James L. Lindsay, Mena, AR., then Caddo Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller
Date: 1999-2000






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James L. Lindsay.  The Lindsay Company, Incorporated, is a concern at Shreveport, 

prosperous, growing with business activities and expanding into an enlarging sphere.  

The business has an interesting history, and is a conspicuous illustration of what 

can be accomplished by a young man who puts into business the determination and 

courage displayed by most of the young Americans who were enlisted in the service 

of their country during the World war.



James L. Lindsay was born at Mena, Arkansas, in 1897, and was about fourteen years 

of age when, in the fall of 1911, his parents, M. W. and Rosa Lindsay, moved to 

Shreveport.  His father is a printer and ex-publisher, and it was under his father 

that James L. Lindsay acquired his early technical familiarity with printing.  

Supplementing this he had a few terms in the public schools.  In the fall of 1916, 

at the age of nineteen, James L. Lindsay bought the little outfit of the Shreveport 

Printing Company.  He had no capital and acquired the property entirely on credit.



However, before he could get the business well under way America entered the World 

war, and in April, 1917, he enlisted in the Regular Army, being first assigned to 

Company I of the Ninth Infantry and later to Company I of the Forty-eighth Infantry.  

He was on duty in a number of camps in the United States.



In the meantime he had turned over his business to his father, and when he returned 

in the early spring of 1919 the plant had suffered almost to the point of extinction 

on account of his father's ill health.  The liabilities of the business amounted to 

more than the assets, and Mr. Lindsay "lacked about $900 being worth nothing."  

The imperative need was for some capital to supplement his personal skill and energy, 

and that was supplied through the friendship of Mr. W. K. Henderson, the leading 

captain of industry of Shreveport.  Then through many discouragements and many 

setbacks the hard work of Mr. Lindsay built up the business, got it on a paying 

basis, and he now has the largest establishment of its kind in North Louisiana.  

The company has a paid-in capital of $45,000, nearly all invested in equipment.  

Besides doing a general line of printing, the company carries a complete line of 

office, bank and courthouse supplies.  Mr. Lindsay is president of the Lindsay 

Company, Inc., and has been directly responsible for the success of the enterprise, 

his individuality having counted always more in value than any capital represented 

in the business.



A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 46, by Henry E. Chambers.  

Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925.