Bridges history column: The tale of Houston businessman Jesse H. Jones, part 2

Editor’s note: This is the second of a two-part series on Houston businessman Jesse H. Jones. Readers can find the first part in last Sunday’s print edition and online at amarillo.com.

Houston had long been an important city for Texas.  Businessmen like Jesse H. Jones helped make it an international center for commerce.  He had arrived in Texas as a young man and worked his way through thr ranks of his uncle’s Dallas-based lumber company before coming to Houston where he would soon invest in all sorts of businesses. President Woodrow Wilson offered him a cabinet position at one point.  By the 1920s, he came to own the Houston Chronicle, and his business holdings would only expand further.  By the 1930s, his expertise would be recognized nationwide as he was called upon by the White House to combat the Great Depression.

More:Bridges history column: Influential Houston businessman Jesse H. Jones, part 1

By the early 1930s, he had added a radio station to his extensive lumber, real estate, and publishing holdings. The Great Depression was hitting the nation hard, especially in the financial industry.  Jones already served as president of the Houston-based National Bank of Commerce in 1931 when Public National Bank was in danger of failing. Jones bought the bank and added it to his holdings.  Jones’s National Bank of Commerce would later merge with Texas National Bank to eventually become Texas Commerce Bank, one of the largest in Texas by the 1960s.

In 1932, President Herbert Hoover named Jones to the board of directors of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which attempted to steer funds to the largest banks, railroads, and manufacturers in the country to keep them from falling prey to the Depression.  Jones managed hundreds of millions of dollars to try to stabilize the economy and keep some of the nation’s largest remaining employers from imploding.  Even with this program, Jones criticized Hoover’s approach as too little to solve the problems of the Depression.

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When Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated as president in 1933, he appointed Jones as the chairman of the RFC. Roosevelt gave the RFC more money and more authority to rescue large businesses. He was initially responsible for $850 million (more than $19.5 billion in 2023 dollars) meant to bail out the nation’s surviving banks so businesses would have the money needed to restart operations and finance their debts. He helped save more than 2,000 banking corporations from collapse through the RFC.

Jones did not just help businesses during the Depression. In the meantime, in 1937, Jones formed the Houston Endowment, which gave to charities across the Houston area and set up scholarships at six universities across the country. He gave more than $1 million of his fortune (more than $21 million in 2023 dollars) initially to set up this charity.

Some commentators called Jones the second-most powerful man in the country after Roosevelt.  He was so influential that Roosevelt briefly considered Jones as his vice-presidential running mate when he ran for an unprecedented third term in 1940.  Instead, Roosevelt named Jones as Secretary of Commerce that September. During World War II, Jones’s position was crucial for helping organize business and financing for war production.

Shortly after Roosevelt was sworn in for his fourth term, he asked Jones to step aside as commerce secretary in favor of now former Vice-President Henry Wallace. Jones did not enjoy being so unceremoniously pushed aside and publicly criticized Wallace’s qualifications. Nevertheless, Jones returned to Houston to resume his business activities. Now past 70, he maintained an active interest in Houston’s civic life.  Working with a group of business leaders and politicians known as the “Suite 8F Group,” he continued his role in guiding Houston’s business future.

After he left Washington, he donated his entire salary from his years as commerce secretary and from the RFC to the Houston Endowment.  In 1946, he was named to the board of Directors of Texas Medical Center and opened a new hospital, called the Jesse H. Jones Hospital, in his native Robertson County, Tennessee, in 1956.  He also donated more than $1 million in 1956 ($11 million in 2023 dollars) for the construction of a women’s dormitory at Rice University, named Mary Jones College after his wife.

He died quietly at his home in Houston in 1956.  Even after his death, Jones remained a widely respected figure in the Houston area.  In 1964, the National Bank of Commerce merged with Texas National Bank to become Texas Commerce Bank, the largest in the state, eventually becoming part of Chase Bank in the 1990s. In 1966, Jesse H. Jones Hall, a multi-million dollar amphitheater, was completed as the home of the Houston Symphony Orchestra.  In 1976, the Jesse H. Jones building became the home of the Houston Public Library.  In 1992, Baylor University established the Jesse H. Jones Library in his honor.  The Houston Chronicle by the early 2000s had become the third-largest newspaper in the country, and the Goodfellows program that Jones started now reaches tens of thousands of children each year.

Ken Bridges is a writer, historian and native Texan. He holds a doctorate from the University of North Texas. Bridges can be reached by email at drkenbridges@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Bridges Texas History column: Jones gave fortune to save others