 While there, however, he became friends with J.S.Cullinan, and the two, along with Emerson Francis Woodward, Will C. Hogg, and James L. Autry, joined in 1914 to form the Farmers Petroleum Company, of which Lee became president.In 1916 Lee, along with Cullinan, Woodward, and other associates, organized the American Republics Corporation that later controlled twenty-one subsidiaries involved in all facets of the oil industry