Estudio de mercado, preferencias del consumidor

Mississippi, on April 3, 1853. His parents moved to Richland Parish, Louisiana, in the year 1860. This handsome, blonde Irish and Scotch lad married, but his marriage was short-lived. His wife died of pneumonia, leaving him childless. In the early 1880s, James W. Lynn met a vibrant, energetic, dark- eyed Scotch lassie by the name of Salethia Archibald. When they were married, they rented a farm and occupied the lone, one-room log cabin. They called it a two-room cabin, although it did not have a partition. Here their six children were born.

The children’s names are given here in the order in which they came into this world. Robert Bray lived to the age of 45; he died of cancer of the jaw. Mary, better known as Mamie, married Charles I. Bilington. Frank lived only to the age of42; it is believed that he fell asleep at the wheel while driving his automobile and was killed. The fourth child was our own Rajasi Janakananda named "James" after an uncle, and "Jesse" for his father. Some members of his family called him "Jimmy" and others called him "Jim". These names are still used to this day (1958) by his friends and business associates. Josephine was born next, and married T.W. Logan; at the time of this writing (1958), both sisters are still living in Archibald, Louisiana. Eugene, who lived to the young age of 30, was killed with his friends who were returning from a fishing trip in the friends' private airplane. He had been in two previous airplane accidents before this fatal one. Salethia's parents, the Archibalds, were the first pioneers in the area. The town was given the family name. It is still called Archibald to this day. The Archibalds owned and operated their 120-acre farm to good advantage. It provided a good living for them.

Salethia’s father died in early 1903. Salethia's two brothers remained to care for their mother and operated the farm. The youngest brother, James, married and went out on his own, leaving the eldest brother, Alec, to shoulder the responsibility of the farm alone. This uncle dearly loved his favorite nephew, little Jimmy. He remained unmarried and lived with his mother and operated the farm until his death. After Alec's passing, Jimmy's family moved in with Grandmother Archibald to continue caring for the farm and her. The children were elated at the prospect of living in a larger house. When Jimmy was six years old, the grandmother died. She left the 120-acre farm to Jimmy's parents and their children, with the understanding that the rest of the heirs would be paid their share of the estate from the produce of the farm. On this farm Jesse W. Lynn, wife, and family lived until the parents' death Salethia Lynn passed the portals of this world on September 16, 1943 at the age of 88. James W. Lynn, her husband, followed her on August I, 1945, at the age f92. Newspaper accounts of the passing of both parents can be found in Appendix I of this book.

Childhood

was a very sensitive child. In 1953, his sister told me, "Jimmy was more like a little girl than a boy." He never destroyed anything. He told me later, "When my brothers played too rough, I withdrew and hid behind a tree and if someone was hurt, I would cry with them." He stayed home with his mother rather than play with the boys. The log cabin only had a fireplace in which to cook their meals. It was Jimmy's duties to build the fire, wash the breakfast and dinner dishes, milk 14 cows, churn the butter, and help his mother with household chores. He picked cotton but a few times, actually never working in the cultivating department of the farm. He walked three miles to sell two or three pounds of butter at the country store. He would proudly bring the sales money to his mother. This was her only household expense money; luckily, she was a thrifty woman. When Jimmy was around seven years old, he helped his mother plant some pecan trees around the house, which are now huge beautiful trees that are still bearing large sweet pecans.

Jimmy had a Negro playmate, whose mother regarded Jimmy as one of her own favorite children. Whenever Jimmy visited her, which was often, she ran to meet him, picked him up in her arms, and carried him in the house to feed him the sweet tidbits she had saved for him. Little Jimmy responded to her deep love. Even after 50 years elapsed, as he told me this story, tears streamed down his cheeks with the recollection of the deep childish sorrow he felt at her passing, when he was still but a small boy.

Jimmy and his dog went into the woods often to play. One day he got lost; he was gone so long that the neighbors formed a posse and went out in search for him. They found him frightened, crying, and trying desperately to find his way back home.

Little Jimmy wore dresses and long hair up to the age of six. He started school at the early age of five. He felt a deep urge for education. He walked two miles to a log cabin school. He was very diligent in his studies. He was set up as an example to the other children; he was also a leader amongst his playmates. He had a gift for spelling and giving definitions of words. When he went to the store to sell the butter, the storekeeper and the elders in the general store gathered around Jimmy, sat him on the counter, and delighted in asking him to spell long words. Without hesitation, he spelled the word and gave them the definition as well. As a reward, they gave him a piece of candy- or fruit. The family rarely had enough money to buy fruit and fresh vegetables. Sometimes the children would get an apple and an orange and nuts in their Christmas stocking. At those times, Jimmy sat on the floor with a bowl between his legs and emptied the contents of his stocking into the bowl and ate to his heart's content. That was the only gift they had, but it was to them a happy event.

On his store trek, he noticed there was always a barrel of nice red apples standing on the floor. Little Jimmy would look at them longingly and hungrily. One day Jimmy was especially hungry for fruit. The sight of the beautiful apples was too much for little Jimmy. He ran up to the barrel, snatched a large red apple, ran outside, sat on the front steps of the store, and hungrily ate the apple. The elders laughed to see Jimmy devour his somewhat stolen apple.

At the age of seven or eight, Jimmy's right leg began to curl under him. It was very painful. Bumps appeared on his thigh and calf. The doctor had to lance the infested bumps. The doctor feared that because the leg was so badly twisted, Jimmy might not be able to straighten the leg out and would remain a cripple for the rest of his life. But Jimmy's strong will, even at that tender age, was not going to let anything like that keep him down. He started gradually stretching his leg, pulling it, and exercising it until he got it to resume a normal position. He never ha d trouble with that leg afterward. The leg was as normal as the other.

Jimmy learned to play baseball and was very proud when he was outfitted with a baseball suit. His team won over the older boys' team. In the course of one of these games, Jimmy broke the first joint of his third finger He did not go to a doctor for the broken joint; therefore, it remained crooked.

First Job

In the course of his childhood, he was always on the lookout to earn money. At one time he and one of his friends got a job hauling a whole carload of bricks from the railroad station. They had to haul the bricks six miles back and forth on a little hand wagon. They received three dollars a piece for the job. Their little fingers were bleeding almost to the quick, from handling rough bricks. He was happy with the three dollars and proudly gave it to his mother. At the age of fourteen, he found a job in the neighborhood town of Mangham, Louisiana, at the railroad station. His duties were to sweep the station, learn telegraphic, and handle the incoming and outgoing freight. The 4 a.m. freight car engineer would blow his engine whistle to notify little Jimmy that freight was coming. Jimmy would jump out of bed, dress, and run to the station to receive the freight, unload and put it in the shed, and return to bed. Fortunately, the hotel where he was staying, which was owned by a cousin of his, was located near the station. Jimmy would do household chores for his room and board. When he received his first wage, he bought himself a new suit and a high stiff collar. Someone had to put it on for him. Jimmy was so afraid that he could not put the collar back on the next morning that he slept all night with it on. The next day he took it off and on several times to learn how to do it by himself, so he would not have to sleep with it on again. I can well imagine what that discomfort did to him he who in later years did not like his collars and ties tight around his neck.

Jimmy had to share his room with other men and sleep in bed with one of them. This was not too satisfactory an arrangement for Jimmy, for even at an early age, he had particularly clean habits, and the workmen were not too careful of their persons. But he did not have money to have a room or bed of his own and was lucky to have a place to eat and sleep. He made the best of it. During this period, he discovered that he felt itchy and could feel bugs crawling all over his head. He could not figure out what was the matter. Trying to get rid of them, he took drastic measures. He soaked his head thoroughly in kerosene; still that did no good. Finally he threw everything up in despair and ran home to his mother to be de-liced.

While he was working at the station, he would see Mr. W. C. Morse, the division Superintendent, ride back and forth in a private car. This created a desire in his young head to ride in one of those private cars. That day materialized many years later when he was serving as Chairman and Director of the Kansas City Southern Railroad Co. He was given the privilege of traveling in a private car on his business trips or when he went back home to see his parents, thus fulfilling a childhood desire. Mr. Lynn never forgot friends who helped him on his upward climb to success; Mr. W. C. Morse and Mr. Lynn corresponded to the last. In later years, Mr. Morse's son needed financial help to start a business venture of his own. Mr. Lynn repaid a debt to the father by giving a helping hand to the son. It became a thriving business.

During the lean years of his small jobs and study in Kansas City, Mo., he roomed here and there without steady decent meals. In those early days, he did not know the value of proper eating habits. He told me he would buy and eat a whole pie or cake or two-pound box of chocolates for a meal and nothing else. Mr. Lynn often told me the story of his early and middle life, his business achievements, and so forth. Mr. Fowler has written it so much better than I could ever do, so I am copying his article in full here for your pleasure, and another article, which appears first.

Publications About Rajasi

(The following article about Mr. Lynn's life appeared in the "Kansas City Star Magazine in 1924.)

A Sprint to Big Success:

"Jimmy" Lynn’s Race to the Top in Seven Years Is Almost a Breath-Taking Story of Progress

An 8-year-old boy worked in a cotton field in Northern Louisiana one day in the summer of 1900. He was hot, he was tired, and he thought with longing of a swimming hole not far away which probably

held its full complement of happy, splashing boys at that very moment.

The boy wondered what his father and mother would say if he ran down to the swimming hole for awhile. He wouldn't be gone long, and he imagined with boyish optimism that he could work all the better when he got back. He might ask his mother, he considered. He glanced toward a little farmhouse not far away to see if she were in sight. Then he started off, but stopped abruptly, and his face took on a serious look.

How hard pressed the family was to make both ends meet, the boy knew. He knew also that his father needed the cotton gathered that if anything happened to prevent the family getting every cent of money it could from the ultimate yield it would mean harder times than ever, less food on the table for his parents and his five sisters and brothers to eat.

"I’d better stay on the job, I guess," the boy said to himself, with a little sigh of regret. "Maybe a time will come when I can go swimming any old time I want to."

That time has come, and it is only twenty-four years since the boy stood in the Louisiana cotton field and envied his companions in the "old swimmin' hole" not half a mile away.

Today the boy sits in a handsome private office on the third floor of the R. A. Long building and directs the destinies of a concern that does a business of three million dollars a year. He owns in Kansas City real estate the entire area on the South Side that is bounded by Sixty-fourth street on the north, Meyer Boulevard on the south, Michigan Avenue on the west, and Olive Street on the east.

His name is James Jesse Lynn, and he is general manager of the U. S. Epperson Underwriting Company. Needless to say, Mr. Lynn goes swimming these days whenever he desires, because he happens to have a swimming pool of his own at his home. But it must be admitted that he gets more enjoyment out of playing eighteen holes of golf over the Mission Hills course than in all the swimming he ever could do.

James J. Lynn should never have been in that cotton field in Louisiana in the first place. Perhaps that is one reason that he got out of there quickly. His was one of the southern families that the Civil War ruined. Before the secession, his grandfather had an estate in North Carolina with a large group of slaves on it and a rating as a wealthy man in his neighborhood. After the war, his grandfather was just his grandfather, and "Jimmy" Lynn's father was a "renter" in Louisiana, farming a bit of land in an effort to make both ends meet and having a struggle to achieve that result.

The morning of May 5, 1892, saw the birth of "Jimmy" Lynn, the fourth of a family destined to contain six children. He had a brother, Robert, a sister, Mary; and a brother, Frank, who were 8, 5, and 3 years old, respectively, when "Jimmy" was born. Another sister, Josephine, came three years later and a brother, Eugene, five years later. The Lynn children ranged upward in age and size just like steps.

"Jimmy" Lynn was a precocious child. He seemed to be born with the word "school" on his mind. When he hardly was able to talk, he lisped out to his parents continually that he "wanted to go to tool." He was so insistent that he was granted his request at last and was taken before a country teacher when he still was in dresses. At 5, he could spell correctly every word in the old "blue-back speller" that was used in country schools in those days, and older children used to be embarrassed because "little Jimmy Lynn" would outlast them in the Friday afternoon spelling bees.

"Jimmy" went to school until he was 14, getting an education that was remarkable considering the fact that at the same time he was doing work on the farm. On the day he reached the high age of 14, he was in the little town of Mangham, La., near his father's farm, and he heard the telegraph instrument in the railroad station ticking.

"Is that hard to learn?" he asked, fascinatedly, of the station agent.

"Not very," the latter answered. "Why don’t you come here and work for me? I'll teach you telegraphy in odd moments. I need someone to help around the place. You won't be sorry if you take a

chance at it."

"How much would you pay me?" asked young "Jimmy."

"I'd have to see what the road allows and get authorization from headquarters, but I imagine you could make about $15 a month. That's high money for a boy your age."

"Jimmy" agreed it was. He went gleefully home to tell the "folks" about the grand job that was going to be his – if railroad "headquarters" only said the word. The word was said, and "Jimmy" entered the business world as a general handy man at the Missouri Pacific railroad station at Mangham. He worked there until October of that year, learning telegraphy until he could send messages well. Then an opening developed for an assistant agent at Oak Ridge, L.A., a position that paid $35 a month, more than twice as much as "Jimmy" was getting.

"Jimmy" believed he could handle the new job and considered applying for it when the agent at Oak Ridge, who knew of "Jimmy's" work, beat the boy to it, and asked the division superintendent if young Lynn could not be moved to Oak Ridge. The promotion went through. "Jimmy" worked through the winter, the busy season, at Oak Ridge, went back to Mangham in the spring, and was almost tickled to death to be drafted by the division Superintendent himself and taken to the terminal at Ferraday, La., as assistant agent. The boy felt he was getting along in life. As a matter of fact, he was. He worked at Ferraday from 1907 to 1909, the years between his fifteenth and seventeenth birthdays.