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THE LEGAL PROFESSION --- The son of a lawyer but no lawyer himself, James Williams of Yadkinville exhibits a rack of printed forms turned out in his plant --- the only one in the South devoted exclusively to the legal trade.

By Martin Howard Journal Farm Editor When a 17 year-old high school graduate launched an odd venture in Yadkinville in 1932 with a $25 second-hand printing press, he started an enterprise destined to prosper with business drawn from many states – and one which finds few parallels today.

James Williams, now 39 and with grown children, owns and operates the only printing business in the south which caters exclusively to the legal trade.

Lawyers, magistrates, clerks of court, public stenographers – the scores of printed forms used by these professions and public offices are the sole stock in trade of James Williams and Company, now operating in its own plant on the edge of Yadkinville.

"Most of the forms are standardized in text," Mr. Williams explained last week; "but many are printed according to individual order."

Some Real Puzzles

Occasionally an individual order arrives in the mail and poses a real puzzle—like, for instance, the letter received from an unknown woman who requested the printing for her of a license to preach.

"Some denominations do issue preaching licenses," Mr. Williams said; "but I didn’t feel quite in position to fill this particular order, myself."

And there have been other "printing orders" delivered in person which he not too reluctantly refused. "I’ve had rural mailboxes brought in for lettering and trucks driven up to my door for sign-painting; but I had to explain," Mr. Williams added, smiling, "that I am exclusively a printer—not a sign painter."

Son of a Lawyer

James Williams is the son of a widely known lawyer, the late S. Carter Williams; and his brother Lafayette practiced law for many years and is now assistant U.S. District Attorney in Greensboro. Whether James himself might have come up as a lawyer must remain forever problematical. "When I finished high school in 1932," he recalled, "the depression was on, and my father told me I’d just have to skip one year before he could manage to send me on to the University at Chapel Hill, where my brothers Joe and Lafayette studied." (Joe R. Williams later became widely known for his work with the Production and Marketing Administration, an assistant director of the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation, and as secretary of the Winston Tobacco Board of Trade. He is now in Washington, D.C., where he heads the Flue-cured tobacco division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.) Well, a boy out of high school and with no immediate prospect of going on to college has got to have something to do. James’ father had a suggestion: "I think I know where I can pick you up an old hand press for about $25. Maybe you can print and sell handbills around here this summer." The idea was not exactly farfetched, for in addition to being a lawyer S. Carter Williams had been publisher and editor for several years of the Yadkin Ripple. Set Up Home Shop "But I had never got printer’s ink on my fingers at that time," James Williams said. "I got the press—one of those old-fashioned foot-powered Gordon jobs – and set it up in a small building on our home grounds. Well, it was interesting, all right—but I had to learn everything from scratch, and it took quite a bit of scratching, as well as foot-pumping and hand-work!" He bought some standard printer’s handbooks, digested their contents, and gradually system and skill began to emerge from his labors. But while billheads and dodgers for local trade did come in, a substantial part of young Williams’ early business came from rural churches—for church record books and other printed forms. How did his printing business (then bearing the proud shingle of the "James Williams Printing Company") get into the legal field? "I knew lawyers and others used many types of printed documents—mortgage forms, claim and delivery papers, warrants, and so on. Among my father’s law books I found a volume listing all lawyers then practicing. I printed up a circular advertising the sort of work I could do, and mailed this to lawyers all over." Orders Pour In Orders began coming in. They have steadily grown, from this and other states, even unsolicited—a tribute evidently to the thoroughness with which James Williams learned his trade. He has today more than 1,600 regular customers. James Williams admits that, with his business so successfully started that first year he probably would not have dropped it later for college, anyhow. But the clincher apparently lay in another "venture" of his the second year out of high school. A successful young businessman at 18, James Williams wooed and won Pattie Johnson of Hamptonville—and so they were married. "That really put me in business, I guess," acknowledged James last week, grinning.