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been a sleepy little town. When the tidal wave came and wiped out Galveston, it was Jesse Jones who saw that Galveston was in an exposed place. This wasn't the first time there had been trouble at Galveston. The bigger Galveston grew the worse the disasters would be. He had the brilliant idea that by dredging and enlarging the great canal that led to Houston you could make Houston; and all the environs, a great shipping point, the great central business point. He went to work. This was partly sheer civic partriotism for his city and his community, pulling the people who had been affected by this awful disaster out of it, and part of it the true business mind seeing where two dollars could be made.

Jones was already, before that time, a very well established operator. He did know how to make money. He knew just how to do it. He saw the opportunities. he had that kind of a plunging mind. He also was a great loan person and had made loans for years. I heard of Jesse Jones first when there was some housing project proposed in New York City. I must have heard of him through Henry Bruere, who was then in the Metropolitan Life and concerned about housing. Of course, the life insurance companies had to invest in housing. We hadn't heard the word “slum clearance” then, but there was a