To Midwest farmers, there was good news last week from the little town of Baxter Springs, Kan. (pop. 4,921). The news: the RFC-owned Jayhawk Ordnance Works, giant producer of chemicals for wartime explosives, had been taken over by a private company to make badly needed ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Jayhawk expected to become the world's largest maker of it, cut $3 to $4 a ton off prices to farmers.
The man who expected to do this was a Kansas City coal man named Kenneth Aldred Spencer, president of the Spencer Chemical Co. He got Jayhawk on a lease with an option to buy for $20,000,000, two-thirds of the original cost of the plant.
Big, hard-driving Kenneth Spencer, 44, was a newcomer to the fertilizer business. But he was no newcomer to Jayhawk. In fact, Jayhawk was his baby, born in 1941. One day Spencer, who was then helping his father run the four-state activities of their Pittsburg and Midland Coal Co., got a telephone call from the War Department in Washington. Said he later:
"They wanted us to build and operate a big basic chemical plant. I didn't know about operating such a plant, but they told us anyone who could operate an electric shovel, move 30 or 40 feet of overburden to get an 18-inch seam of coal, and make it pay, could operate anything."
Spencer took the job, set up Military Chemical Works, Inc. (with himself as president), pitched in. Jayhawk was completed early in 1943 — 3½ months ahead of schedule, soon was running at 140% of designated capacity.
After the war ended, Military Chemical continued to run Jayhawk, turning out nitrate fertilizer at the rate of 14,500 tons a month for export by the Commodity Credit Corp. But Spencer saw a chance to build up a new business. So with the financial backing of Manhattan's J. H. Whitney & Co., he bought his baby.