Abe Plough, (1892-1984), entrepreneur

[(David P.)]

Abe Plough, (1892-1984), by Selma Lewis, entrepreneur
Within a year of his birth in 1892 in Tupelo, Mississippi,
Abe Plough moved with his family to Memphis, where his father
Moses operated a clothing and furnishings store. Abe Plough
attended Market Street School where a teacher taught him to
calculate figures without pencil or paper. He said this “mental
arithmetic” served him well in his business career since he
never needed a pencil to calculate his acquisition of thirty
companies for the Schering-Plough Corporation at a cost of
over $1 billion.

Plough received his only other formal education at St. Paul
Street Grammar School, from which he graduated. After school
and on weekends he worked at the George V. Francis drug store
without pay because he wanted to learn the drug business,
determined that it would be his future. Moses Plough lent his
son $125 to start his own business, Plough Chemical Company,
in 1908. At age sixteen Abe Plough was owner, manager, and only
employee of the new business, located in one small room above
his father’s store. Using dishpans for mixing the chemicals,
his first formula was for Plough’s Antiseptic Healing Oil, a
“sure cure for any ill of man or beast.” On days when he was
not bottling his healing oil, Plough set out in his father’s
horse-drawn buggy to sell his product to drug stores and
country merchants.

Success came almost immediately for the new enterprise.
Within two years it doubled in size, entered the patent drug
business, and branched out into cosmetics. Adding aspirin to
his line of products in 1920, Plough bought the St. Joseph
Company, a step he called his “first on the road to the big time.”

Despite the worldwide depression in 1929, Plough raised his
employees’ salaries and added one hundred others to his drug
store and factory labor forces. Plough, Incorporated, moved in
1951 to 3022 Jackson Avenue, a $2 million plant encompassing
250,000 square feet on six acres of land. The business reported
net sales of $254.5 million by 1954, a figure that doubled by
1962. It merged in 1971 with Schering Corporation, primarily a
manufacturer of prescription pharmaceuticals. Plough was Chairman
of both Plough, Incorporated, and Schering-Plough.

Plough retired from business in 1976 to devote his talents and
energies to his other chief interest, philanthropy. His generosity
to the community is legendary. His many gifts were often made as
“challenge grants,” his stated goal “to help the greatest number
of people in order to do the most good.” His legacy lives on not
only in the business he created, which bears his name, but also in
his deeds of generosity and leadership. The Plough Foundation
continues to be devoted to the welfare of the community and is
administered in his name by his heirs.

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