Ken Bridges/Contributing writer
Success in business is often a combination of timing, determination, and imagination. One Houston businessman, Jesse H. Jones had all these qualities and an innate sense of enterprise to build a fortune that changed the landscape of Texas’s biggest city. Jones became a giant in Houston business circles, leading what became some of the state’s largest and most influential companies. While Jones became one of the most important businessmen in Texas, he also became one of a handful of Texans to ever serve in a presidential cabinet.
Jesse Holman Jones was born in Tennessee, near the Kentucky state line, in 1874. The family had worked the land for several generations as successful tobacco farmers. His mother Laura, however, died when he was six. By the time he was nine, his father, William, moved the family to Dallas to join his uncle, M. T. Jones, with his successful lumber business. After making a tidy fortune himself, Jones’s father soon brought the family back to Tennessee where he expanded the farm and built a luxurious new home for his five children.
William Jones gave his three sons a small plot on the farm where they could grow their own tobacco and manage the profits any way they sought. Jesse, the youngest, worked hard at his three acre plot but also proved quite adept at trading it and came into a partnership where at age 14 was allowed to manage a small factory that processed his partners’ tobacco. He proved so able that he quit school.
By 1891, Jones returned to Dallas and eventually landed in Hillsboro to work with his uncle’s lumber business where he worked with keeping the lumberyard’s accounts and debt collections. Soon, he was transferred back to the company’s main headquarters in Dallas where he became a manager within six months. When his uncle died a few years later, Jones was named general manager of his lumber business.
Jones moved to Houston in 1898. Soon, his already bright fortunes accelerated. He started the South Texas Lumber Company in 1902 and built it into a million-dollar business within a few years. He also began dabbling in real estate and construction. He won a contract to build an extensive addition onto the Bristol Hotel in 1906 and won the contract to build the new headquarters for Texaco. The TexacoBuilding would become a 17-story building completed in 1915 and a dominant presence` in downtown Houston.
In 1906, Jones bought a 50% stake in the Houston Chronicle from founding editor Marcellus Foster. Jones and Foster built the paper into one of the largest and most influential newspapers in Texas. Foster convinced Jones to build the Chronicle Building in 1908 as a new home for the growing journal, which became another landmark in the growing downtown area.
By 1911, he bought the Rice Hotel from Rice University, tore down the old building, and built a new 13-story structure by 1916. Jones was already a millionaire in his own right and continued to invest in new construction projects and new businesses.
Interested in increasing Houston’s reach as a port city, Jones led a campaign in 1911 for a bond election to create what became known as the Port of Houston Authority, which included improvements in the waterways leading to the city, expanding its port facilities, and starting what became the Houston Ship Channel. Jones was asked to lead the board of the new organization, which rapidly increased shipping into the city, soon surpassing Galveston as the most important port in Texas.
His business acumen and success gained respect across the country. After President Woodrow Wilson was elected in 1912, he offered the new position of Secretary of Commerce to Jones. Jones, though intrigued, decided to stay in Houston and tend to his growing business interests instead.
He became known for giving back to the community as well. Through the Houston Chronicle, he started the Goodfellows program, which helped disadvantaged children in the city. During World War I, he gained new acclaim for his efforts to raise money for the American Red Cross as American troops fought overseas.
Jones married Mary Gibbs in 1920, and marrying late in life, he never had children but helped raise one of his wife’s granddaughters.
The Houston Chronicle in the meantime continued to gain influence. In the 1920s, he actively supported Foster’s editorial crusade against the Ku Klux Klan. When Foster retired in 1926, Jones bought his remaining half of the paper’s ownership and named himself publisher. His influence was so great that he was able to convince Democratic Party leaders to hold the 1928 Democratic National Convention in Houston, the first time a major political party had held its national nominating convention in Texas. And by 1930, Jones expanded into radio. He began broadcasting radio station KTRH from the Rice Hotel, where Jones had long occupied the penthouse suite as his main residence.
Now in his late 50s, the challenges of the Great Depression would lead him to take on new roles in Washington, DC, where he would go to serve two presidents.
Dr. Ken Bridges is a proud father, professor, native Texan, and author of seven books. His columns appear in 85 newspapers. He can be contacted by e-mail at drkenbridges@gmail.com.