James Buchanan Duke 1856-1925, American industrialist, processor of tobacco products, b. near Durham, N.C. The Civil War left the Duke family poor, but James and his brother, Benjamin, helped their father in building up a local tobacco-processing business, which soon prospered. Development of cigarette-making machines and extensive advertising gave the Duke company a lead in tobacco manufacturing. Through a long series of mergers with competitors, James Duke organized (1890) and led a trust that, when dissolved by order of the Supreme Court in 1911, controlled 150 factories with a capitalization of $502 million. He left a trust fund to Trinity College that provided for the erection of buildings and facilities; the name of the college was changed to Duke Univ . He also gave large amounts for hospitals, orphanages, and churches.

Bibliography: See biographies by J. W. Jenkins (1927, repr. 1971) and J. K. Winkler (1942).

James Buchanan Duke

James Buchanan Duke (1856-1925), American industrialist and philanthropist, was the first giant of finance to emerge in the post-Civil War South.

James B. Duke was born on Dec. 23, 1856, on a small farm near Durham, N.C., the younger son of Washington Duke. Union troops during the Civil War so ravaged their farm that at war's end, when Washington Duke returned from service in the Confederate Army, the family had to begin anew with total assets of 50 cents and two blind mules. The discovery of a small load of tobacco that had somehow escaped capture by Union forces triggered their rise to wealth. This supply sold so quickly that the Dukes began production and distribution on a large scale. By 1872, at the height of the South's impoverishment, the family was selling 125,000 pounds of tobacco annually.

When, in 1881, the Dukes began to manufacture cigarettes, business boomed. Three years later, with James in control, the company moved its executive offices to New Jersey to take advantage of that state's liberal corporation laws and to exploit the virgin markets of the North and West. Thereafter, the business grew into an international combine as Duke pursued monopolistic methods. Rebates, discrimination, a nationwide secret service, bulldozer tactics against competitors, and price manipulations marked the long "Tobacco War," by which Duke gained complete ascendancy over all rivals.

By 1904 Duke's American Tobacco Company controlled 90 percent of the national market and at least 50 percent of the foreign trade in tobacco. With unlimited power and a capitalization of over $500,000,000, the Duke trust was so powerful that a 1911 Supreme Court decree ordering their monopoly be dissolved had little effect on the company's prosperity.

Duke also developed an interest in the potential of electrical power. In 1905 he organized the Southern (now Duke) Power and Light Company. Within 25 years this utility was "capable of producing more energy than all the slaves of the Old South."

Duke contributed large sums to hospitals and churches. His last notable act was the establishment of the Duke Endowment on behalf of a small Methodist school, Trinity College. He donated more than $60,000,000 toward the creation of a new campus characterized by large buildings of Gothic design. The school was renamed Duke University.

The tall, rugged, redheaded industrialist died on Oct. 10, 1925. Once asked the secret of his success, Duke replied simply, "I had confidence in myself."

Further Reading

John W. Jenkins, James B. Duke, Master Builder (1927), and John K. Winkler, Tobacco Tycoon: The Story of James Buchanan Duke (1942), give sympathetic treatments of Duke. See also Meyer Jacobstein, The Tobacco Industry in the United States (1907), and Nannie May Tilley, The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860-1929 (1948). □

Duke, James (1856–1925), manufacturer of tobacco products, philanthropist.James “Buck” Duke, the son of Washington Duke and Artelia Roney Duke, was born on the family's farm in Orange County, North Carolina. After the Civil War, Washington Duke and his sons began manufacturing and selling smoking tobacco under the brand name “Pro Bono Publico.” The family moved to nearby Durham and opened a factory. Under James's leadership, the company began making hand‐rolled cigarettes in New York. Securing exclusive rights to the Bonsack cigarette‐making machine in 1885, the firm soon gained dominance in the industry. Duke's imaginative advertising enlarged markets for his mass‐produced cigarettes, but his real genius lay in creating a corporate structure that integrated purchasing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. Organizing the American Tobacco Company (known to its detractors as the “American Tobacco Trust”) in 1890, he consolidated control over the entire tobacco industry. Ruthlessly cutting prices to undermine competitors, American and its affiliates dominated the production of cigarettes, pipe tobacco, snuff, chewing tobacco, and every tobacco product except cigars. The Trust became so dominant that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered its dissolution in 1911 under antitrust legislation.

James Duke increasingly devoted himself to Duke Power Company, which figured prominently in the industrialization of the Carolina Piedmont region. He also became involved in philanthropic causes, primarily the Methodist church and Trinity College, which moved from Randolph County, North Carolina, to Durham in 1892. Creating the family philanthropic foundation, the Duke Endowment, in 1924, Duke specified that its annual income be distributed among colleges, hospitals, and orphanages in North and South Carolina. The endowment provided for the transformation of Trinity College into Duke University.
See also Education: Rise of the University; Mass Marketing; Mass Production; Methodism; Philanthropy and Philanthropic Foundations.

Bibliography

Robert F. Durden , The Dukes of Durham, 1865–1929, reprint 1987.
Robert F. Durden , The Launching of Duke University, 1924–1949, 1993.

Robert Korstad