Mr. Pullman suggested that the matter be submitted to the decision of the traveling public. He proposed that the new cars, with their increased rate, be put on trains with the old cars at the cheaper rate. If the traveling public thought the beauty of finish, the increased comfort, and the safety of the new cars worth $2 per night, there were the $24,000 cars; if, on the other hand, they were satisfied with less attractive surroundings at a saving of 50 cents, the cheaper cars were at their disposal. It was a simple submission without argument of the plain facts on both sides of the issue--in other words, an application of the good American doctrine of appealing to the people as the court of highest resort. The decision came instantly and in terms which left no opening for discussion. The only travelers who rode in the old cars were those who were grumbling because they could not get berths in the new ones. After running practically empty for a few days, the cars in which the price for a berth was $1.50 were withdrawn from service, and Pullmans, wherein the two-dollar tariff prevailed, were substituted in their places, and this for the very potent reason, that the public insisted upon it. Nor did the results stop there. The Michigan Central Railway, charging an extra tariff of fifty cents per night as compared with other eastern lines, proved an aggressive competitor of those lines, not in spite of the extra charge, but because of it, and of the higher order of comfort and beauty it represented. Then followed a curious reversal of the usual results of competition. Instead of a levelling down to the cheaper basis on which all opposition was united, there was a levelling up to the standard on which the Pullman service was planted and on which it stood out single-handed and alone. Within comparatively a short period all the Michigan Central's rival lines were forced by sheer pressure from the traveling public to withdraw the inferior and cheaper cars and meet the superior accommodations and the necessarily higher tariff. In other words, the inspiration of that key-note of vigorous ambition for excellence of the product itself, irrespective of immediate financial returns, which was struck with such emphasis in the building of the "Pioneer," and which ever since has rung through all the Pullman work, was felt in the railroad world of the United States at that early date, just as it is even more commonly felt at the present time. At one bound it put the American railway passenger service in the leadership of all nations in that particular branch of progress, and has held it there ever since as an object lesson in the illustration of a broad and far-reaching principle.[1] [1]: _Contemporary American Biography_, p. 260. [Illustration: One of the first cars built by George M. Pullman]