In 1852, brothers Henry and Clement Studebaker opened a modest blacksmith shop in South Bend, Indiana, with two forges and sixty-eight dollars, building an empire whose wagons carried pioneers west, supplied the Union Army, and even bore Abraham Lincoln to Ford's Theatre. Unlike every other major nineteenth-century wagon maker, Studebaker successfully leaped into the automobile age, surviving a catastrophic 1933 collapse to produce unforgettable postwar icons like the bullet-nose coupe, the Starliner, and Raymond Loewy's supercharged fiberglass Avanti. Yet runaway factory costs and fierce Detroit price wars ultimately brought South Bend production to a halt in 1963, leaving a small plant in Hamilton, Ontario, to roll out the very last Studebaker in March 1966.

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“The Rise and Fall of the Pullman Car Company” is a business history deep dive from Strange Business History Cafe into the railroad sleeping car empire that changed American travel.

George Mortimer Pullman started as a cabinet maker and building mover who helped raise Chicago’s buildings with jack screws. Convinced overnight train travel could be better, he built the sleeping car and grew the Pullman Company into a giant. He then built a whole company town around his factory, where he owned everything and workers rented from the company.

When Pullman cut wages but not rents, workers went on strike, and Eugene V. Debs and the American Railway Union called a national boycott. The Pullman strike changed America, and Congress made Labor Day a national holiday in 1894.

The story continues after Pullman’s death, through the Pullman porters and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters led by A. Philip Randolph, to the company’s decline in the age of the airplane and the automobile.

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Sponsored by CampfireShoppe.com. Campfire Shoppe is a small business offering natural herbal supplements, soy candles, melts, and teas.

“The Rise and Fall of Montgomery Ward” is a business history story from Strange Business History Cafe.

From a single-sheet catalog in 1872 to one of America’s retail giants, Montgomery Ward pioneered mail-order shopping and went head-to-head with Sears for a century. This podcast traces the company’s spectacular rise, its innovative catalogs and stores, and the missteps, competition, and changing times that led to its dramatic fall.

Strange Business History Cafe looks at the rise and fall of the brands and businesses we remember. Follow the show for more business history. Press play and share your own memories of these brands.

New listeners are welcome: start with this episode, then browse the back catalog for more.

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Explore more at StrangeHistory.com

Sponsored by CampfireShoppe.com. Campfire Shoppe is a small business offering natural herbal supplements, soy candles, melts, and teas.