Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 5.djvu/804

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VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

of him: "He was a modest, unpretending soldier who did his whole duty and never thought it necessary to parade it. He was a man of broad business capacity, ready to do his duty and always in a pleasant way. He knew how to do things! He never sought place nor shirked duty. He never complained and was never complained of. He stood at his post and did his best and was a true Confederate soldier with a clean record, commanding respect by winning it." Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Graves says of him. ''He was a soldier who never shirked, a man that you could rely on in every way."

When the war was over, he turned his back upon that chapter of his life, honorably though he had lived it, and courageously faced the future. It is characteristic of him that in a country where time was marked by the "War," he rarely mentioned it, and his own brave drudgery in ranks he looked upon so as a matter of course that he felt no claim to place among Confederate heroes. He would be unable to recognize himself in the belligerent bronze twins, masquerading in soldier garb and accoutrements under his name, in the city where he sought so earn- estly to place at the service of the people the fruits of his success as a business man.

After Lee's surrender in April, 1865, until December of that year, he remained on his farm in Bedford county, gathering up the loose ends of his business and piecing to- gether the fragments the war had left of his capital. In December he formed a partner- ship with his two brothers-in-law. and they immediately began business as wholesale and retail hardware merchants in Lynch- burg. The foundation of his fortune thus laid was built up steadily and rapidly as the city recovered from the ravages of war and developed to an important business centre. The firm prospered greatly. The industry of its members, their fearless undertaking of the hardest physical labor, their careful conservation of every cent of their resources, made the name of Jones, Watts & Co. a synonym for hard work and close counting of cost. They had all just emerged from the hard school of the Confederate army, where they had known need of the simplest com- forts of life. They brought to their busi- ness a keen realization of the commercial truths that dollars at work are the most profitable of servants, and that dollars are made up of cents. They counted every

penny and demanded its full equivalent in every business transaction. The hardware business in Virginia is controlled to-day by men who learned it in their hard school of close economy and grilling work. Many are the stories told of the strict discipline main- tained among their employes, but in all ac- counts given of life in their establishment, of the stern demand for every hour of labor paid for, of the intolerance of waste and shirking of any sort, there stands out the voluntary and undisputed testimony that i\Ir. Joiics was always just and fair. He de- manded what he paid for, but no more, and rendered with exactness all that was due from him. His was the recognized brain that made the fortunes of the firm. "Ask Brother George" was so invariably the answer to every business problem submitted to his partners that the expression became a fixed one in local parlance. Until his clear mind and cool judgment could be brought to bear upon a question, it remained un- answered. He recognized commercial life as a cruel game played with money as coun- ters and he played it without quarter to the incompetent, but he played it according to the rules laid down in good conscience, wherein honesty is the only policy and trick- ery and misrepresentation and unfair ad- vantage have no place. He played on a fair field and asked no favor. He was a mer- chant with a merchant's mind and a mer- chant's talent, but he dignified his occupa- tion of tradesman with an ethical perception of that exact and honest distribution of com- modities essential to the development of a complex community life for the greatest good of the greatest number.

As his business methods brought repu- tation to the firm of Jones Watts & Co., their trade stretched out through the State and made profitable the establishment of branch houses in Danville, Bedford City and Salem. His prominence in the mercantile world created many demands upon him out- side of his hardware business, and all that was conducive to the material welfare and prosperity of Lynchburg had his earnest support. The twenty years he was presi- dent of the National Exchange Bank were the years of its greatest growth. He was the first president of the Lynchburg Board of Trade, and connected with all the general business activities of the town, as well as the more important ventures of Lynchburg