PRODUCTION

Although the demand of manufactured cigarettes had it grew gradually from 1850 up to 1870, the production of these was still an insignificant part of the industry of the tobacco. The family Duke was formed by small farmers and dealers of the area of Durham. The patriarch of the family, Washington Duke, era a veteran confederate that had returned to a farm ruined at the end of the civil war. He found a small deposit of tobacco Bright that sold with Pro Voucher's name I Publish. Duke and their children planted this variety and they sold it from door to door and of city in city, making with it a great business. In 1873 they moved to Durham to be more near the railroad and to transport their products to the markets. 

At the end of the decade of 1870, the growth of the business of Duke had been stabilized. James Duke traveled for the whole country selling Pro Bono I Publish but, as the other makers of tobacco, he found more and more difficult to compete with the Bull Durham. In 1881, James, head of the company, began to manufacture cigarettes, denominating them Duke of Durham.

Duke triumphed from the beginning. Thanks to a combination of commercial ability and of big cuttings of prices, it was able to popularize the Duke of Durham and other products of their company. With the help of Edward Featherston Small, one of the first promoters of the cigarettes, they could sell their products with success. In that time, the makers of cigarettes used cardboards to make more rigid the bags that contained them; those of Duke were the most imaginative and appreciated by the collectors. After some years, the cigarettes manufactured by Duke were sold in numerous cities of the south and the central west of the United States. In 1883, when the federal government reduced the tax on the tobacco from $1,75 to 0,50 cents for pound, almost all the makers reduced the prices, granting this way part from the saving to the consumers. Non alone Duke made this, but rather he also gave publicity to its politics: "Duke ambitions a great business of cigarettes, and to get it it shares its earnings with the merchants and consumers."