WILLIAM M. GARRARD

THE SUCCESS OF W M. GARRARD COMPANY'S cotton merchandising and export business in Indianola attracted the originating directors of Staplcotn to their first general manager. They beat a path to Will Garrard's door and urged him to take over as Staplcotn's general manager six months after the first organizational meeting.

William Mountjoy Garrard TV was born in Lawrenceville, IL, August 25, 1881. Garrard's family had lived across the Ohio River in Kentucky for generations, moving there from Virginia. His Grandfather, James Garrard was Kentucky's second governor and his father was a newspaper editor in Illinois. Following his father's death, Garrard was reared in Greenwood, where his mother, Zilpha Barrett Garrard, moved to make her home with a brother.

Garrard graduated from Mississippi State College in 1904 and went to work for Humphrey Cotton Company in Indianola, later going into the cotton business for himself In 1908, he married Mabelle Moseley Smith. They had six children.

A winning personality, courage, perseverance, depth of character, and unusual trading abilities were the tools this builder-pioneer brought to cooperative marketing in the Mississippi Delta. His personal magnetism was a major factor in membership growth.

From Garrard's basic blend of ideas emanated the rules of the new road that helped carve an effective and lasting approach out of the shapeless flow of farmers' cotton to the spinner. Main tenets of his early approaches in cooperative cotton marketing included, "Orderliness and patience are keys to cooperative selling. Hold the title to the cotton until we get the money. Don't let good customers get off your books. Share accurate information with your customers. If a problem is too technical to tell the Board, it's too technical to tackle. There is nothing so secret we will not tell a member." His answers were uncomplicated, never evasive, ambiguous or contradictory; his word was his bond.

Once asked about his problems in marketing cotton, Garrard replied, "Same as with anything else. The problem of anyone who has something to sell is finding the person who needs it. If he does this, he's in business. If he sells it or tries to sell it to someone who doesn't want it or doesn' t need it, or if he misrepresents it, he's only got a racket-which cart t last."

"The story of Will Garrard, as an achiever, increases even my own great admiration for my predecessor," wrote Dr. C. R. Sayre of Greenwood in 'The Great Cooperators",a survey of early co-op leaders.

"He was a giant of a man who stood five feet four. He was handsome, dapper, self-assured - and surprisingly grateful for the least attention paid him, the smallest compliment given him. 'There's something you can say, no matter what it is that's been done for you,' he said once in exasperation. 'If a man gives you nothing but a dead cat, at least you can say it is indeed the deadest cat imaginable,"' Dr. Sayre continued.

"He seemed never to have the least difficulty in coming to a decision or forming an opinion. His thinking was mercurial and concise. Characteristically, his counsel was brief, but oft-repeated proverbs and slogans: Get your story straight. Put first things first. Don't guy the clown. (Don't try to beat a man at his own game.) Comparisons are odious. Modesty is one of the attributes of greatness. Don't alibi," Sayre wrote.

"Mr. Garrard was one of the best businessmen I ever knew. He had a total lack of ego as far as business was concerned," Sayre's successor H.L. (Hank) Hodges of Greenwood says.

Often, when business required a Staplcotn representative in Washington or New York, Garrard sent young Hodges. "His whole idea and concept about this business was, 'Go, and when it gets to the point where you have to make a deal, if it's not a good deal, come back and talk to me.' That always gave us two shots at everything. I had great fun doing it, I was the messenger boy but I got to do all of the going," Hodges said.

Not exactly "all the going," since Garrard had for years been Staplcotn's primary representative to mills in New England, the Carolinas and in the European countries where Mid-South cotton was sold.

Garrard played golf and tennis, enjoyed almost any card game and was an excellent quail and duck hunter. Most literature he found tiresome, except for a few verses that said succinctly what they intended to say and were done with it. His friends were poets and preachers, bankers, brokers and the yard man. He was a Baptist, a Democrat, and a leader in a host of civic activities.

"Will Garrard was the founding father, and he did a great job," recalls LeRoy P. Percy. "Today, Staplcotn is run more like a business, where the Board is more involved.

"When I was first elected to the Board, all we did was listen, listen to Mr. Garrard tell it like it was. Mr. Bledsoe was chairman, but he never opened his mouth. Will Garrard did the whole thing. it was his show," Percy said.

By the time Will Garrard died in 1958, Staplcotn had sold more than ten million bales of cotton, valued at $1.5 billion, with buyers in the United States, Europe and Japan.

The forming of Staplcotn was providential for this canny, energetic man. Will Garrard was Emersonian in his belief only a few essentials are important: "These and the wish to serve - to add somewhat to the well-being of men." Asked why he dosed his successful "W M. Garrard Et Company" to cast his lot with this new experiment in marketing, he replied with characteristic directness, "That was a business. This is a service."