"CHICAGO, ILL., Aug. 21, 1894. "SIR: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of this date, giving your impressions derived from your visit to the town of Pullman yesterday. In pursuance of the invitation contained in your telegram of the 19th inst. I caused Mr. Wickes, a vice president of this company, who is thoroughly acquainted with its affairs at Pullman, to call upon you and offer you every assistance in his power or which could be offered by any officer of the company in making your proposed personal investigation. Mr. Wickes offered to accompany you to Pullman for this purpose, and I regret that you did not appear to consider that he could be of service to you. As an indication of the importance of the aid of local knowledge in making essential discriminations I may say to you that I have the best reason for believing that the husband of a wife who is published as representing her family to you yesterday as in need of help, drew more than $1,300 of his savings from a bank July 2 last for the purpose as he said of buying lots. "While it has not been represented to the officers of this company by any persons concerned that there was any such extended distress at Pullman, as was represented for the first time by the extraordinary method of a published telegram to you in your official capacity, I do not doubt that there are many cases of need caused by the refusal of the employes for more than two and one-half months to earn offered wages of more than $300,000; and that such cases have been increased and made more severe by the persistence of more than 650 of our employes, of whom about 350 live in Pullman, in refusing to apply for their old places after the strike was practically over and after they were publicly invited, July 16, to resume their work, until by the gradual coming in of new men during the whole month their places have been filled and the full force engaged for all work in hand. In addition to this there is, no doubt, need among the old employes living in Pullman, a considerable number of whom have persistently refused to apply for work at all, many of them it is understood, considering themselves to be still engaged in a strike.