£30,000,000 ESTATE.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16657, 30 November 1925, Page 4

£30,000,000 ESTATE.

DEATH OF MR. J. DUKE. TOBACCO WAR ON BRITAIN. Mr. James Buchanan Duke, the tobacco magnate, died at New York last month, leaving a fortune estimated at £30,000,000. He was popularly described as “ope of the last of the logcabin successes of American life,” for he was born 68 years ago in poverty on a small farm in North Carolina. His father grew tobacco, which James Buchanan and his brothers peddled about the countryside. In IS7O they started a small tobacco factory, and James Buchanan was, at the age of 14, its manager. This wasi the business which by masterly consolidations developed into the mammoth tobacco trust, the .American Tobacco Company. Mr. J. B. Duke was a magnificent philanthropist. Only last year he gave £11.000,000 for educational establishments. He attributed his success to a capacity of hard work. About 25 years ago Mr. Duke went to London to try to capture the British market. Buying up a Liverpool corncompany, he started a price war, flooding the country with cheap cigarettes. He also introduced a system of bonuses and premiums to retailers. To meet the attack, most of the British tobacco manufacturers combined and formed the Imperial Tobacco Company, and some of. them retaliated by entering the American market. After a hitter and costlv fight, Mr. Duke and the British firms agreed to the formation of the British-American Company, and the Home trade was left to the Imperial Company. Litigation followed with regard to the bonuses, and this lasted about three years. Lord Birkenhead (then Nlr. F. E. Smith) was one of the counsel engaged, and at a. banquet to celebrate the settlement he said that his fees in the dispute ha,d enabled him to marry and set up his home.