George Sauter Sells Out

His business was successful, but it was killing him. So George Sauter believed, and so the newspapers repeated. Day after day, week after week for the past four years, he'd worked long hours behind the counters of the store, cooped up in its narrow space, sweltering in the summer, alternately freezing and roasting in the winter. Now his health was breaking down.

The hands-on running of the business had fallen mainly to him; the contribution of Armin Mackeldey, the senior partner, apparently ran more to advice and capital than daily presence in the store. But that suited George — he was a worker. He'd begun his working life at about 13 years of age, employed first by E.H. Guyer and then by Stommel & Co., where he learned the grocery trade. From there, in partnership with Armin, he'd become an entrepreneur, like his father before him.

I do wonder if some of George's drive came from the memory of the financial disaster that had overtaken his father's Ainsworth venture. George was about 14 when his family went bankrupt — old enough, certainly, to understand what was happening and to feel the disgrace of it.

Perhaps a determination not to let the same thing happen to him drove George to devote so much time and energy to his own store. In all the four years he'd been running it, he'd never taken a day off. And the store made good money.

But George himself wasn't doing well. Though it isn't clear exactly what ailed him, his doctors told him that if he didn't ease up on the work, he'd soon be beyond their help.

He took their advice. In early November 1917, George sold his share of the partnership to Armin. That brought in enough money to tide him over while he took a rest and tried to get his health back. He could go where he liked, as he had no wife or children to be considered. First, he said, he was heading up to the woods of Michigan for a vacation. Then maybe he'd spend the winter in Florida. He had no plans yet for future employment, although he'd been offered a job as a traveling salesman by some unnamed firm.

If George ever got to Florida, he didn't stay there long. His rest lasted scarcely two months. By January 1918 George was working again, now as an assistant manager in the meat and grocery department of the Lowenstine store in Valparaiso.


(Click on image to enlarge)
The J. Lowenstine & Sons Dept. Store in Valparaiso, 1911. From the collection of S. Shook, courtesy of the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society.


Sources:
♦ "Armond Mackeldey Takes Over the Sauter & Mackeldey Grocery." Hobart News 8 Nov. 1917.
♦ "Grocery Store Changes Hands." Hobart Gazette 9 Nov. 1917.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 17 Jan. 1918.