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Geography. It is a poor year in which Anderson, Clayton & Co. does not handle 2,000,000 bales of U. S. cotton. It is a poor year in which the firm does not do twice as much business as its nearest private competitor, George H. McFadden & Brother. It has $40,000,000 capital and its credit is good for at least $150,000,000. The list of branches and affiliates stemming from its headquarters in Houston's 16-story Cotton Exchange Building is a complete lesson in world cotton geography. In North America the name Anderson, Clayton & Co. can be found in Montreal, Boston, New Bedford, Providence, Charlotte, Greenville, Gastonia, Atlanta, Memphis, New Orleans, Dallas, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Torreon. In South America the firm has affiliates in Buenos Aires, Lima, Asuncion, Sao Paulo and Recife. Its Far Eastern offices are in Bombay, Shanghai and Osaka. Its Egyptian branch is in Alexandria, its French branch in Le Havre. In Milan it does business as Lamar Fleming & Co., in Liverpool as D. F. Pennefather & Co. Its representatives are scattered from Goteborg, Sweden, to Barcelona, Spain; from Lodź Poland, to Oporto, Portugal.
Last week after a ten-day vacation on a ranch near Las Vegas, N. Mex., with his wife and one of his four daughters, Merchant Clayton returned to his desk in Houston to be on hand, like the world's lesser cotton men, for the Government's estimate. Lamar Fleming Jr., his young partner, who is rated the firm's No. 2 man, saw the figures soon after he debarked from the Enropa in Manhattan. Presumably the partners of Anderson, Clayton & Co. were pleased because a big crop means more cotton to handle. In the seven seasons through 1935 the firm sold more than $1,000,000,000 worth of cotton, yet its total profit was only $13,000,000. Testifying before a Senate committee Will Clayton declared: "We made those profits, by the way, at least half of them, as the result of the Government cotton policy." Mr. Clayton was referring to Herbert Hoover's Farm Board, not to the New Deal's curtailment of production, which he dislikes even more than governmental plunging in the cotton market.
Typist Up. Tall, slim, magnetic, Will Clayton was born 56 years ago on a cotton farm near Tupelo, Miss. His father was a railroad contractor. Son Will left school after the eighth grade, studied shorthand. One of his first customers was William Jennings Bryan, who made him retype a speech because the margins were too narrow. At 15 his astonishing stenographic skill landed him a job in a St. Louis cotton firm. Soon he went to Manhattan as secretary to a cotton man named Lamar Fleming, father of his brilliant young partner. Will Clayton was a model youth. He never smoked, never drank, never swore—and does not to this day. He worked nights, sent money to his mother, put up with a miserable French boarding house in Manhattan to learn another language. Shortly before the company he worked for failed, he went west to Oklahoma City to set himself up as a cotton merchant at 24 under the name Anderson, Clayton & Co. There were two Andersons in the firm—his brother-in-law, Frank E. Anderson, who died in 1924, and his brother-in-law's brother, M. D. Anderson, who is still a partner. Not long after the firm was founded, Will Clayton's own Brother Ben was taken in.