Previous | Next
Session: 1234567891011121314151617 Page 375376377378379380381382383384385386387388389390391392393394395396397398399400401402403404405406407408409410411412413414415416417418419420421422423424425426427428429430431 of 824
For Time Inc.
For Time Inc. [pause]. Well, by Late--by sometime in the 1940s we owned I think 10% of Houston Oil--the stock by then had gotten up to about 80, or something like that, so we owned 10% at practically no cost to ourselves. And in the early 1950s Houston Oil decided to dissolve itself, and it sold its mineral rights to another oil company. And we bought the surface rights to 500,000 acres or something like that with the thought that we would make paper. Well, we built a pulp mill, found that we could sell the pulp at very good prices and gradually came to the conclusion that rather than make paper for LIFE, we could get the benefits by expanding pulp capacity, making sort of crude paper, not printing papers, and in effect balancing out the price structure, i.e.--if what we had to pay for printing papers went up, the odds were that what we would get for the other paper would also--they tend to move in synch. So that was a policy that was adopted and was used for a while, and worked very successfully. Of course, every entity that you create sooner or later gets to have a life of its own. And the man whom we found to run Eastex, Mike Buckley, was an ambitious fellow, and he was forever expanding the capacity there, and selling to more and more people. And it became a very sizable business, and indeed provided at one point close to half of Time Inc.'s profits. Admittedly, I think it was in the year when magazine profits were not good. But it was a lovely hedge.
I'm now trying to remember where the Temple story starts.
© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help