During the time that Jesse H. Jones was the president of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation the RFC became the largest bank in the country and the US’s biggest single investor.
Jones was born in Robertson County, Tennessee in 1874. He became well-known as a Texas politician and businessman in Houston. From 1940 until 1945 Jones served as the United States Secretary of Commerce, but his significant contribution to the nation was as the chief of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation from 1932 until 1945. Jones took control of the distribution of $50 billion, and used much of that money to finance railways and munitions factories.
Jones died in June, 1956.