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Jesse Jones, Mary
Gibbs Jones and
President Franklin Roosevelt after Mr. Jones's swearing in as Secretary
of Commerce, 1940
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In addition to real estate development and philanthropic activities,
Mr. Jones served as finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee
and helped bring the party’s national convention to Houston
in 1928. It was the first major political convention to be held in
the South since before the Civil War and was one of the first to be
heard widely on the radio. An associate wrote Mr. Jones after the
location was announced, “You have caused the South and Texas
to receive greater recognition than any other individual in the history
of this country.”
Mr. Jones continued to realize his vision of a great city and in 1929
completed a 35-story Art Deco building for the Gulf Oil Company and
his National Bank of Commerce. Shortly after the building was completed,
the nation plunged into the Great Depression. When two failing Houston
banks were about to bring down many others throughout the region,
Mr. Jones gathered the city’s leaders for three days and nights
to work out a plan that allowed the stable banks and several local
companies to rescue the two faltering banks. As a result of Mr. Jones’s
leadership and determination, no banks in Houston failed during the
Great Depression. After the successful meeting, Mr. Jones wrote to
one of his colleagues, “I believe that all we have done,
are doing and must continue doing is necessary for the general welfare,
and we cannot escape being our brother’s keeper.”
Mr. Jones’s work did not go unnoticed.
Mr. Jones’s business acumen and civic leadership were called
upon during the depths of the Great Depression when President Herbert
Hoover asked him in 1932 to serve on the board of the newly created
Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). After his inauguration,
President Franklin Roosevelt expanded the RFC’s powers and made
Mr. Jones its chairman. Under his leadership, the RFC disbursed more
than $10 billion (about $120 billion in today’s dollars) to
reopen banks, save homes, farms and businesses, rescue the railroads
and bring electricity to rural areas. Fannie Mae and the Export-Import
Bank are only two of the many enduring agencies created by Mr. Jones
and the RFC. Remarkably, the funds allocated for the massive RFC recovery
efforts were returned to the United States Treasury, along with a
$500 million profit. Vice President John Nance Garner once said about
Mr. Jones, “He has allocated and loaned more money to various
institutions and enterprises than any other man in the history of
the world.”
As World War II loomed, Mr. Jones shifted the RFC’s focus from
domestic economics to global defense and used the corporation’s
enormous clout to build and equip more than 2,000 plants that manufactured
everything from airplanes and battleships to penicillin and synthetic
rubber, an industry the RFC developed from the lab. In 1940, after
Congress passed a special resolution allowing Mr. Jones to become
secretary of commerce while maintaining his RFC position, the Saturday
Evening Post reported, “Next to the President, no man in the
government and probably in the United States wields greater powers.”
Today scholars give Jesse Jones a tremendous amount of credit for
saving capitalism during the Great Depression and mobilizing industry
in time to fight and win World War II. |
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