08/22/1974
WILLIAM C. McGAW
Researching the early life of Royce G. Martin is like trailing a very old and shifty ghost in a sandstorm.
Few in El Paso today say they ever heard of him.
Records of his early activities around here arc so obscure as to be mysterious. During a career spanning more than a half century his name is mentioned only twice in the old El Paso Herald, and once in The Times, according to the El Paso Public Library newspaper index, but he was the subject of countless stories in Time. Fortune, Newsweek, Forbes, Barren's and The New York Times, which often devoted nearly whole pages to interviews with him.
THIS RECONDITE man may have seemed of small consequence to the El Paso establishment, but in 1952, the last year for which complete figures are available, Royce Martin's various business enterprises netted him $9.8 million. That's not a bad year's income for an orphaned farm boy, born at Clint, Texas. June 7,1884.
When I asked Joe Prensky about-him. Joe said, "Sure, I knew him. He used to be a runner for gambling games around here."
Chris Fox recollected Royce owned property here, but "I'd have to check with our trust department for any details."
THIS ABSTRUSENESS is strange indeed when the subject was probably the first from El Paso to make it in Who's Who in America, who was a Papal Knight, a world leader in industry and finance and whose death in 1954 was of such significance that Francis Cardinal Spellman flew from New York to Lexington, Ky., to celebrate solemn high requiem mass in Christ the King Church.
Furthermore , Martin retained such a low profile in El Paso that 1 haven't yet found anybody who knew his name was "Royce." They all thought it was Roy.
I haven't found a single printed source here telling of his having been fiscal agent for the Army of the North in the Madero Revolution, nor his friendship with Raul Madero, Pancho Villa and his brothers, Hipolito and Antonio, as well as some other Americans in Chihuahua like Dave Wallace, later head of Chrysler Division of Chrysler Motor Co., and Harry Gillis, later vice president of Republic Steel.
IT IS UNLIKELY I ever would have become interested in this unusual and talented man if I hadn't encountered his name in interviews with oldtime Villistas, people I interviewed for biographies material on Pancho Villa, a book l am still researching.
Royce ran the financial end of the revolution in the north and in so doing made a lot of people in El Paso rich. He placed a. single order with Haymon (formerly Hyman) Krupp for 40,000 khaki uniforms including boots, hats, leggings and coats; furthermore it was Martin's job to raise the money to pay for these items, one source of which was overseeing that the gambling concessionaires paid their full share to the Chihuahua State Government, with no "skimming."
This job was fraught with peril, causing the loss of the tip of his right index finger, according to Time magazine in a story about his encountering a mean individual who did not care to ante up.
THE RECALCITRANT pulled a 45-Colt to demonstrate his displeasure and Roy attempted to disarm him, accidentally poking his index finger in the barrel. He got the gun, but lost the tip of his finger.
Time magazine called Roy "hickory tough," for, although not a large man, he consistently proved a nemesis for those who would do him harm —in revolutions or in business.
"Fiscal agent" is how Martin described his job with Villa and other revoluntionary leaders, but the term is vague. An interviewer for the New York Times story (published April 5, 1953) asked him "if he was picked by Villa because of his training or talent as an auditor or accountant."
"ROYCE LOOKED at the questioner," said the Times, "as if he had called him a rattlesnake.
" 'I've been a mechanic all my life,' he declared. 'I was a mechanic when I served Villa. He didn't know whether cartridges should cost S7 or $700.1 did, and I was able to see that funds were not dissipated. But I was never a bookkeeper.' "
How did Martin become a mechanical genius in that part of the southwest in those days, where the hinge on a gate was the most complicated mechanical contrivance to be found?
HE LEARNED it in Chicago. Orphaned at 9, Roy was sent to his grandmother Boyd's in Chicago to attend St. Patrick's and later St. Aloysius academies. His mother was Ann Boyd before marrying George W. Martin, Clint farmer and rancher.
While at St. Aloysius Martin worked during the summer, first as a bank runner, which he didn't like, and later as an apprentice in the toolshop of Felt and Tarrant Co., marine motor manufacturers.
After leaving school he was apprenticed to the Western Electric Co. of Chicago, and in 1905 he returned to the El Paso area, where he raced horses at Juarez and worked as a foreman for the Mexican National Railroad.
THROUGH this latter job he became acquainted with Raul Madero, brother of the Mexican Revolutionary leader and President Francisco Madero, Chihuahua Governor Abraham Gonzalez, Revolutionary General Paneho Villa and his brothers, Hipolito and Antonio, as well as two Americans in Chihuahua mining, Dave Wallace, later president of the Chrysler Division of the Chrysler Motor Co., and Harry Gillis, destined to become president of Republic Steel.
The latter two employed Villa $5,000 a year to protect their inbound supply trains and outbound bullion trains from their mines at Rio Tinto.
WHEN THE revolution got too hot for Villa to protect the mines, specifically when de la Huerta was coming up from the south to meet Villa head-on in a battle fought near Ahumada, Pancho warned that Americans found by de la Huerta were likely to lose both life and property, so Wallace and Gillis left the mines for good. They drove to El Paso in an open Mercedes, and since there were no roads, the men deflated their tires and wrapped the wheels with canvas for traction. They joined Martin in Juarez for a few days, then proceeded back East, where they became leaders in U.S. industry and life-long friends of Royce.
DONA LUZ CORRAL de Villa, widow of Pancho, remembers Roy well, she told me the other day in Chihuahua. "Roy and Raul Madero were friends first, then through Raul, Pancho and Roy developed a friendship," she said. "Roy was also a friend of Abraham Gonzalez (newspaper editor and later governor of Chihuahua) and I think worked closer with Hipolito Villa than anybody. They ran Juarez."
When Hipolito Villa brought some $30,000 worth of jewels to a Villa headquarters house at 329 Leon street (near today's Convention Center) the Federal Government confiscated them on a charge they was stolen property.
ROYCE MARTIN supplied the surety for Hipolito's bond of $5,000 and after the latter was acquitted of this charge a few days later, Martin went with him to Havana, Cuba, where Dona Luz Corral de Villa had arrived some weeks earlier.
This, no doubt, gave rise to the statement in Time that Royce accompanied Mrs. Villa to Havana, when it was Hipolito he actually took there. Mrs. Villa had already arrived in Cuba on the steamer Atenas, embarking from New Orleans.
Roy began one of the first automobile finance companies in Texas, the Texas Automobile Mortgage Co., Inc., in 1914, which was the first year he took up residence in the Linden Hotel, 504 North Oregon.
THIS PROPERTY had been the site of the home of Colonel Theodore L. Eggers, who joined Michael McLean, former deputy of Bat Masterson and a partner of Col. E. R. Bradley in the Bacchus, in the purchase of the Wigwam Saloon in 1891.
They sold the Wigwam to W. A. Morehouse in 1893, and Col. Eggers opened his own place, called "The Eggers Saloon," at the rear of No. 6, Pioneer Plaza. Eggers sold this property in 1910 and built the Linden Hotel where his residence had been.
Col. Eggers had two beautiful daughters, Delia and Doris, and Royce married the latter. Their two daughters were born at the Linden, also called Doris and Delia, and both are still living today, the former in Toledo, Ohio, and the latter in Cincinnati.
ROYCE owned the Tivoli Gardens and La Fiesta, the finest Juarez casinos, and a place called The Annex on San Antonio street. In 1921 he bought the Elite Confectionery Co., Inc., building and all, at Mesa and Texas, where he began the manufacture of chocolate covered ice cream baseballs. Stupid? It sure was. Nobody wanted chocolate covered baseballs. So he changed them into Eskimo Pies and sold that idea for a fortune.
By now he had built a large home at 1707 Mesa (where Levinson's Realty is now) and living with his wife and daughters was the widow of Col. Eggers, who had died in 1917.
Royce bought substantial amounts of El Paso real estate, and still owned much of it at the time of his death, according to his daughter, Doris, with whom I spoke briefly over the phone recently.
HE ALSO owned a 70,000- acre ranch, according to the Time and Fortune stories, but his daughter said he had sold that early. She said it lay just east of El Paso, "all along the Rio Grande."
By 1912 El Paso was growing rather small for a man with the energies and talents of Royce Martin, so he went to Brooklyn and bought the Safe-T-Stat Corp., a manufacturer of visual thermometers for automobile radiator caps, then purchased all of the capital stock of the Nagel Electric Co. of Toledo, and absorbed the National Gauge and Equipment Corp. of LaCrosse, Wis., which he combined with the Moto-Meter Co., of Long Island City, N.Y., paying some $5 million dollars for their combined assets, for which he paid cash with his signature, according to Fortune.
This corporation became known as Moto-Meter Gauge and Equipment Corp., with Martin its president.
ROYCE became president of Auto-Lite in 1934 when Moto-Meter and Auto-Lite merged, then he succeeded to chairman of the board in 1944, after the death of C. O. Miniger, founder of Auto-Lite.
Under Martin's leadership, Auto-Lite's annual sales grew from about $34 million in 1934 to $300 million in 1953. He not only strengthened the firm's position in the original equipment field to include almost every automobile manufacturer, but also expanded Auto-Lite's position in replacement sales until Auto-Lite became the world's largest independent manufacturer of automotive electrical parts.
He also was instrumental in channeling Auto-Lite's production facilities into other non-automotive fields. At his death, Auto-Lite operated 30 plants in the U.S. and Canada.
ROYCE CONTINUED his great love for horses and was associated with racing throughout his life. He owned Woodvale Farm, near Lexington, where he and his wife bred, raised and trained race horses. Three of his horses, Our Boots, Halt and Goyamo, ran in Kentucky Derbies. His wife died at Lexington in 1950.
Royce was on his breeding farm when he suffered a heart attack on April 30, 1954, and was removed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he appeared to be responding to treatment.
The next day, however, was Derby Day, and he insisted on watching his horse Goyamo run "for the roses" on TV. He died only minutes after Goyamo finished fourth.
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