The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1905-05-09
THE LATE WASHINGTON DUKE.

MS nome In durham yesterday, COW
cred an important period in the his
tory of his State. He had been an ac-
tor in great crises and had won a high
position in the world. His rise from
romance in any country but America.
He was born in 1920, during Mon
roe's Ezra of Good Feeling" in the
historic county of Orange. His father
was a farmer who cultivated his farm
with success, was a man of capacity
deputy sheriff of Orange county,
though he had enjoyed only very linn
tied educational advantages. He
taught his children to work, but the
scheme of college education was not
in his mind, and his son Washington
never went to school six months in his
life. Those were days when only few
people were educated. Looking back
upon his narrow opportunities when
he was a boy, Mr.. Dukes benefactions
TO Trinity College were no doubt made
in order to make it easier for the
educated. Though no scholarship
could have made him richer, he felt
that he had lost the value of compan-
ionship with the worlds great think
ers, and he resolved to open doors
which were closed to him in his youth.
Generations yet unborn will owe him
debt of gratitude. Most of the men
who gave great sums to education
were men who never rubbed their
heads against n college wall" Leland
Stanford. Andrew Carnegie, George
Peabody. John F. Slater, John d.
Rockefeller, and John Hopkins like
Mr.. Duke, were not college-bred men.
They have shown their belief in edu-
cation by applying large portions of
their fortunes to establishing or en-
downing educational institutions. Mr..
Duke. no doubt, gave a larger proper
any rich man who has lived in North
Carolina, except the late Maxwell
Chambers, who endowed Davidson
College before the War Between the
States.
Mr.. Washington Duke graduated at
as he would have expressed it, and if
the war had not changed his plans,
would probably have followed in the
footsteps of his father, and lived and
died a farmer. In 1863 he enlisted in
the Confederate Army and served I'M
4; I,o foI
to Libbey prison about the close of the
war. He was a faithful and brave sol
der. After the surrender he was
given transportation as far as New
Bern. From that town he walked to
his farm in Orange county-a distance
of 1S4 miles and accepting the stu
alton in good faith, applied himself
once more to filling the soil"
The surrender of Johnson's army
near Durham created new industry
and opened new field for men who
could look far into the future. Mr..
Duke was among the few who saw
that the demand for Durham tobac-
co. created by the widely scattered
soldiers of both armies would make
market for all the tobacco that the
Durham people could manufacture.
Upon his return home from the army
manufacture smoking tobacco on his
farm near Durham. His factory was
a log cabin 16x18 feet The business
had grown SO rapidly that in 1873 he
and his boys erected a factory in Dur
ham with floorage capacity of 40x70
feet, three stories high, giving work to
ffteen hands. In 1875 another build
ing Was added The business then ex-
panded rapidly until its floor space IS
measured by acres, its business
reaches every country under the sun,
and the name of Duke is known in
every tobacco market in the world.
How great business has grown from
the little log cabin near Durham
where Mr.. Duke and his sons, with
their own hands did every part of the
business from growing the weed to
putting the manufactured product on
small beginnings, but a business en-
terprise of such magnitude has rarely
ever grown SO rapidly from an insig-
nificant log cabin plant to the great
est business of it's kind in the world.
The founder of the house of Duke
never claimed credit for the magni-
tude of the business, and was often
wont to say: well, / started it on a
small scale and when we succeeded
we'll | turned the management over to
the boys But "the boys" had inner
tied from the father the qualities of
never giving UP application to business
and an ambition to succeed that en-
abled them to meet and outclass most
of the great tobacco manufacturers
with whom they competed in the great
cities of America and Europe. Mr..
Duke gave the start and his sons with
the mighty impetus, carried on the
business to it's present immense pro-
portions.
In the Duke family there always