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He reared a $42 million lubricating oil refinery beside the Lake Charles refinery, spent $21 million more on new oil and gas pipelines and plants, completed Cities Service's modern fleet of 22 tankers. To broaden his oil operations on the East Coast, which were 90% wholesale, he took long-term leases on Continental Oil's 1,600 filling stations. Though Cities Service's 1949 net, like the industry's, had dropped (at $55 million it was down $10 million), Jones boosted the company's earned surplus $70 million to a record high of $243.6 million. By last week, the company's stock sold for about $73. Anyone who had bought it at its 1935 low and held on to it could have made 100 times his investment.