Billie Sol's Supplier

Back in 1958, New York's Commercial Solvents Corp. obviously thought it would get even more solvent by placing faith and credit in Billie Sol Estes. a rising young Pecos, Tex., wheeler-dealer. But by last week it was plain that doing business with Billie Sol was Commercial Solvents' worst mistake in a remarkable record of good, bad and indifferent commercial guesses.

The company got its start just after World War I, when it took over rights to a bacteria-fermentation process for producing a solvent used in artillery explosives; the process had been formulated by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who years later became the first President of Israel. It was found that a by-product of the Weizmann recipe, butyl acetate, could be used in a marvelous, quick-drying lacquer for cars. Until the Weizmann patents expired in 1936. Commercial Solvents' picture was painted rosy.

During that same period. Commercial Solvents also sold industrial alcohols, another Weizmann byproduct; and in 1933, with the repeal of the 18th Amendment, the company for a time supplied some of the makings of Old Mr. Boston and Gordon's gin. During World War II, Commercial Solvents became the first firm to mass-produce penicillin; it also developed a crystalline form of the drug, which could be transported in bulk without refrigeration.

After the war, Commercial Solvents concentrated on antibiotic drugs, but made fewer discoveries than its competitors; its fortunes fell from 1947 sales of $55 million to $33 million in 1949. So the company concentrated on producing industrial and agricultural chemicals.

Among its specialties was anhydrous ammonia, a chemical fertilizer. And then in 1958. along came Billie Sol Estes. who could sling fertilizer with the best of them.

Offering the shakiest sort of financial credits. Billie Sol still sold Commercial Solvents on a curious deal: over the ensuing years, the company supplied Estes with an estimated $12.7 million worth of the anhydrous ammonia fertilizer--getting back to date some $7.000,000 in Estes' revenues for grain stored in Billie Sol's grain elevators under federal programs. Estes "paid"--and little cash was involved--as much as $90 a ton to Commercial Solvents for its chemical manure, then sold the stuff to West Texas farmers for as little as $20.

When Billie's bubble busted. Commercial Solvents was left floating. The firm has since found itself a co-defendant with Billie Sol in a civil antitrust suit filed by Texas' Attorney General Will Wilson. The charge: conspiring to monopolize the West Texas market for anhydrous ammonia by underselling all competitors.

Last week Commercial Solvents had its own say before the House Subcommittee on Inter-Governmental Relations. Witness Maynard C. Wheeler, the company's president, clearly wished he had never heard of Billie Sol Estes. But he stoutly insisted the Commercial Solvents' relationship with the Pecos Ponzi had been that of "company and supplier, and no more."

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