Not aiming to brag, I led the “pack” on the Atchison Daily Times with more type set in given time than any other printer. It was back in the 80’s when everything was handset. On learning that a new daily newspaper was to be launched in Atchison, I wrote to John N. Reynolds asking for a position as compositor. He replied that all cases had been filled. He said he liked the tone of my letter, and maybe there would be an opening later. I went down to Atchison anyway the day before the first issue was to come out. Reynolds said he wished I had applied earlier; that he had been told by a Globe printer—probably Charley Gill or “Doc” Tennal—that I was a swift, printer’s term for a fast type-setter. After a little more conversation, he said, “Come back here tomorrow morning—if any one of the printers fail to show up a 7 o’clock, you shall have his case.” A printer who had the night before celebrated on the prospect of a new job, came in five minutes after I had gone to work.
And while I made more money than ever before, setting bravier type—(8-point now) at 30 cents a thousand ems, had I known in advance the low character the Times proved to be, I think I should have let that disappointed celebrant have his case. Conducting his paper on something like iconoclastic order; not exactly image smashing, but unquestionably an attacker of shams—I am now thinking of “Bran’s Iconoclast,” published at Waco, Texas, about that time — Reynolds dug deeply into the private lives of Atchison’s truly great.
A prominent Atchison banker was reportedly out gunning for the editor. The Times office was in a large second floor room on the south side of Commercial street. An open stairway, the only entrance to the printing office, came up from below in the rear of the building. Reynolds, facing the stairway, always with a six-shooter tucked in his belt, worked at a flat-top desk halfway between the head of the stairs and the printers’ cases against the windows in the front end. It was watchful waiting for the eight printers.
Then one day it happened. When the banker’s head showed above the level of the floor, every printer made a break for cover—that is, got quickly out of range of possible feudal bullets. The banker did not come up with his hands in the air. Nor did Reynolds lay aside his gun, as he had done a few days before while discussing matters with a woman. But then, it was said, the woman had no grievance with the editor. She merely wanted to know how he had found out so much about her man and the other woman — things that would be helpful in the matter of obtaining a divorce. And so far as we—the printers — were to know, the banker might also have had no grievance with the editor. It was apparently only a business discussion.
As an indication of the stakes Reynolds was playing for, I cite this case. A tired, overworked, Commercial street business man—and family man—was reportedly seen crossing the river bridge with another man’s wife. The incident rated only five lines. Somehow the tired merchant got hold of a first copy of the afternoon paper—and it was said, paid $500 to have the objectionable five lines lifted before the edition was printed. And I still think Reynolds had engineered matters so that the overworked merchant could have a look-see in plenty of time to act.
I had set that five line item. But I balked, later, when I got a “take” attacking one of Atchison’s foremost professional men, involving a woman, who, of all women, in her most respectable churchy connection, should have been above reproach. I gave that “take” and my “string”—type set that morning—to a printer whose case was next to mine; and called for my time.
Nannie Reynolds, the publisher’s pretty 18-year-old daughter—she was really pretty—gave me a statement of the amount due me. Ordinarily, it would have been the foreman’s place to attend to this matter, but, unfortunately, he was in jail—said to have been put there because of his position on the paper, but more likely for a night’s celebration. Oldtime printers thought they had to go on periodical “busts” to ward off lead poisoning caused from handling so much type. And, incidentally, I had declined to take the foreman’s place—that is, the foremanship of the Times, while the ranking man was confined in the City bastile.
I took the statement Nannie had given me down stairs to Scott Hall, who was to be the cashier of a new bank not yet formally opened, in that building—but he had been paying the paper bills. Scott said he had paid out all he was going to until more definite arrangements could be made. I went back to Reynolds. He grabbed up a full blank newspaper sheet and wrote in six-inch letters diagonally across from corner to corner: “Pay this man $17.65.” Scott Hall reluctantly went into the vault and brought out the money. He said, “This IS THE LAST. You can count yourself lucky in getting away now.”
I learned later that the tall Irishman who so bravely took my “string,” did not profit by it. In fact, there were no more payments. And, with the publisher in the penitentiary and a portion of his printing plant in the Missouri river, the Times also was no more. Atchison’s enraged “good” people did not overlook any bets. Reynolds was caught in a Federal net, charged with irregularities while president of a defunct Atchison Live Stock Insurance Company.
Reynold’s wife died a few months after he was taken to Leavenworth. He was permitted to come home for the funeral, under guard, of course. Nannie had neither brother nor sister. Thus, she was now left entirely alone. It is always a very sad thing for a beautiful young girl to be left out in a cold world alone.