








"Cameo"
Cigarettes--an early cigarette from W. Duke, Sons
and Company
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Cigarettes in Durham
Although W. Duke, Sons and Company enjoyed a
healthy trade in smoking tobacco, the keen rivalry with W. T. Blackwell
and Company finally prompted the Dukes to begin the manufacture of
cigarettes in 1881. The practice of using cigarettes had spread from
the European countries to the United States around 1860. The
manufacture of cigarettes extended southward to Virginia and North
Carolina in the 1870s and 1880s.
Early hand methods used in cigarette production
were slow and tedious; an expert could roll only about four per
minute. W. Duke Sons and Company and other firms began to hire immigrants from eastern Europe who were skilled in cigarette making.
As cigarettes grew in popularity, tobacco companies began the search for a
mechanical method of manufacturing them rapidly. Around 1877, the
Allen and Ginter Company of Richmond, Virginia, offered $75,000 to any
person who could invent a practical cigarette-making machine. Such a
machine was developed in 1880 by eighteen year old James Bonsack; Allen
and Ginter installed the machine in their factory, but discarded it as a
failure after several trials.
In 1884, however, the Duke company decided to
take a chance on the imperfect Bonsack machine, leasing and installing two
of the devices in the Durham factory. When working properly, the
machine could perform the work of forty-eight hand rollers. When the
Dukes encountered mechanical problems with the machine, The Bonsack
Machine Company of Virginia sent a mechanic, William T. O'Brien, to Durham
to refine the apparatus. O'Brien and James B. Duke were finally able
to make the equipment work more smoothly, cutting the cost of cigarette
manufacturing in half.
Believing that the new Bonsack machine eventually
would eliminate hand processing of cigarettes, James B. Duke, in the
spring of 1884, went to New York to establish a branch of the company
there. This relieved the overburdened Durham factory and enabled the
firm to gain a foothold in the national center of commerce and world
trade.
W. Duke, Sons and Company was becoming the
leading cigarette producer in the country. Increased advertising
efforts enabled the firm to outsell its competitors. One journalist
later noted that James B. Duke "was always an aggressive advertiser,
devising new and startling methods which dismayed his competitors and was
always willing to spend in advertising a proportion of his profits which
seemed appalling to more conservative manufacturers.
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