How Did James Buchanan Duke Contribute To The Rise Of The Tobacco Industry

Growing up on a tobacco farm, James Buchanan Duke learned from an early age the trials and tribulations of running a tobacco business from the ground up. He joined his father in 1874 to help drive his father's company known as the American Tobacco Company, and slowly but surely developed his new fledgling company into the number one producer of tobacco in the Unites States of America. Through the pioneering use of machine manufactured cigarette makers, he single handedly revolutionized the tobacco industry, and created an almost unbreakable trust set up that controlled roughly 90 percent of tobacco production in the country. However, his business was not without its dark side that so many men of his time were accustomed to being apart of

In just a few short years during the early 1870’s Duke’s family business had grown to control forty percent of the tobacco production industry in the United States of America. Unsatisfied with his work, Duke wished to further expand his control on the market but knew at the moment he did not posses the technology required to surpass his rival the William T. Blackwell Company who at the time led the nation in smoking tobacco production. In the early 1880’s Duke saw an opportunity to strike with the invention of James Bonsack cigarette machine. This new machine could produce up to 120,000 cigarettes a day which surpassed the abilities of any group of hand rolling cigarette workers. Due to his manufacturing ability, Duke slowly began to push other businesses out of the market, and buy them up. He formed groups of financiers to purchase other large cigarette companies in order to eliminate competition. “To purchase Liggett and Myers, J.B. Duke joined a group of financiers to form a syndicate. For the assets of of Liggett and Myers and 5,000,000 in cash, the continental Tobacco company… of its common stock and the same amount of its preferred” James Duke used crafty ways to ensure that many different groups of people would not know that he slowly was taking over every major tobacco company. He did this through taking old companies he had acquired

Dukes control. With his increased power, he was able to drop the price at which he bought tobacco dropped artificially as no other company could offer the tobacco growers a fair price. This led to outrage in a particular area known as the black patch counties in Kentucky and Tennessee . A black patch countie was an area in which “Specialized in making Dark Fired Tobacco, which was cured by wood smoke and namely used in chewing and pipe tobacco”. These areas depended on their income from growing this specialized tobacco, and once Duke began paying them exponentially lowering prices, these people began to feel the severe effects of poverty. With this, the people grew enraged with their predicament, and looked to violence as a means of gaining control of their lives again. At first the growers formed a group known as the

Dark Tobacco District Planters’ Protective Association of Kentucky and Tennessee to combat the robber baron tactics of Duke. At first the group protested the prices by refusing to sell to Duke, but this led to no success. As the situation worsted the group resorted to violence against Duke and his company. On December 1, 1906 a man named Dr. David Amos conducted a raid with his group of men on the tobacco warehouses of Duke. They blew up his warehouse, and these tactics would continue until the American Tobacco Company was broken