A notable addition to Chicago's mercantile industry is to be the extensive car works of the Pullman Palace Car Company, ground for which is to be broken today. A larger establishment for manufacturing purposes will not exist in the West, and while it will contain all the latest and most improved mechanical appliances in use, it will embody in its architecture grace and beauty that is quite characteristic of the palace car. The works are to cost $1,000,000; about 2,000 men are to be employed in them, and the extended arrangement of machinery is to be moved by the Corliss engine, one of the Centennial wonders, which has been purchased by the Pullmans. [Illustration: Fitting the car with steam pipes and electric conduits] [Illustration: At work on the steel plates for inside finish panels] An interesting personal reminiscence of this famous real estate operation may be found in Frederick Francis Cook's _Bygone Days in Chicago_. Another "Pullman scoop" was of an extraordinary real-estate and manufacturing interest when "negotiated"--the slang to be accepted for once in its proper meaning. In the later seventies, besides other duties, I had charge of the real-estate department of the _Times_. It became known that the Pullman Company intended to build a manufacturing town somewhere, but whether in the environs of Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, or other western point, was for the public an open question for many months--and, I dare say, for a time was an unsettled proposition with the company itself, for St. Louis offered large inducements in the way of land grants. What finally turned the scales in favor of Chicago, according to Mr. Pullman's declaration to me, was the more favorable climatic conditions presented by Chicago. It was his contention that during the summer a man could do at least ten per cent more work near Lake Michigan than in the Mississippi Valley in the latitude of St. Louis. During many disturbing weeks--for the whole real-estate market in at least three cities waited on the decision--frequent announcements were made that the directors of the company, or its committee on site, had inspected this locality, or that, in the vicinity of one city or another, and so the wearisome time went on. Many places were visited about Chicago--some to the north, some on the Desplaines, some in the neighborhood of the Canal, but somehow none near Calumet Lake, a fact which finally aroused my suspicions. In the meantime, unverifiable reports of large transactions in that locality floated about in real-estate circles. Finally, I pinned down an actual sale of large dimensions, with Colonel "Jim" Bowen as the ostensible purchaser. That opened my eyes, for the colonel's circumstances at this time put such a transaction on his own account altogether out of the question.