The town of Ennis commenced building their compress in less than three days, but the conduct of these old mossbacks, in this case, finally proved the straw that broke the camel’s back. I immediately resolved to get out of there as soon as possible and move to Dallas, which I have never had cause to regret.
After moving to Dallas I succeeded in making better contracts with the factories whose goods I had been handling through Mitchell & Scruggs, and had a number of contracts, which they had held, turned over to me direct, thereby enlarging the profits of my business from fifty to one hundred per cent and soon established one of the largest and best businesses in my line in Dallas, except that of R. V. Tompkins, who had large capital and more extensive factory arrangements than mine. Having large capital he was able to employ a large corps of traveling salesmen, besides he, himself, having a practical, thorough knowledge of machinery.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The Methodist School at Waxahachie.
I forgot to mention, soon after entering the commission machinery business, I met a friend by the name of Meeks who was the owner of the Marvin College property at Waxahachie, established and built up by the Methodist Church of Texas, and governed by a Board of Trustees who had permitted the school to go down, after having been in operation for perhaps two or three years. They borrowed ten thousand dollars in gold from my friend, Meeks, giving him a first mortgage on the property, which mortgage he had to close by public sale and had to take the property for the debt, though the trustees claimed that the property cost the church about a hundred thousand dollars. The same old mossback element that persecuted me in my railroad and other business, too, were largely responsible for the failure of Marvin College and boasted that it should never succeed again. Mr. Meeks asked me to undertake the sale of it, which of course could be used only for school purposes, as it was unfit for anything else. Having received his promise that he would give me full control of the sale of it, I agreed to take hold of it for a commission of ten per cent.
I immediately went to work, got out an attractive circular letter, giving advantages of Waxahachie for an educational point. I soon had responses, or inquiries from the North and East, and a strong one from a Presbyterian school man at Lexington, Kentucky, who decided to take hold of it as soon as he could dispose of his property in Lexington.
Finding that I was about to sell the property to a Presbyterian who did not expect to make it a denominational school, the trustees of the Methodist Church, composed of Captain V. G. Veal, Fred Cox and Doctor Walkup, got busy among their Methodist friends and secured authority to take the property over again for ten thousand dollars in gold, Meeks waiving the interest, and paid me a thousand dollars cash and three thousand dollars in one, two and three years, with a mortgage on the property. In selling them the property on these liberal terms, I had it distinctly understood that if they failed to come up with their second payment I would close them out at once, which I was forced to do.
I soon got into correspondence with General L. M. Lewis, an educator of high order, then connected with a college in Little Rock, though he had already been connected with the A. & M. College at Bryan, where the faculty had a rupture, which resulted in the resignation of the whole board. I induced General Lewis to visit Waxahachie, where I introduced him to the Rev. Chas. E. Brown of the Methodist Church, who was one of the most popular preachers there and he, in turn, got him acquainted with Fred Cox and Doctor Walkup. These four gentlemen formed a copartnership and again bought the property and in less than two years built up a large school with many transient boarders. While on a deal with General Lewis, I frankly told him that he would have a difficult task to build up a school in that town on account of the sworn opposition of the mossback element and that he would have to depend upon transient patronage altogether for the success of his school when they began, having no doubt that Waxahachie’s patronage would gradually follow.
As I predicted, soon after starting the school and having the children of Mr. John G. Williams, who tried to be the boss of the town, Williams demanded of General Lewis that he make a change in certain rules and General Lewis told him that if the rules didn’t suit him he had better take his children home, which he did and the faculty were not sorry for it.
The second year of the school, having paid their indebtedness to Meeks, a demand for an addition became imperative, so they borrowed money and put up a large one, as also a separate boarding house. After two years more, the free school system of Texas obtained, thereby cutting down their patronage to a point that did not justify them to continue and were finally induced to sell out to the city for a public free school, which they had to do, at a considerable loss and thus crippled them financially.