(3 of 5)
Hoover-appointed Democrats whom President Roosevelt allowed to con
tinue on the board are all big businessmen. West by Southwest. Wilson
McCarthy is one, a smart Salt Lake City lawyer whose pony-express
riding father left him a cattle fortune. Another is that husky lover
of detective stories, rich Public Utilitarian Harvey Crowley Couch of
Pine Bluff, Ark. And from the most spacious State of all is the man who
dominates RFC's policies, has dominated them since the agency's re
birth—Chairman Jesse Holman Jones, a Texan now become a titan. When
Jesse Jones is out of Washington, RFC is out of Washington; no
decisions are made, no major business transacted. Just as Hugh Johnson
is NRA, Jesse Jones is RFC. Farm Boy to Financier, Like most of the
Southwest's first generation of indigenous tycoons, Jesse Jones's
origins were humble. He was born 59 years ago on a farni in Robertson
County. Tennessee. His father moved over into Kentucky where he heard
there was money to be made in Burley tobacco. He died before he made
much, leaving a farm to his three daughters, $2,000 each to his two
sons. The sons applied their inheritance to paying off the mortgage on
the sisters' farm, set off to shift for themselves. Aged 20, a brawny
big youngster, Jesse found himself in Dallas, Tex. He had no money
but he did have a well-connected uncle. The uncle ran the M. T. Jones
Lumber Co., gave Jesse a job in one of its yards. In a year Jesse was
yard manager. In three years he was general manager of the whole
concern, planning to extend the company further through Texas and Okla
homa. It was then that he moved the scene of his operations south to
Houston, a growing railway and shipping town connected with the Gulf
by shallow Buffalo Bayou.
