Columns & Opinions

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.

For the Texas House and Senate, there is not much daylight between each chamber’s priorities in this year’s legislative session.

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.