(2 of 2)
To get additional equipment, Chris Jensen ransacked machine shops and railroad yards, came up with many a prize. Example: a White truck on railroad wheels, now used as a Port Cargill switch engine. To get water for launching, a pool 20 ft. deep was dredged at Port Cargill, and a 9-ft. channel was dredged all the way to the Mississippi.
No blueprint expert, Chris Jensen leaves fine details to his staff of engineers and Navy officers, runs the yard and its more than 2,000 workers on a "let's try it this way" basis, hits his best form in emergencies. When the flooded Minnesota threatened to sweep away the big administration building in June, Chris Jensen had 120 jacks thrust underneath, raised the building three feet in twelve hours to let the muddy waters sweep underneath. The office staff kept on working.
The Future It Made. With a ship building backlog of nearly $30,000,000, Cargill, Inc. has no trouble fitting its new yard into the pattern of its postwar operations. To get lower freight rates for Port Cargill now, Cargill, Inc. has already bought the 115-mile Minnesota-Western R.R. which taps Minneapolis and the rich grainlands of central Minnesota. Thus, Cargill, Inc. has its own port at the head of the navigable Mississippi, its own railroad to supply it.
Cargill men hope this will be enough inducement for grain, coal and ore ship pers to make Port Cargill their rail-ship transfer point (WPB designated it the region's ore transfer point for war ship ping this spring, but retracted when Minneapolis and St. Paul objected). Cargill has long boosted river shipping, contended the big obstacle was not shallow channels, but lack of the proper boats. At war's end, Cargill, for the first time, will have an efficient, top-notch yard to rectify that.
*In September 1937, the Cargill Grain Co. of Illinois, a subsidiary of Cargill, Inc., virtually cornered the Chicago corn market, squeezed short sellers so tightly that the Chicago Board of Trade stepped in, told Cargill to sell corn holdings at an arbitrary price. Cargill refused to comply. In 1938, the Board of Trade expelled Cargill of Illinois from the Board for its price manipulations in the corner fight.