Patillo Higgins Interview - Patillo Higgins Interview [part 2 of 7]

"let Bud go fix it." They called me "Bud" Higgins. So I fixed everything. And a foreman of the mill there one time was talking they had some trouble about getting the logs down, to the mill to saw. They floated down right up to where the log crane would get them and load them all and the [unintelligible] would come down out of the mill, in the water. Then they'd haul it, and pick those logs up. Now I got kind of off -- now let's see, what was the last I talked about?

O. How they'd bring the logs down.

H. Oh, yes. The foreman of the mill a long time, Mr. Carroll was the foreman, and I think he had a helper. Now, here's what I started to tell you. This foreman of the mill, they were having trouble getting logs down to keep feeding them in to the saw.

And this foreman made a remark --I wasn't there. It might have been after I quit. But the foreman remarked that he had five men filling my place. And he made a remark that, "Bud always knows how to do a thing right. If Bud had been here why he would have kept them logs going." Sometimes they would run out of logs and have to wait till they could get them in there to saw. But I never made a failure at anything on there.

V. Dad, then you went into business building the brick plant?

H. Yes, that was the next, the brick. Then from the brick into the oil.

O. Well, tell me about the brick work -- your work making brick. Will you tell me about that?

H. I thought I'd told you about how I organized the brick company. I went North and bought the machinery. They left that all to me as to what kind of machinery. We made the finest brick in the whole country. We made forty thousand brick a day.

V. Dad why did you decide to -- was there need for brick in Beaumont?

H. Yes, but you couldn't get them.

V. But you couldn't get the brick. There was plenty of lumber around and no brick.

H. Yes, they didn't have brick. There was one little brick yard out, they just made a few brick but this couldn't supply the demand for brick. But there's lots of things that come up to be in the way but I pulled everything out and made a success of it.

O. Where'd you go up North, to buy the machinery? Where up North did you go?

H. Oh, what we called it, I don't know what they call it this day and time. One place -- I went to Dayton, Ohio. And I believe that's the place where I saw that material being burned with oil, there. Then I went to another place -- you see, where I'd go, them people, I'd go to their office and then they'd take me to where they had sold machinery and it was in operation and so I caught on to all of them. They finally showed me one place that oil, another place they showed me gas they were using for fuel. Now, one place was Indianapolis, Indiana. Another place, Dayton, Ohio, is where I bought most of my machinery.

O. Where did you get your crew to operate? H. What? O. Where did you get your men to run the machinery then?

H. Well, I just saw the machine run and it just come in my head, I don't know how it got in there.

V. He said, "Where did you get your labor to run the brick plant?" Isn't that it? O. Yes.

H. Well, just common labor that had never been in a brick yard. I had all that gathered up, that was all in my head, I knew what to do.

V. You trained them, yourself.

H. All I needed was a good man that wasn't lazy, with good strength that could do this work. It was pretty hard work. Well, now let me tell you something about the machinery.

O. All right.

H. It was built, the main body of it, was built out of lumber. Then the other parts was put into it, rigged it together, and that was all built into one big box, a long box. Now, they had the front part of it that would do the work, making the brick. They shipped that box down, cause it was all too heavy, in pieces-[unintelligible] and so on-the prints and everything.

And to be sure I was right on that, I hired a millwright, a man that understood it. Now, he lived in, I believe, Kansas City, the millwright. Everything was hauled in and we put the frame part, the body of the main machine. Now, all of these separate pieces-this millwright started in there to put 'em up.

So he come to me after he'd been working on it and said, "You know something, I've been a millwright for many a year, and I just can't put that machine together. I just can't read the blueprints of this and that and so on, and I just have to confess I can't do it." He didn't know how to put it together to make it work, didn't know where each piece, each piece had to be fit in a certain place and put together.

We had a big rain one day. That was soon after he told me about it, that he just couldn't put that together and he'd have to send to the factory and send a man to show how to put it together. Well, had a big shower of rain and that set us down; and all of them went up to the boarding -- we had a boarding house -- some of them living around near by it. A rain, and they all went to the boarding house and they all just sat down.

Well, there was one man, now he'd been working around some railroad company, a kind of a clerk and roustabout and all around about that work, and around the depot and such as that, and I had give him a job-a young fellow, good and stout and everything. And I was out there and he stayed out to the mill-the others all went in.

And I told him, talked to him, he didn't know anything about machinery-and I told him, and I says down over there I was looking at the pieces laying around. There was a big machine like this -- the box, the framework, and one part was back this way and then the front, the front was the one that made the brick and that was the one the man couldn't put together. I said, "I tell you, I believe you and I can fix that. Let's try it."

"All right." Now we had a block, a chain, they call it a chain block we would lift them things with and we had a place to fasten it. We just hitched on a piece, raised it up and placed it, had the bolts and everything ready and I screwed it together. I brung the monkey wrenches, and the other wrenches, we put it together and then I looked it over and I said, "Well now, let's try this piece."

We raised it up. It was heavy, you know. Six men couldn't have lifted it but we had that little light block, we raised it up and then we could fix it. Either one could place it and then the other one let it down. And we put that machine together. And when we got it started, it went right off to making brick.

It was next day or two before we -- we might have had to wait on it to dry it up a little or something. But when we started, the thing was ready to go. It had stumped the millwright man. He was a nice old fellow. He just couldn't work it out, couldn't go by the blue prints. Well now, what did I go by? I worked it out. I had all them big iron things right up here in my head. [Laughter]

I fixed it right and they never did have to take it down, all the time I was there. And it did certainly make the brick-forty thousand brick a day.

O. Forty thousand a day. You told me about a man that you fired, burning brick. I'd like to hear that story again.

H. Well, now he was a man who lived near Baytown. He lived on Cedar Bayou, where the bridge cross, I guess you've been over there. O. Yes, I have.

H. Well, now he had operated a little brick plant, I don't know whether he owned it or somebody else, but he had managed it. He set the brick and he burnt it. And they made 'em, they had some kind of a machine, I don't remember whether I ever saw their machine or not.

But now, to be sure I was right, I got a man that had the experience and worked at it twenty years and had good recommendation and I hired him. At that day and time, I believe I gave him a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.

That was big wages he was getting, gettin' along fine and everything but he didn't know how to burn that certain kind of clay. That was the only trouble with him. He set the brick all right, he fired it all right, but it would take a whole lot of time for me to explain the additions I put to it, you see, to control my fire.

I just went to a machine shop in Beaumont and had them to cut my pieces out. I took them out there and set them in, set them in the kiln. Door worked, you know, just like bolting those doors, simple as could be. And I knew how to handle the heat, you see.

V. In other words, you regulated the heat.

H. Yes. Now he, he put it on with a kind of a flash way, too fast, or something he didn't do, it got too hot on him or something. But anyway, he didn't make good brick. Made a failure in that. But now I burned at one kiln and it was the prettiest, finest lot of brick I ever saw. And they was good and tough. Now, there's a way you can burn a piece of clay, fix it up anyway, dry press or mud press. But you've just got to know how to burn it. That's the science about it.

Now, I worked all that out, I didn't get it out of a novel, I worked it out in my head, just how to fix it and I knew how to fix it and I knew that he had too much draught. And the addition I put there so that it went along slow and I didn't over-burn it at the beginning, let it take its proper time. But anyway, I burned the finest brick I ever saw. We could have shipped those brick to New Orleans, could have made a big thing out of it but we didn't do it.

But I never made a failure with it, while I just stayed there with it. But I sold my stock. And a certain man that had that little brick yard out there, he knew that he couldn't compete with the class of brick that we were making and even as cheap as we could make them. Then we had plenty of [unintelligible] right at our plant, hauled it right in there to the fire and dumped it in.

V. Then he was the one that bought out the brick plant?

H. No. It was another man. He just happened to own stock in my company. He owned the other little plant. V. And bought it out.

H. No. He bought some and others bought some. I sold my stock to different ones. In a way, I have never made a failure in buying land or selling land, I always give good measure. I've always made it out so I didn't fix the price. Then they'd set the price and I'd take and buy it; if not, I didn't buy it, that's all.

V. Dad, along when the brick plant closed, I mean the brick plant -- you sold your interest, and then you went into the oil -- you used to tell about there was a furniture factory opened up and didn't they give you some competition in launching your little company? The local people, didn't they put money in the furniture plant and didn't --

H. No. You're not explaining it just so I understand it. Now, a man, a certain kind of man going around building up plants, he stuck 'em to make furniture. We had lots of wood, as they thought, oak mostly, maple, we had other timbers. We had one certain kind there was called black gum and another one, tupelo gum. They had [unintelligible] but I knew that it wasn't suitable for making furniture. I could tell that, I didn't put a dollar into it.

That man got a lot of stock out of it among them and he made believe they could do this and that. They had some oak lumber, lumber from the North somewhere, showed what kind of work they could do, just test it. Then they run an apparatus, run it through an apparatus -- piece of machinery -- and would stamp it, make it ornamental, you see?

But they made a failure of with it. Now, if them men had put money in with me into the brick company, I'd have put in a big steam dryer to make brick on a big scale. Forty thousand brick a day, you see we'd have to have a good dryer, to dry the clay after we made it into brick. Everything worked out all right. But I didn't make any blunder anywhere in that, even though when I sold my stock, I didn't make any blunder.

Now, this man some way got a lot of the stock and he want to move it over on the Beaumont side and they moved the plant and I don't know what ever become of it. It may be running today and it may not. The man is dead.

V. What was his name? H. His name was Blanchard. "Co-la" they called him. Not "Coal Oil," but "Co-la."

O. Well, what work did you do after you sold your brick plant?

H. Well, I think I went into real estate business. That's where I learned how to tell the stories -- in the real estate business. [Laughter] That's where I caught on to that.

V. Well, right soon then you organized the Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company, too, didn't you? Then, you organized the Oil, Gas --

H. Gladys City Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company. That showed the kind of work that I was going to carry on. I showed the big refinery there. You can't go around and get a picture of a refinery as good as I had it in that day and time.

How did I do that? I studied it out.

V. He means on his letterhead, you know. O. Yes, well, would you tell me more about that refinery on your letterhead? How did you get the idea for it?

H. Well, in a way I might just say I had a little copy of a refinery some little newsprint I saw in some magazine, I guess-something like that. And it showed a few scattered tanks near the plant. But I beat them all to smash about fixing my tanks and my furnaces and all as that. There's all them big, let's see, what do you call them, for the smoke to go through? V. Chimney?

H. Oh, it's a kind of a chimney.

V. Smoke stack.

H. I made them chimneys a little different from what the other fellow--I made something nicer. Now I knew what to draw and done that with a lead pencil. I set down and right in my mind I knew what to draw. Just like you invent.

Give a man a subject to work on, you want so and so, and a man that's got good -- plenty of qualities to him can work it out, get it into operation, manufacture it. You know what I've got in my head, I --

V. He's going to go to rambling now.

H. I'm going to change the style of building automobiles. I'm going to change it and I can make them to sell for less than half of what they are selling for and the fellow that's making them will make more money than the fellow that's selling them at the high price. They just don't know. That's the same way in the oil business. They haven't learned yet just how to refine oil, they haven't learned how to develop oil.

Now these companies that are operating, developing it themselves, they don't know how to handle it. And they are operating under such an extravagant way -- that the poor fella, he has to pay the price. They're making something out of it, I guess. Oil should come half of what we pay for it now, and then everybody could make money out of it.

V. Dad, you organized the Gladys City Oil Manufacturing Company --

H. Oil, Gas and Manufacturing Company.

V. -- in what year?

H. Well, we got our charter--it's dated, it's a record in Austin. We got the charter on the twenty-fourth day of August, eighteen hundred and ninety-two. That was when we were chartered. We were a company then, and ready to work.

O. How did you happen to name it Gladys City?

H. I named it after the picture of the little girl. You saw the picture of the little girl on the letterhead.

O. Yes. The girl on the letterhead was the one that you named it for?

H. Yes. Her name was Gladys.

V. Gladys what? H. Gladys Bingham.

O. And you told me how you'd known her -- what were the details of that? How had you known Gladys?

H. How'd I get acquainted with Gladys? Well, it was this way. I was a Baptist, had Baptist Sunday School. Now, her parents were Episcopals. But among the other children in my class, talking to them, they wanted to join my class so I took them in. And her parents, her father and mother, they were Episcopal people -- belonged to the Episcopal Church there in Beaumont. But they preferred to come to our Sunday School.

Then the girls that they talked to, I guess, in talking, I guess they bragged on me, probably, or something, they wanted to join my class. That's what started it.

O. Well, how much stock did you put into the company when it was organized?

H. How's that?

O. How did the shareholders share in the company originally? Who went into it with you?

H. Well, now we put in land. Now you see the first, we bought the land. Now, we borrowed the money to buy this land. Now when I went to the others that owned the other part of it --

V. That was the O'Briens.

H. O'Brien. I went to him. I called him Captain O'Brien. I said, "Captain O'Brien, I understand you own such and such a tract of land, don't you?" Yes, he did. And I asked him would he sell it. He said, "Yes, I'll sell it." Next thing is, "What's your price, what'll you sell it to me at?" He said, "Twenty dollars an acre."

Well, I knew that was too big a loan to get offhand from a little bank. There wasn't enough to buy at twenty dollars an acre. Then there was several other tracts that I wanted to buy. We could have bought it real cheap, bought it at ten dollars an acre. If we'd done that we'd have controlled the oil market. The oil went down to where it sold under ten cents a barrel.

V. Well Dad, how many acres did the O'Briens own? H. What? V. How many acres did Captain O'Brien and John Lanier own?

H. It was twenty-seven hundred fifty-two and a half acres. Of the O'Briens', it was in one big tract. The O'Briens owned one half undivided interest, you see?

Now we bought from the heir the other half. I went to buy it from O'Brien, and that was all right, he wanted to sell it. He wanted to sell it at twenty dollars an acre. Well, now if he they'd have kept that land, the O'Briens could have easily got ten million dollars for it -- for their holdings.

V. After the oil came in.

H. Yes. And then Mr. Carroll and I would have got the other half, you see. Now, Mr. Carroll and I, to get our half, we borrowed the money from the First National Bank of Beaumont. Well now Mr. Carroll had property, we didn't have to mortgage or anything like that, just a plain note.

The cashier held the note out for this money and Mr. Carroll signed it, I signed it, and everything was all right. I went to the bank and got the money and took it to the real estate man, all in big bills mostly -- twenty dollar bills -- that was some little money. We bought our half. Then we organized our company, Gladys City. And Mr. Carroll and I got half of the stock.

V. And who got the other half?

H. Captain O'Brien. V. Captain O'Brien got the other half.

H. Now, if it had been handled like I wanted to, we'd have gotten these other tracts of land and that wouldn't have cut the price of oil. I know we could have gotten a dollar a barrel, could have gotten two dollars a barrel for it. [Simultaneous] V. I want him to stay with Captain O'Brien. Dad. O. Yes. K. We lost lots of money by not being able to handle it.

V. Dad, when Captain O'Brien wanted to sell it for twenty dollars an acre and he couldn't and you saw that you couldn't pay twenty dollars an acre for it, then what did you do next? Did he, then did he just agree -- what did he ask you?

H. Well, I -- I just told him. I said, "Now, I think it's worth that money but I just couldn't raise that much money to buy it." I told him what we'd paid the others -- most of it was six. There was one or two men that sold their interest at seven dollars. The ones that owned that other half -- bought them all out. We bought most of it for six dollars an acre.

Now we could have borrowed the money. It was just a trade venture and I believe we could have gotten the money anyway. Mr. Carroll, I started to say a while ago, he had lands and I had lands that was very valuable. He had his value of the part was stock in two big saw mills. That fixed him. That made our credit good. We had the credit to borrow that. We didn't have to go and have this certain piece of land bargained and all kinds of things. Just wrote the

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