Caldwell Corner

If a man has once built up a banking house that did a $100,000,000 annual investment business and controlled $600,000,000 of financial and industrial enterprises, but has lost it all; if he is still under 45 and if he stays out of jail--the chances are that he will make a comeback. Rogers Clark Caldwell, whose crash three years ago reverberated from Georgia to Arkansas, was sentenced to jail but high Tennessee courts reversed the conviction. The ambitious, youngish banker-promoter promptly started afresh at his old Nashville stand with $1,000 capital and the old Caldwell slogan, "We bank on the South" (TIME, Sept. 12).

Last week it became apparent that, unlike his old associate Col. Luke Lea, who is fighting extradition to North Carolina where a six-to-ten year sentence awaits him, Rogers Clark Caldwell was coming back fast. He signed contracts for the second biggest tobacco deal in history. Biggest was R. J. Reynolds (Camels) lump purchase of 60,000,000 lb. of burley from a growers' association several years ago. Last week Mr. Caldwell was not far behind. For approximately $3,750,000 he agreed to buy 40,000,000 lb. of dark-fired tobacco from two big cooperatives, giving him a practical corner on the dark-fired market.* As was often the case before his crash, Mr. Caldwell's deal had a political twist. He will assume the obligations of dark-fired growers to the R. F. C. for crop advances, is also seeking (and will probably get) R. F. C. assistance in financing the deal. Bitterly opposed is Universal Tobacco Co., a syndicate which has contracts to supply the Spanish monopoly with dark-fired tobacco, and which now must step up and pay Mr. Caldwell's price. Nashville believed, however, that Mr. Caldwell's promise of quick cash to growers would outweigh any political pressure that Universal might bring on the R. F. C. Rogers Caldwell & Co., his new banking house, had nothing to do with the dark-fired deal. It was engineered by Mr. Caldwell personally, with a few associates. The firm, its original stake of $1,000 swelled considerably by sale of preferred stock to the public, is doing business in local stocks, local real estate, has even toyed with an Alabaman canal project.

*Grown in the heavy clay soils of western Tennessee and Kentucky and parts of Virginia, dark fire-cured tobacco is largely exported to Europe where its full body and woodsmoke flavor is highly prized.

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