Brimstone Business

Deep in the earth's crust along the Gulf of Mexico are huge knobs of pure salt. In the tortured strata around these salt domes are often found fabulous pools of petroleum and the world's richest sulphur deposits. Water heated under pressure to 330DEG is forced into sulphur wells. This melts the brimstone, which is then pumped out. Two companies control substantially the entire U. S. sulphur production and the price for years has been $18 per ton-- no more, no less. The companies are Texas Sulphur, which accounts for two-thirds of the production, and Freeport Texas, the principal deposits of which are at present not in Texas but in Louisiana. Last week Freeport Texas completed a four-year internal reorganization. John Hay ("Jock") Whitney, sportsman son of the late Payne Whitney, was made Freeport's board chairman. Jock Whitney graduated from Yale in 1926 and by the time he finally went to work as a buzzer boy in Lee, Higginson & Co. in Manhattan he was already a director of Great Northern Paper. While answering the buzzer, he got to know another young Lee, Higginson employe named Langbourne Meade Williams Jr., who knew a lot about Freeport Texas. Jock Whitney became Freeport's largest stockholder and a director. He drifted away from Lee, Higginson to manage his race horses and polo ponies and now rarely spends more than three months a year in Manhattan. The man who upped Jock Whitney from a director to a full-fledged major corporation executive was President Langbourne Meade Williams Jr., son of a Richmond, Va. banker who helped found Freeport in 1913. Working control of Freeport had passed to Eric P. Swenson, onetime chairman of National City Bank, by the time young, energetic Langbourne Williams graduated from the Harvard Business School. But by 1930, after his Lee, Higginson apprenticeship, Mr. Williams was ready to oust the old management which had, among other things, let Freeport's reserves approach the point of exhaustion. He became vice president and a Baltimore banker named Eugene Norton took the presidency "in trust." Last year Langbourne Williams felt he was old enough to assume official control and Banker Norton moved up to the chairmanship. Last week it was Mr. Norton who made way for Chairman Jock Whitney. Today this brimstone company has probably the youngest management of any major corporation in the U. S. The president: 32; the chairman: 28.

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