Book Provides First Scholarly Biography of Tobacco Magnate James B. Duke

DURHAM, N.C. -- James Buchanan Duke arrived in New York in 1884, a slim, clean-shaven young man with a Southern accent "as thick as butter." His assignment was to establish a branch of the family tobacco manufacturing business.

He succeeded. By 1890, W. Duke Sons and Co. was the largest producer of cigarettes in America, and "Buck" Duke was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the nation.

The story of James B. Duke is told in a new biography, 'Bold Entrepreneur: A Life of James B. Duke' (Carolina Academic Press, 2003) by Robert F. Durden, a Duke University professor emeritus of history.

It is the first scholarly biography of James B. Duke and the fifth book on the Dukes by Durden, the unofficial historian of the university and its founding family.

The book follows the life of James B. Duke throughout his long career as a businessman to the establishment, in his later years, of The Duke Endowment, the philanthropic foundation based in Charlotte which for decades has supported higher education, health care, children's welfare and spiritual life in the Carolinas. Although he had never been as involved in Trinity College as his father and brother had been, it was James B. Duke's financial support through The Duke Endowment that turned the small college into a national university.

"He was more important to Duke University than Duke University was to him," Durden said.

Durden says James B. Duke was a shrewd and hard-driven businessman, more important in American economic history than his father, Washington Duke, or brother, Benjamin Duke.

"He liked to think big. He liked large, challenging projects," Durden said. "Neither Washington nor Ben thought like that."

In the prologue to the book, Durden quotes James B. Duke talking about his work habits: "I hated to close my desk at night and was eager to get back to it early the next morning. I needed no vacation or time off'There ain't a thrill in the world to compare with building a business and watching it grow before your eyes."

From W. Duke Sons and Co., James B. Duke took the lead in forming the American Tobacco Co., which controlled most of the country's tobacco industry during the 1890s. In 1902, he headed up the British-American Tobacco Co., a pioneering multinational corporation.

After success in the tobacco and textile businesses, the Dukes went into the hydroelectric generating business, founding the Southern Power Co. (now known as Duke Power) in 1905. James B. Duke's later venture into the Canadian hydroelectricity business, though brief, was "a highly creative and bold move that dramatically revealed his entrepreneurial panache and genius," Durden writes.

He also describes James B. Duke's scandalous affair, marriage and divorce from Lillian McRedy, which Durden describes as "the low point in his life." He later married Nanaline Holt Inman and had one child, Doris Duke.

In the last 10 years of his life, James B. Duke turned more of his attention to the Methodist college that his father and brother had supported through the years.

In the early 1920s, Trinity President William P. Few presented James B. Duke with a grand plan for building a major national university with Trinity College as its core. In 1924, James B. Duke created The Duke Endowment and agreed, at Few's request, to change the name to Duke University.

"[Few] had come to understand James B. Duke's mind, his character," Durden said. "[Duke] didn't want to just dribble his money away. He wanted to use it in a way that was most effective."

Construction had barely begun on the project when Duke died in 1925, though Durden says today's campus does bear his strong imprint. He had been involved in the planning, had chosen the architecture firm and had decided the buildings would be constructed with local stone.

Durden can be reached for comment at (919) 684-3088 or by e-mail at durdenrf@duke.edu.

Note to editors: To obtain a review copy of the book, contact Laura Roose at Carolina Academic Press at (919) 489-7486 Ext. 124 or by e-mail at lroose@cap-press.com. Photos of Robert Durden and James B. Duke are available here.