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Over the next seven years, other trainers learned to worry when Ben Jones came into sight. He had hard-hitting horses—Joe Schenck, Inscoelda, Technician, Rifted Clouds, Lady Broadcast.
In 1938, Ben Jones brought a sore-footed colt named Lawrin to Louisville. If he worked Lawrin, the horse would probably break down; if he didn't work him, he wouldn't be fit for the long Derby grind. Ben got a blacksmith to shoe the horse with heavy protective bar plates, then got one hard work and a race into him. On Derby Day, lightweight shoes replaced the heavy ones and Lawrin must have felt as though he was flying. He romped home at $19.20 for $2.
It was Ben Jones's first Derby winner. Several months later, Ben was sitting in a box at Chicago's Arlington Park when Millionaire Warren Wright stopped by and said: "Telephone me tonight." Wright wanted Ben Jones as the triggerman for his then not-too-successful Calumet Farm.
Horses for Profits. A meticulous man who inherited a Chicago fortune, Warren Wright decided when he took over his family's Calumet Baking Powder Co. that he would not be satisfied until he doubled the fortune. Under his able management, Calumet prospered so well that Postum Co., Inc. offered him "more than it was worth" (about $29,200,000 worth of common stock), and he sold out.
Wright insisted that all his enterprises, including Calumet Farm at Lexington, Ky., show results. He went as high as $75,000 to get the best brood mares he could find. The rest of the Calumet first team that operated under Quarterback
Ben—from blacksmith to farm manager—was hand-picked for performance.
Ultimate result: Calumet's high-pressure horse factory, which costs $500,000 a year to operate, earned a whopping $1,269,710 in purses last year; the year before it won $1,402,436, a runaway record. Says Ben Jones: "It's like running a grocery store ... I love to hear that cash register ring."
Halters for Foals. Calumet Farm, 1,038 acres of grass and white fences, five miles west of Lexington, is a rare gem among the bluegrass country's jeweled horse farms. The white, red-trimmed barns with dormer windows are quaint and comfortable looking on the outside, elegant and modern inside, with chrome handles on stall doors, chrome saddle racks, cork-brick floors and pine-paneled walls. Although 55 persons and 140 horses inhabit the farm, the place is so carefully kept that it gives an impression of never having been used. But Willow Run has nothing on Calumet's production line.
In Bull Lea, sire of both Citation & Coaltown, Calumet Farm has the most valuable stud in horsedom today. The waiting list of those who would like to breed their mares to him, at a fee of $5,000, stretches clear to the Quarter Pole.
When Calumet's own foals begin dropping early each year, no time is lost preparing them for their goal in life—the race track. Halters go on the wobbly legged foals when they are only two days old. Ben Jones and his hard-working farm manager, Paul ("Dutch") Ebelhardt, like horses to get used to human hands early. After that, the Calumet education proceeds with the greatest caution and care. Yearlings, for instance, are legged-up three months before being called on for speed over the farm's three-quarter-mile training track.