the
new regime, as they did under the old.54
