Purgatives and Politics

Digging a well in lonely northern Texas late in 1880, an oldtime settler sipped its water, spit it out in puckery disgust. Later he learned its medicinal value, watched mineral wells rapidly mushroom about him. Soon Mineral Wells, Tex. became a mecca for U. S. health seekers. One of them was a woman with a brain disordered by menopause. She lived to a sane old age and the font from which she had sipped was christened Crazy Well.

In 1926 the Crazy became a big-time gusher. From the charred remains of the first Crazy Hotel sprang up-&-coming Crazy Water Co., with capital stock of $400,000, an $800,000 mortgage. It 1) rebuilt the hotel, 2) bottled the water, 3) produced Crazy Water Crystals by evaporating the water. Whereas the old Crazy Hotel, a mere therapeutic resort, had sold health on a cash-&-carry basis, Crazy Water Co. put it on drugstore shelves all over the U. S. Today its debt is down to $150,000, its physical assets up to $1,500,000.

Principal Crazy stockholder is thin-faced, black-eyed, ministerial Carr Pritchett Collins, chairman of the board and longtime crony of Texas' hillbilly Governor Wilbert Lee ("Pass the biscuits, Pappy") O'Daniel. With Brother Hal Houston Collins, president of Crazy, Stockholder Carr has a strong grip on Texas politics. Accredited with having helped start O'Daniel's Hillbilly Flour Co., Carr helped run the Governor's campaign, remains a close adviser, is sometimes called the power behind the throne. Glib Radiorator Hal plugs Crazy products and O'Daniel doctrine over company-sponsored broadcasts.

Understatement has never been the backbone of Crazy promotion. Sample blurb: ". . . 70 to 75% of disease today can be attributed to one condition. Crazy Water remedies this common condition." Fortnight ago the Federal Trade Commission cracked down, issued a complaint against Crazy Water Co. Charged FTC: Crazy cannot help, as it claims it can, in the cure or relief of some 30 ailments of the alimentary or urinary tracts, Crazy misrepresents constipation as the cause of some 50 diseases, Crazy products do nothing more than speed the bowels.

But Texans wondered which lay more heavily on FTC minds, purgatives or politics. Paced by Politico Hal's key-noting speech at the recent State Democratic Convention (held in Crazy Hotel), the Collins machine had taken an anti-New-Deal, anti-Third-Term stand, toyed with the idea of plumping for Willkie. Whereupon revolt broke loose against the Collins machine. And New Deal Congressman Clyde L. Garrett (since defeated for renomination by a Collins candidate) went after Collins' business flank, threw nothing in the way of the FTC complaint.

With 20 days in which to answer it, President Hal Collins swung into action last week, put lawyers to work drafting a reply, proposed to take a "trainload" of cured Crazy customers to Washington to back his claim. Said he: "We'd just as soon comply with some of the commission's demands, but those that would put us out of business we're going to answer."

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