SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



thetic rubber program and artificial cocoa, pepper, 

 cloves, and cinnamon for the pantry shelf. For the syn- 

 thetic condiments, Thomas Jefferson Harrell is himself 

 indirectly responsible. 



Shoveling cottonseed out of a freight car is not raking 

 leaves on the lawn of the Public Library and today $10 

 for a sixty-hour week is not even coolie pay. As he 

 wiped the sweat out of his eyes, T. J. Harrell, B.A., no 

 doubt wondered what good a college education was to 

 him anyway. But it did teach him to use his eyes and 

 his brain, to see things from all sides and then think 

 them through from an original premise to a definite 

 conclusion. 



"Togie" confesses that though he did not like his 

 first job, he did like the crushing business from the 

 start. From the soft feel of the fuzzy seeds and the 

 aromatic smell of the cooking kernels to the hazards 

 of a seasonal, speculative enterprise and the flinty com- 

 petition with big and little rivals for both raw materials 

 and sales, he just liked it all the way through. Maybe 

 heredity pulled some strings. His grandfather, back in 

 the 1860's, owned and operated one of the first cotton 

 gins in Texas, a four-horsepower gin, literally four mules 

 on a treadmill, with a daily capacity of four bales. To 

 his grandfather, cottonseed was a bothersome nuisance. 

 He dumped it in the river. 



From the receiving platform where he shoveled in- 

 coming seed, young Harrell began to observe every 



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