With the realization constantly before him that the most perfect service could be given only by the most radically improved equipment and the widest extension of this company's activities, Mr. Pullman identified the early years of organization with a development of the passenger car to a degree of comfort, convenience, safety, and luxury that passed popular comprehension. Nothing was too good for the Pullman car; too much money could not be invested in it. Hand in hand with this development of the mechanical side of service he developed its extension throughout the country, by means of which it might be put into the hands of the greatest number of people for their greater convenience. Never has history more completely justified a business that from its character must be to a certain extent a monopoly. Never has competition more promptly yielded to unification. It is natural to think of the Pullman Company as housed in some miraculous manner in the cars which it operates, as a company which expends its restless existence in untiring travel from state to state. But, as a matter of fact, the vast organization which makes possible the movement of the seventy-five hundred cars which comprise the present equipment holds an interest secondary only to the actual operation of the cars themselves. [Illustration: Front end of a dining room in a private car] [Illustration: Rear end of the same dining room] There was a day when the run from Albany to Schenectady was the longest continuous railroad ride that a traveler might take. Today it is possible to travel in a Pullman car without change from Washington, D. C., to San Francisco, a distance of 3,625 miles, requiring one hundred and eighteen hours, or approximately five days. But distance is not alone characteristic of Pullman service; equal attention is given to shorter "hauls." From Greensboro to Raleigh, North Carolina, for instance, a distance of only eighty-one miles, Pullman sleeping cars are regularly operated. Here, as in many other instances, arrangements exist whereby the passengers may retire early in the evening while the car is at rest on a siding in the station, and arise at a reasonable hour in the morning. By such service hotel accommodations are practically afforded and it becomes possible for the travelers to have a whole day for pleasure or business at one place, spend a night in which a hundred or five hundred miles are traversed, and arrive without fatigue at another place the following morning.