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24. "I Am Now Enjoying Life"
- Southern Illinois University Press
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389 24 “I Am Now Enjoying Life” The 1909 centennial events took a physical as well as emotional toll on Robert Lincoln, as his dizzy spell at Hodgenville showed. But in general, and not unusual for his age, Robert’s health declined with every passing year. His major issue was anxiety—what doctors then called nervous dyspepsia—but he also suffered from high blood pressure, digestive trouble (biliousness), rheumatism , gout, and occasional bouts of mild depression. Robert’s poor health had caused him to take some time off from Pullman in early 1906.1 Newspapers reported that Pullman President Lincoln actually had tendered his resignation at the time, but the board of directors refused to accept it and instead gave him a six-month leave of absence. Lincoln later told the Associated Press that rumors of his resignation were “entirely without foundation.”2 By 1911, however, Robert’s health at age sixty-eight was worsening, and he spent much of the beginning months of that year away from the office on physician-ordered rest. In April, Lincoln concluded that he was too permanently unwell to continue in his job, so he resigned his position as president of the Pullman Company. His successor was his friend and Pullman Vice President and Special Counsel John S. Runnells, who had been with the company since 1887 and vice president since 1905.3 Robert later explained his resignation to a friend, “I . . . was no longer able to stand up under the strain of the regularly recurring problems which only a few years ago it was a positive pleasure to tackle. If I had tried to keep on, I should now, I am sure, be dead.”4 Robert T. Lincoln had been president of the Pullman Company for thirteen years when he retired in 1911. During his leadership, the company’s success and value had skyrocketed. Total revenue during Robert’s first full year as president in 1897 was $10.6 million; revenue for his last full year in 1911 was about $40 million.5 The statistics of the company, such as revenue, dividends, chapter twenty-four 390 cars built, contracts made, miles of track covered, and number of passengers carried, all steadily increased during Lincoln’s tenure; the company was valued at $120 million in 1911.6 Although Robert retired, he did not walk away from Pullman. He remained on the board of directors and was elected its chairman in 1911, the year he retired. In this position, he earned $25,000 per year, a halving of his $50,000 salary as president.7 His main duty as chairman of the board was to attend the yearly directors’ meeting—and any other meetings—and to contribute to the decisions about the operations of the company as a member of the board of directors. Lincoln remained chairman of the board until 1922. During these years, he also retained his leadership roles in other businesses as well. He was vice president and a director of Commonwealth Edison (resigned in 1914)8 and a director of the Continental and Commercial National Bank, the Chicago Telephone Company, the Pullman Trust and Savings Bank, and the John Crerar Library in Chicago.9 He also was a trustee of Knox College and the Mark Skinner Library in Manchester, Vermont. These positions, as well as his numerous other investments, sustained Lincoln’s million-dollar fortune. His retirement from Pullman in May 1911 was followed in October that year by the sale of his Chicago home on Lake Shore Drive and the purchase of a house at 1775 N Street NW (later renumbered 3014 N Street NW) in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.10 The move was done because Mary, Jessie, and her children (who had lived with Robert and Mary since Jessie’s divorce in 1907) all preferred winters in Washington to Chicago, and “Mrs. Lincoln has become so devoted to her country place [in Manchester] that it is unlikely that she would care hereafter to spend much time in the Chicago house,” Robert explained.11 He did not mind the relocation but was a bit saddened to leave the city he had lived in for nearly fifty years and the home he had built that he always said suited him perfectly. But he was comfortable in the new house—a three-story, red-brick colonial mansion originally built in 1790 by tobacco merchant John Laird—and was fascinated by its rich history.12 The Lincolns always had enjoyed...