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  • Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism, and the Common Good by Steven Fenberg
  • Jason Scott Smith
Steven Fenberg. Unprecedented Power: Jesse Jones, Capitalism, and the Common Good. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2011. xiii + 611 pp. ISBN 978-1-60344-434-7, $35 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-62349-157-4, $24.95 (paper).

Steven Fenberg’s authoritative biography of Jesse Jones provides historians with a sweeping and detailed account of Jones’s private and public life, tracing his activities inside and outside of government service. Jones, an entrepreneur with an eighth-grade education, built most of Houston’s downtown during the first half of the twentieth century and became wealthy. During the Great Depression and World War II, Jones entered public life, becoming, as Time magazine declared, the most powerful person in the United States after Franklin D. Roosevelt. Appointed the head of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) by FDR, Jones supervised the financing and rescue of the nation’s banking system during 1933 and subsequently used the RFC’s power to channel funding to such New Deal agencies as the Public Works Administration. Fenberg argues that Jones’s private life and public work serve to “redefine Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency by contradicting common notions about the New Deal, shedding new light on World War II mobilization, and offering perspective on, and possible solutions for, some of today’s intractable problems” (1).

Fenberg brings a deep engagement to his project. A native of Houston and an independent scholar and author, Fenberg worked to help organize and archive a range of sources relating to Jones’s business activities, conducted oral histories with more than forty individuals who worked with or knew Jones, and served as executive producer and writer of a PBS documentary, “Brother, Can You Spare [End Page 414] a Billion? The Story of Jesse H. Jones.” It is safe to say that no other account of Jones’s life draws on such a breadth and depth of research. While not an exercise in hero-worship, Fenberg’s biography presents a positive assessment of Jones. “As a businessman (and card player),” Fenberg writes, Jones “was a merciless competitor and a fierce negotiator who always intended to win. As a civic leader and a public servant, he bent over backwards to help others, enhance Houston, and nurture the common good. … He would go on to combine capitalism and public service to help save nations” (3). Fenberg’s enthusiasm for his subject may pose a challenge for some readers as, at times, it seems that no detail is left unmentioned. For example, we learn that during the 1928 holiday season, Jones (no stranger to networking) sent sixtyeight crates of Texas Rio Grande valley grapefruits to various people, including the new governor of New York, FDR. Fenberg then quotes Roosevelt’s thank-you note to Jones: “Ever so many thanks for the delicious grapefruit. We all enjoyed them so much. I wish you could have been here for the Inauguration; it was a great day” (171). At points such as this, Fenberg’s readers would have been well served by a stronger editorial hand.

As Houston’s banking community grappled with the Great Depression in 1931, Jones’s prominent role in persuading Main Street bankers to work together in stabilizing the city’s financial institutions brought him considerable attention. President Herbert Hoover appointed Jones, along with two other Democrats, to the newly created RFC, largely in exchange for support for the RFC’s creation from conservative Democrats Joe Robinson (Arkansas), Carter Glass (Virginia), and Speaker of the House John Nance Garner (Texas). Jones’s financial acumen, business bona-fides, and reputation as a “commonsense capitalist who believe in the power of public service,” Fenberg writes, would subsequently serve Roosevelt’s New Deal well, giving FDR a member of his administration who could serve as an envoy of sorts to the nation’s financial community (207). Fenberg draws on his oral history interviews with John Kenneth Galbraith to support this point; Galbraith noted that Jones “gave the impression of somebody who was accustomed to handling…tens of millions of dollars, and liberal New Dealers could not project that impression. [Jones...

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