(See Cover)
Jesse Jones is Biblically big. One day last week the U. S. had a reminder of his size. Brooding over the immensity of 1941's coming boom. Federal Reserve Boarders recommended a program of legislation to curb inflation (see p. 15). Its fears were put into a lot of fiscal words that added up to: Look out. That afternoon, reporters found Jesse Jones between trains at St. Louis. As usual, the big man declined to make a direct comment; as usual, dropped an indirect one: he saw no danger of inflation.
Most people who read his words felt reassured at once. There was no need of higher authority; not J. P. Morgan, not even Franklin Roosevelt could be of as much comfort to the public. To many a U. S. citizen, great or small, if Jesse Jones says O.K., O.K.
Long before last week, Jesse Jones had become something enormous, fabulous, towering; had imperceptibly been transfigured into a symbol and an influence.
Whatever the wave of the future might be, he was on the crest of the present. To some he was a monstrous symbol—he was State Socialism, or Governmental paternalism incarnate, a man with powers too great for any man to wield. To others he was a figure of awful benevolence: the far-off giant in Washington who had saved their farms or banks or railroads or mines; who had rehabilitated stores, factories, schools, shops and homes after earthquakes, floods and tornadoes, or after financial disasters just as catastrophic.
Like a green bay tree his powers had spread.
Like the Biblical ancients, they had increased and multiplied; old powers begat new powers in marvelous profusion. Through the years of the New Deal he had become a patriarchal emperor, and his empire stretched beyond all fences.
Little men and great peoples were beholden to him, from China to Argentina, to the far corners of the British Empire. Had he not said: "Britain is a good risk for a loan"? The statement might be highly debatable as to fact; editors might inveigh against it for reducing to crass financial terms a cause immeasurable in money.
But just the same his solid, simple phrase had brought assurance of a kind; it was an old-fashioned Yankee yardstick. Franklin Roosevelt might be morally right in saying that the silly, foolish dollar sign must be taken off aid-to-Britain, but Jesse Jones touched an old American feeling that there is righteousness in sound business.
Open & Shut. Nearly all appraisals of Jesse Jones sound like the baldest kind of hokum success stories, 1929 model. The pattern of his career seems as simple as Boy Makes Good, except that the caption should probably be: Boy Makes Perfect.
Actually, Emperor Jones's life is an open book of closed deals. Some of those deals were sharp. But they are all closed. He made those closed deals in one city, and incidentally made the city. Houston, Tex. was a desolate prairie hamlet when young Jesse Jones, up-&-coming lumberyard owner, took it apart and put it together again.
Son of a Tennessee farmer, he went to Dallas to work for his well-to-do uncle, M. T. Jones; then went to Houston in stead of college. In nine years he ran one lumberyard into 65, branched out into real estate, banking, other investments.