Paper Mill

In the early 1960s a gentleman came to Lumberton, Mississippi where I then practiced law.  He had built a washer for a paper mill and convinced a lot of people he could construct a 500 ton a day pulp mill. A stock offering was made.  Subsequently, stock was sold.  However he wasn’t able to sell enough stock and the venture failed.

Apparently he went to Jackson, Alabama and tried to promote another mill there.  The Jackson, Alabama Chamber of Commerce group came to Lumberton and my Banker, J. V. McElveen urged them to talk to me which they did. I advised the group which included a Mr. G. E. Woodson, Vern Slayton, J. P. McKee and Jim Bledsoe that I felt it was too big an undertaking for them and that they would do better to hire someone to talk to executives of existing paper companies to locate in Jackson. 

Mr. Woodson and his group returned to Jackson, Alabama.  Later Mr. Woodson called me every few weeks.  He said he believed I was the man that they should hire.  I told him I didn’t know a single executive of a paper company. 

In 1961, my wife Cleo had an operation for kidney stone that was lodged in her urethra. The operation was at the Methodist Hospital in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The operation was not successful and we later flew her to New Orleans to Ochsner Hospital where a famous urologist named Dr. Edgar Burns operated and corrected the problem.  Mr. Woodson even called me while my wife was in the hospital. He told me that he had a premonition that I could get his Town a pulp mill.  That he wanted to hire me.

I was getting desperate for money.  My wife had been in a hospital for eight weeks and our Blue Cross insurance had expended its limits.  At that time I was representing J. P. and Roy Miles who had a sawmill in Lumberton where I then practiced law.  What impressed me about their operation was that they didn’t own any timberland. If they could do this, why couldn’t a pulp mill do likewise?

When I started my practice of law I figured that one way to get clients was to assist businesses in getting loans.   According to George Field, then head of Small Business Administration in Mississippi, I was one of the main lawyers in Mississippi in getting Small Business Loans. In the course of this I also studied bond issues for new plant construction.  At that time there was no limitation on the amount of the tax free bonds that could be issued for new plant construction. That being the case, why not use same as an inducement to get a pulp mill?

At that time, I contacted Nimrod Frazier who worked in a brokerage firm in Montgomery, Alabama and he explained their method of financing under their Wallace-Cater Act.  They could finance a pulp mill if the company had good credit.  Nimrod Frasier was later named man of the year by Time magazine. 

I also studied the problem of disposing of a pulp mill’s waste and concluded that a site near the Tombigbee River in Jackson, Alabama would resolve this problem and not place an excessive biological oxygen demand on the river.  

I then called Mr. Woodson and went to speak to members of their Chamber of Commerce.  When I got through Mr. Woodson wanted to know what I would do. I told them I would call on ten companies and try to sell them on locating in Jackson, Alabama. Mr. Woodson then wrote me a check for $6,000. He didn’t want any signed contract. 

Upon my return to Lumberton I did some research on engineering companies who worked with Paper Mills. I picked out Eastern Engineering Company in Atlanta, among others. The next evening I drove to Meridian, Mississippi and got on a Delta Airline’s plane and got to Atlanta about midnight. 

I got up early the next morning and was in the office of Eastern Engineering at 7:45 a.m. at 90 Fairly Street NW.  I asked the only Secretary there if I could speak to Eastern’s President, W.F. Hughes. Mr. Hughes was in his office.   His Secretary wanted to know the nature of my business and I told her I was trying to get a pulp mill to locate in Jackson, Alabama and that there was plenty of timber available and I could get the company financing.  Mr. Hughes told her I could have five minutes as he was getting ready for a Board meeting that afternoon.

I got my audience with Mr. Hughes. Five hours later Mr. Hughes and I ended our conference. He invited me to lunch.  I told him I would like too but knew that he had a board meeting and would go and he said “no”, you are the Board meeting.  In those five hours I had convinced him that Jackson was the place to go.

That afternoon I attended the Board Meeting. I again made the same presentation that I had given Mr. Hughes in the morning.  They excused me from the meeting for a few minutes.

When I returned to the Board meeting, Mr. Hughes explained they would make me privy to confidential information if I would promise to return to Mississippi, which I did.  Mr. Hughes then explained that they had spent over a half million dollars looking for a site for two paper companies and named them as being Great Northern and Allied Paper Company.  Further he thought that Allied would be the most likely to come to Jackson.

I returned to Lumberton from Atlanta that evening and the next morning Mr. Hughes was calling me as I put the key in the office door. Mr. Hughes said that I would get a call from Dr. Ward Harrison who was President of Allied Paper Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan in five minutes and good luck.

Dr. Harrison called and introduced me on the phone to a Mr. Daley and Howard Roxburough who was his assistant and I again pointed out what Jackson, Alabama could do.  Before I finished he told Howard Roxburough to schedule a flight to Jackson, Mississippi where I met him around noon the next day and flew him on a plane belonging to Frankie Lee to Jackson, Alabama.  Mr. Daley had at one time lived in Sumrall, Mississippi which is only fourteen miles from Bassfield. 

Mr. Woodson and I took Roxburough around Jackson and showed him, the site adjacent to the M.W. Smith sawmill.  Mr. Woodson had set up a meeting previously for the purpose of raising money to pay for my services. It was getting late and Roxburough  inquired if he could get some beer.  Mr. Woodson then got busy and got a bootlegger to get the beer.  Jackson, Alabama was then dry.  After drinking the beer and having dinner I invited Roxburough to the meeting and he blurted out to the audience that Allied was going to build a pulp mill at Jackson, Alabama. People employed by other paper companies were there. The next day it was in all the newspapers and a few days later Dr. Ward Harrison called me and he was very angry that Roxburough had made the announcement. It was a case of having drunk to much bootleg beer, but I didn’t tell him that.

In any event, while Roxburough’s announcement was premature, it ultimately became a fact.  Jackson passed a 25 million bond issue and the pulp mill was built. Governor George Wallace called me and said that the Jackson group felt that I should get the credit for having gotten the prospect and he invited me to personally come to Montgomery, which was his first industrial announcement as Governor.  However, I had a Court case set for trial and was unable to go.

Every now and then I drive over to Jackson, Alabama and look down from the high bluff above the Tombigbee River at the people getting off work from what is now the Boise Cascade Mill.  There is inner satisfaction to having known that you achieved your goal in getting that Town industry and was instrumental in getting those people jobs.