My first memories of my grandfather, Oliver Emmerich, were at the old McComb Enterprise-Journal building in downtown McComb.
There was not a lot of room. It was busy and cramped in 1962. The Associated Press wire telegraph was a lifeline to the rest of the world and the only one in that portion of our state sat in our newspaper building. It had different dings representing different levels of important incoming news.
In the basement, burly soot-covered men melted lead in a fiery furnace for the linotype machines. To my child’s eyes, it looked like a glimpse into the pit of hell.
The melted led was reconfigured daily as movable type that pressed against sheets of newsprint to create a newspaper. Its black-and-white graphical quality was infinitely crude compared to today’s glossy magazines and high resolution smartphone screens.
Thousands of copies of the newspaper would be printed. Each copy was 10 to 12 pages. Young paperboys would distribute the copies in town. Adult drivers would distribute in the rural areas. It was the fastest, cheapest way to get news out back then.
Oliver, the son of a conductor on the City of New Orleans, went to Mississippi State, then Mississippi A&M, to learn to be a county agent. His boss told him, “Oliver you’re not the best county agent we’ve got but you write the best column about being a county agent I’ve ever read.” Oliver took that to heart, returned to his McComb home and bought one of eight weekly newspapers published at that time.
He started a family with his brilliant and eccentric wife Lyda Will, borrowed money to upgrade his press and then the Great Depression hit. Mouths to feed, no money. He traded ads for chickens.
Then World War II came and he got the sandwich franchise for a nearby Army base. He made so much money, he was able to buy out his competition, upgrade his press, go daily and then hit a 30-year sweet spot of growing newspaper profits.
During these years, Oliver Emmerich became famous for his editorial writing, not just in Mississippi, but throughout the nation. He won every award there was to win. He was friends with Senators and Presidents. He was editor of the State Times, which competed against the Clarion-Ledger. He was a big-time inspirational speaker.
Years after Oliver’s death in 1978, the paper moved from our downtown building.
A few years ago, on a whim, I decided to go check out the old decaying downtown building. I walked into his crumbling old office where as a child I watched, awed, as he sat in his office. He seemed to me like a king on his throne.
There was a hole in the roof. The beautiful brick floor was covered in green mold. The walls were cracked. But his old leather chair and fine-wood desk were still there, ripped and buckled, a home to insects.
If ever I got an electric shock of insight about the transience of life, it was right then and there.
A few months ago, I was in McComb visiting our “new” building, now 35 years old. An office worker reminded me that there was a box in the storage room with some old books of Oliver’s I might want to save. Within them were pamphlets of his compiled editorials. I took them home and read them at my leisure and was astounded at how relevant his words still are today, 70 years later, especially during the month we observe our nation’s independence.
I am reprinting one below, titled “Spelling Out the Term “Enlightened Capitalism.”
Like the Indians who sold Manhattan Island for a handful of trinkets, the people of America could exchange our nation's ideology for a deceptive socialistic scheme.
For this reason it is timely that we spell out the meaning of "enlightened capitalism."
America must distinguish between two concepts of capitalism. One concept is the outmoded exploitation of the days of Karl Marx. The other is enlightened capitalism of today.
The now obsolete concept of exploitation sought to make a profit out of labor. Enlightened capitalism seeks to earn a profit out of production.
At the turn of the century, capitalism of exploitation was entrenched. So-called big business, ruthless and arrogant, flaunted its power and pursued a policy of the public-be-damned.
The Theodore Roosevelt administration enacted anti-trust laws to thwart cartels and monopolies. A regulatory system was set up to keep vibrant the forces of competition, and enlightened capitalism grew with the impact of constitutional freedom.
Production under enlightened capitalism rests firmly upon four corner stones - management, labor, stock holders and customers.
Management must provide a production program and the know-how to execute it. Labor must supply human energy and the skill to make it productive. Stockholders must supply the money for the tools to make it produce. The customers - the ultimate consumers - must provide a market without which production would be worthless.
Well-paid, well-treated workers, satisfied in their work and in an environment of wholesome working conditions, can far outproduce workers not accorded the benefits of enlightened capitalism.
Management, free to execute its program planning, can outproduce management harassed with interference and confusion.
Stockholders, adequately compensated for their investment and equipped with better tools, can expand production.
Customers, including workers who are well paid and who have time to enjoy the products of their system, have the right to enjoy a broad field of selectivity and to demand adequate quality of products rightly priced.
Production is wealth. But it must be production with customer approval. Consistent loss of customer approval means ultimate loss of profit. Without profit any business fails.
This is why enlightened capitalism is a wonderful ideology. With the freedom endowed in the Constitution, men risk, invest, explore, invent, launch, venture, dare - and all for the incentive of profit.
The profit motive, therefore, becomes the service motive. It provides the quality people want at prices people can afford.
This is the factor which has helped to provide America with the highest standard of living the world has ever known.
Workers invest their pension funds, their insurance money, their life's savings in stock. Workers then are stockholders. Stockholders, workers and management are customers, and customers are all three.
All three need management, management needs them all - and today's machinist helper is tomorrow's plant manager.
What a wonderful American ideology this is. It is a system of justice, opportunity, freedom and abundance to all.
In any year, but particularly in a presidential year, we should distinguish between the profit motive and the political motive and strengthen, not weaken, America's system of enlightened capitalism.
