Ganancia de capital

public support of the tax to fund the project and his criticism of lawyers who had successfully won an injunction stopping construction while the legality of the tax was reviewed in the courts. He contrasted his motives with those of contesting attorneys: “We may differ in regard to the late law with some lawyers, but they are talking for a fee, whilst our advice is given pro bono publico.”⁹⁸

Like a boating trip on a summer’s morning, McIntire found relatively smooth sailing in the first two-plus years of his time at the Commercial. He was growing in his professional reputation and influence as a publisher and journalist, and the successive Republican administrations of Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant provided top cover for the brand of Radicalism he promoted in his paper, which included the elimination of slavery by constitutional means, equal rights and treatment of the races, woman suffrage, and higher wages and better working conditions for laborers.⁹⁹ He also had more time at home, and his youngest child John was born in 1873.¹⁰⁰ However, a seemingly out-of-nowhere electrical storm was about to sidetrack him in early 1875, blowing him off course for a time and leaving him to again live out the MacIntyre clan mantra: Per ardua (through difficulty).

U.S. Railway Mail Service

McIntire left no personal record that foreshadowed or offered a meaningful explanation of his seemingly abrupt departure from the helm of the Mitchell Commercial in early 1875. At this point an outside observer might have concluded that his life was finally settling down into a predictable yet rewarding ritual. But something was amiss, and a few clues point to the timing of this detour but not the details. The first was an announcement in the Bedford Star on March 6, 1875: “We learn that the Mitchell

Commercial is to change proprietors, but who the coming man is we can not find out. He has a fortune waiting for him, whoever he is.”¹⁰¹ A week later the Star added an even-more-terse bit of news: “James W. Glover is working on the Mitchell Commercial.”¹⁰² McIntire, in his 1876 diary, the first year since 1871 from which a diary survives, indicated not only the timing of his departure from the day-to-day operations of the Commercial, but also what he had been doing in the meantime. On January 17, 1876, he wrote: “Have been in the mail service eleven months today,” which meant he began that employment on February 17, 1875.

Why McIntire found himself in the mail service after less than three years of running the Commercial has yet to be definitively established. His 1876 diary described his postal work and corresponding travels in great detail, but nowhere therein is an explanation of why he made the decision to leave the Commercial. While it is not known what McIntire earned from his newspaper, his financial-account register in his 1876 diary showed that he received $51.08 on January 2 and another $40 on January 17, for an approximate monthly salary with the Mail Service of $90, which equates to $2,021.82 in 2015.¹⁰³ The following day he wrote in his diary that he “payed [sic] Kelly $25 on an old debt [and] am trying to get out of debt,” but he offered no explanation of who Kelly was, what the debt was for, nor how much remained to be paid.¹⁰⁴ He might have had other debts as well, which could have added to the pressure on McIntire to increase his

Commercial income quickly in early 1875 or find alternate employment. Apparently, he chose the latter.

The U.S. Railway Mail Postal Service, referred to by McIntire as the “Mail Service,” carried its first mail by rail on December 5, 1832, on a run from Lancaster to West Chester, Pennsylvania.¹⁰⁵ Initially, mail was transported in sealed pouches or sacks

on routes between Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, DC.¹⁰⁶ Gradually, the network expanded, as did the duties of clerks, who accompanied the mail and sorted and

processed it on moving trains.¹⁰⁷

Around the mid-1870s, multicar mail trains came into existence for shuttling mail between major cities, and each car was assigned two or more mail clerks, depending on the amount of mail to be processed.¹⁰⁸ In addition to the big cities of the East, railway post-office lines were also established in St. Louis and Cincinnati, and by 1876, when McIntire worked in the Mail Service, there were eight divisions in the mail-by-rail system.¹⁰⁹

McIntire never indicated how he was made aware of job openings with the Mail Service, but he could have observed mail clerks at work during his many travels by train as part of his work as a newspaperman. Journalists received free passes to ride on trains at that time, so McIntire could ride as often as he pleased. One such complimentary ticket from November 1882 for the Ohio & Mississippi line survives among McIntire’s

personal papers.¹¹⁰ McIntire was described by friends and acquaintances as witty, genial, sociable, brilliant, and well-liked, so he would not have had trouble engaging a working mail clerk in conversation on the train to learn about his experiences or possible

employment opportunities.¹¹¹ He was known to strike up conversations with the individuals he met on the train, eminent and otherwise, the most notable of which was Henry Ward Beecher, well-known abolitionist, clergyman, reformer, and lecturer.¹¹²

To what degree this career change was discussed between Margaret and Elihu is not recorded. It would again involve his being away from home for days at a time, similar to his insurance work, but the working conditions, set schedule, and steady salary of the mail job differed from life as a traveling salesman.

In the early pages of his 1876 diary, McIntire provided thick description of the world of a train-based clerk in the Mail Service. His assignment was to work the St.

Louis-Cincinnati run, a one-way distance of 350 miles that a train could cover in about 14 hours.¹¹³ Mitchell was closer to Cincinnati than to St. Louis; it took five hours to get to Cincinnati by train and eight hours to reach St. Louis from Mitchell. A typical work cycle began when McIntire would get on the train at Mitchell about 4 p.m. and head east to Cincinnati as a passenger. Three hours later, at Milan, Indiana, about 100 miles east of Mitchell, he would move to the mail car and begin his work, sorting and processing mail.

Two hours later, about 9 p.m., the train would arrive in Cincinnati, and McIntire and his fellow crewmen would stay at Madison House.¹¹⁴ Employees had all day to themselves in Cincinnati, stayed the night, and reported about 7 a.m. the next day to the train station for the return trip to St. Louis. The westbound train, which passed through Mitchell, would arrive about 9:30 p.m. in St. Louis, and McIntire went to his hotel, which he did not name in his diary, but two favorite restaurants nearby, Sprague & Butters and the Commercial, were amply mentioned.¹¹⁵ The crew spent the next day in St. Louis, stayed a second night at the hotel, and reported for work at 7 a.m. the following day. McIntire remained at his post as the eastbound train passed through Mitchell until it reached Milan, where he would alight, catch a westbound train for Mitchell, and arrive home about midnight.

Sixteen hours later, he would again get on the train at 4 p.m. for Cincinnati and start a new four-day cycle.¹¹⁶

For McIntire, the schedule was taxing on a number of levels. The work itself alternated between light and heavy, and most of the time McIntire was on his feet for the entire 14-hour journey between Cincinnati and St. Louis. The comforts available on the mail car varied, and if it was an old car, McIntire described the work as “disagreeable.”¹¹⁷

A stove in the mail car provided heat when the weather was cold, but sometimes it was warm enough in the winter that it was not needed.¹¹⁸ He experienced some “rheumatism in my shoulder,” possibly inflamed from the constant lifting of heavy sacks of mail, and he had a relapse of his “bowel trouble.”¹¹⁹ All of these variables could combine to make a disagreeable old mail car seem even more “disagreeable.”

However, what might have worn on McIntire the most seemed to be the

separation from his family. On January 9, 1876, his 44th birthday, he wrote in his diary from Cincinnati, “I wanted badly to be home today but could not be,” and two days later, while in St. Louis, he added, “I am always lonesome in the city.” One remedy for missing his family was to have one or more of his children meet his train when it stopped in Mitchell to bring him his lunch. But on occasion McIntire’s family did not know when the train was coming through Mitchell, and he passed by without seeing them.¹²⁰ When he was home, two days out of each week, it was partial days at best. But he did manage to keep up with local politics, work on a geological report with his colleague, Dr. Moses Elrod, attend Masonic council meetings, and approach landowners about leasing their land for its kaolin deposits, a white-clay substance that is used in making ceramics.¹²¹

The daylong stays in St. Louis and Cincinnati were challenging for McIntire during his mail-service days. To kill time he would read, visit acquaintances in both cities, and on one occasion he walked across the bridge over the Mississippi to East St.

Louis to make a house call to a sick friend, Wheeler Putnam, who had “a severe attack of erysipelas” (a skin rash).¹²² Other free-time activities for McIntire included attending lectures in both cities, visiting with a geologist to discuss fossils, going to the public library, and shopping for books or gifts for his family, once paying two dollars for a pair of shoes for his 17-year-old daughter Ella.¹²³

On February 2, 1876, just two weeks before completing one year as a railway postal worker, McIntire approached a Mr. French at the Cincinnati office for permission to attend Indiana’s statewide Republican convention to be held a few weeks later.¹²⁴ The request would have involved granting McIntire some time off, which apparently was especially important to him during this presidential-election year. Three days later he described in his diary events that took place when his work cycle brought him back to Cincinnati: “[I] found a notification of dismissal awaiting me, so I bid farewell to the U.S. Mail Service.”¹²⁵

Exploring Options and a Return to the Commercial

McIntire expressed no emotion in his diary over being sacked from the Mail Service, but he did note the following day that he tried to meet with a Mr. McGinniss, to get an explanation. The man at first avoided him, but McIntire persisted and was told by McGinnis that he would not do anything to secure McIntire’s “restoration.”¹²⁶ Neither could McIntire get in touch with Mr. French, who “was not in the city.”¹²⁷ The next day McIntire wrote that “Gus Greenland has been appointed in my place,” and from that day forward he made only one oblique reference to his dismissal, that he “went to Bedford to see some men in regard to claims against the Cincinnati office.”¹²⁸ He remained silent in subsequent diary entries about anything that might have come of the “claims” he

mentioned, and he wrote nothing further about his firing or any other details regarding his time in the Mail Service. Prior entries in McIntire’s 1876 diary offered no hint that his supervisors were unhappy with his work or that he had not done everything that was asked of him.

True to McIntire’s matter-of-fact, practical nature, he wasted no time in his diary lamenting his loss of employment. On the same day that he could get no audience with French regarding his dismissal from the Mail Service, while he was in Cincinnati he visited Hamilton Road Pottery to learn “many facts” about kaolin.¹²⁹ As previously noted, McIntire had been exploring his options with kaolin and had considered leasing land where it was deposited and opening a mine with some business partners.¹³⁰ Within days of returning to Mitchell, McIntire looked at other kaolin sites for possible lease or purchase.¹³¹ But not satisfied that kaolin was his only option, on his first full day back home McIntire wrote: “I sent Rollins for my Gordon press and am going to open a job office.”¹³² He elaborated neither on who Rollins was nor where his press had been located during his time in the Mail Service, but it was apparently his intention to try to generate income through job printing by producing circulars, dodgers, notecards,

letterheads, tickets, and posters for a number of merchants, professionals, politicians, and tradespeople.¹³³ At the same time McIntire continued in earnest his work with Dr. Elrod on an extensive geological report of Orange County, a project that he had worked on intermittently while in the Mail Service and now to which he could give more

attention.¹³⁴ And to top off this post-postal flurry of activity, McIntire also explored the possibility of resuming his newspaper work, either as editor of the Bedford-based Lawrence Gazette or his former paper, the Mitchell Commercial.¹³⁵

Ever since McIntire had left the Commercial in February 1875, the paper could not seem to keep an editor for any significant length of time. Replacement editor James Glover did not last long. The Lawrence Gazette remarked on June 3, 1875, that “the Mitchell Commercial comes to us with a new face—the face of John Robinson.”¹³⁶ How long Robinson was with the Commercial has not been pinpointed, but the one surviving

issue of the Commercial from 1875, dated November 25, lists William H. Edwards as its editor, which suggests that Edwards assumed the post sometime between June and

November of that year.¹³⁷ When McIntire returned from his yearlong, rail-riding odyssey, Edwards was still editor of the Commercial.

As his fate was deliberated by the stockholders of the Commercial, and while his friends in the Gazette office lobbied him to edit that paper, McIntire was busy printing

“some [hand]bills for the colored Masonic festival,” running off circulars for a customer in nearby Orleans, and printing “noteheads” and envelopes for the local Masonic

council.¹³⁸ During this transition period McIntire attended the convention for which he had requested time off from the Mail Service. Also while in Indianapolis he and Dr.

Elrod spent time with Professor Cox, the state geologist, who helped them identify many of the Orange County fossils they were collecting as part of their geological report that was nearing completion.¹³⁹

On March 6, 1876, McIntire met with the stockholders of the Commercial and purchased the interest of H. L. Kimberlin, a fellow Mitchell physician, for 65 dollars, giving 35 in cash and a note for 30, which gave McIntire majority control of the paper upon the condition that McIntire retain the printer who was working in the shop. The result of the arrangement was that McIntire was to “take possession of the Commercial”

as of March 9.¹⁴⁰ McIntire helped Edwards with some local items for his last edition as editor, and McIntire made final “preparations to go to work in good earnest on the newspaper.”¹⁴¹

McIntire did not record his wife’s reaction to either his dismissal from the Mail Service or his return to the helm of the Commercial. But as McIntire worked to

reestablish himself in his former post—paring down his subscription list, “making it

beautifully small,” to include only those who actually paid for the privilege of reading his paper, and rebuilding his job-printing business—Margaret and the children might not have seen their husband and father much more than when he worked and lived away from home.¹⁴²

As he resumed his tenure as editor and proprietor of the Commercial, McIntire was optimistic: “[I] think the Commercial is going to take pritty [sic] fairly with the people.”¹⁴³ That positive attitude was tested within days, as he exulted and lamented at the same time in his private record: “Got a few subscribers, find money very scarce.”¹⁴⁴ Two things might have perked him up, however. The first was the completion of his

“Geological Survey of Orange County,” compiled with Dr. Elrod, which was “sixty-one pages of legal cap in length.”¹⁴⁵ The report was well received by the geological

community, cited by scholars then and now, and was further testament to McIntire’s versatility as a scientist and scholar.¹⁴⁶ The second was the warm expressions of welcome from his colleagues as he returned to the profession, which constituted the majority of clippings he saved and placed into his 1876 diary:

We notice that Dr. McIntire has assumed the editorial management of the Mitchell Commercial. The Dr. wields a ready pen, is a clever gentleman whom we cheerfully welcome back to his old calling, in which he has hosts of personal friends.¹⁴⁷

Last week the Mitchell Commercial changed hands—W. H. Edwards surrendering it to E. S. McIntire, a former editor of the same paper, and a newspaperman of ability.¹⁴⁸

The name of Dr. Elihu S. McIntire again flaunts at the mast-head of the Mitchell Commercial, and it is with pleasure that we welcome him back to his old post.

The Dr. is a fluent writer and will infuse into the Commercial that vitality of yore.¹⁴⁹

The name of E. S. McIntire again floats at the head of the Mitchell Commercial, after an absence of twelve months. One only has to glance at the Commercial to know on which ‘side of the fence it is on’ politically.¹⁵⁰