The Big Courthouse "Job."
Another disappointment of McDonald's political career was when he got a bill past the county commissioners and city aldermen authorizing Harry Holland to paint the outside of the City Hall and County Building with a mixture which was guaranteed to prevent the stone from decaying.
Holland applied his marvelous preparation, but when the time came to pay the bill a newspaper man, John J. Lane, who died only the other day in St. Louis, had dug up evidence tending to show that Holland's preparation was nothing but water and chalk, and not quite so efficacious in preventing the decay of stone as prune juice or ice cream would have been, but much cheaper. The county has never yet paid the $80,000 that Holland wanted for the job on the county building.
After the close of the Harrison administration a new day began in Chicago. The independent voter broke the power of party bosses. Mike McDonald's rule was broken. He could no longer do what he pleased with city administrations and be unofficial chief of police.
He bowed pleasantly to the inevitable, and stepped down and out. He was wise in that he saw the handwriting on the wall, and gracefully submitted instead of "kicking against the pricks" and wasting his time and his money, as did other gamblers and sports, who were finally crushed out simply because they could not recognize that new conditions and new men had come.
McDonald quit every sphere of his old life and went into business.
It was he who, with William Fitzgerald, built the first elevated road in town, the Lake street "L." Then, in 1891, he thought he would like to be an editor. He bought control of the Globe, a daily morning paper, and ran it for over two years. It was not a financial success, and finally McDonald gave it up. "I guess I was never cut out for a literary man," was his laughing remark. "There are other things I know more about."