James Buchanan Duke

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James Buchanan Duke (December 23, 1856 – October 10, 1925) was a U.S. tobacco and electric power industrialist.

Born near Durham, North Carolina, his father, Washington Duke (1820-1905), had owned a tobacco company which James B. Duke and his brother Benjamin Newton Duke (1855-1929) took over in the 1880s. Known by the nickname "Buck," in 1885, James Buchanan Duke acquired an advantageous license to use the first automated cigarette making machine (invented by James Albert Bonsack), and by 1890, Duke controlled 40% of the American cigarette market (then known as pre-rolled tobacco). In that year, Duke consolidated control of his four major competitors under one corporate entity, the American Tobacco Company. Duke then used his monopoly control over the American cigarette market to engage in predatory pricing in the remaining American tobacco markets: plug or chewing tobacco, and loose smoking tobacco.

In the 1890s, he forged an agreement with his British competitors to divide the market, with Duke controlling the American trade, the British companies controlling the trade in British territories, and a third, cooperative venture between the two - the British-American Tobacco Company - controlling the sale of tobacco to the rest of the world. During this time, Duke was repeatedly sued by business partners and shareholders who alleged that he had engaged in shady, self-serving business deals. In 1906 the American Tobacco Company was found guilty of antitrust violations, and was ordered to be split into three separate companies: American Tobacco Company, Ligget and Myers, and the P. Lorillard Company.

Duke was married twice, the first in 1904 to Lillian Fletcher McCredy, but they divorced in 1906 and had no children. He married again in 1907 to Nanaline Holt Inman with whom he had his only child, a daughter, Doris.

In 1892, the Dukes had opened their first textile firm in Durham, North Carolina that was run by Benjamin Duke. At the turn of the century, Buck Duke organized the American Development Company to acquire land and water rights on the Catawba River. In 1904, he established the Catawba Power Company and the following year he and his brother founded the Southern Power Company which became known as Duke Power, one of the companies making up the Duke Energy, Inc. conglomerate. The company supplied electrical power to the Duke's textile factory and within two decades, their power facilities had been greatly expanded and they were supplying electricity to more than 300 cotton mills and other industrial companies. Duke Power established an electrical grid that supplied cities and towns in the Piedmont Region of North and South Carolina.

In 1911, the United States Supreme Court upheld an order breaking up the American Tobacco Company's monopoly. The company was then divided into several smaller enterprises, of which only the British-American Tobacco Company remained in Duke's control. Nevertheless, Duke continued to collude with the other companies to maintain high tobacco prices until his death in 1925. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding his death, and some historians suspect that some resentful Imperial Tobacco executives were feeling some anger at Duke for having lost the Tobacco War between Duke's company and Imperial Tobacco.

In December of 1924, Duke endowed Duke University with $40 million (about $430 million in 2005 dollars), naming it for his father. On his death, he left approximately half of his huge estate to The Duke Endowment which gave another $67 million (about $725 million in 2005 dollars) to the university's endowment. The remainder of Buck Duke's estate, estimated at approximately $100 million (about $1 billion in 2005 dollars), went to his twelve-year-old daughter, Doris Duke.

James Buchanan Duke is interred in Memorial Chapel in the Duke University Chapel on the campus of Duke University.

[edit] Further reading

• Robert Sobel The Entrepreneurs: Explorations Within the American Business Tradition (Weybright & Talley 1974), chapter 5, James Buchanan Duke: Opportunism Is the Spur ISBN 0-679-40064-8
• Robert F. Durden Bold Entrepreneur: A Life of James B. Duke (Carolina Academic Press 2003), ISBN 0-89089-744-1