Word: owens
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lose It on Zinc. When he was 18 and still on the road, Owen met Bertie Keen, who married him, taught him to read & write and joined his business as a bookkeeper. In 1922, they opened a trading barn in Kansas City's stockyards, slowly developed it into a center for a widespread trading network...
...Owen does a bigger volume of trading (about 200,000 horses and mules a year) than anyone else...
...fire behind this sulphurous cloud was caused by 1) a mixup by the Department of Agriculture and 2) a smart trick by Dealer Owen. Last May, the Department of Agriculture wired all big dealers that it wanted to buy mules for resale to Mexico. They were needed to replace oxen exterminated in Mexico's hoof-&-mouth epizootic. The dealers bought up 8,000 mules, signed contracts to buy 12,000 more. But when they went to Washington with their bids, the Department of Agriculture told them that it might not buy a single mule. It would first have...
Make It on Horses. But not Ferd Owen. He went right on rounding up more mules. While the Department of Agriculture hemmed & hawed, he flew down to Mexico City to see Mexican officials himself. When he went home, Owen carried a contract to sell the Mexican Government 20,000 mules at the handsome price of $115 a head. That just about eliminated everyone else...
...such fast maneuvering, slender, affable Ferd Owen, 58, has become the biggest mule and horse trader in the U.S. His natty suits, hickory cane, and diamond stickpin (shaped like a mule's head) belie his origin as the fifth of nine sons of a poor Missouri farmer. Ferd went to school for only six months. At 15, he went into business for himself as a "road trader," driving all over the Midwest in a covered wagon and swapping animals with farmers along the road. That sharpened his trader's eye; now he can tell an animal...