The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-12-13

statement which saddended him, but the cruelty of which didn't appeal to me, This statement showed me, he would have to put the $40,0Oo,ooo al work for fully nine years and not toucn . penny of the income during all this period. Mr. Duke had it all worked / out to nicety.
 But I couldn't shed eany tears over the financial plight of any $4O,OOO,OOO man. So I had to tella MT. Duke that I couldn't pull any chestnuts or tn1s kind out of the fire for him and other multimillionaires.
 came away, let me repeat' Ieeiihs that Duke was miserly.
 Now comes the explanation. He wasn't worrying over not being able to leave $40, ,00e, ,0O0 intact to his own fam fly, but as it would now appear, ne had solely in mind the inroads which taxation might make upon the $40,OOO,- 900 he planned to provide for educa- tional, religious and other worthy purposes. Q
 e MT. Duke Is an unsual type of man. Totally uneducated, he is entitled 10 be rated one of the six shrewdest busl- : ness operators in the United states 4 His money-making bump is enormous ly developed. His faculty for making friends is under-devefoped. When wanted some years ago, to get rom him the story of his life I had great difficulty in .finding single financial 7. or business leader who felt that ne knew Duke at all intimately.
 But Duke presumably had a higher ambition than merely rolling up mii- lions for his own satisfaction. Appar- ently he had in view the worthy goal he now unfolds. And certainly no man in America ever sweated more and de- nied himself more than did James Bucn- anan Duke in order to reach his goal. The only place where the full story IS to be found is in my book, "Men Wno Are Making America"
 These extracts give glimpses or DuKe's struggles:
 "At fourteen-note the age-James R. Duke, after having experienced life in a log cabin and almost inhuman pow erty, won the position of manager or the family's small tobacco factory-tne factory which formed the nucleus or the greatest tobacco enterprise the world has ever known.
 ago frugal was MT. Duke and so de- termined to conserve capital for the de- velopment of the >business that after ne was earning $50,000 year, ne hVeo III a hall bedroom in New York and ate his three meals daily in the cheapest lunchroom in the Bowery!
 "I have succeeded in business, salo MT. Duke, not because have more , natural ability than many people who have not succeeded, but because l nave applied myself harder and stuck to it longer I know plenty Of people Wno r have failed to succeed in anything who have more brains than had, but they lacked application and determlnatlon. ~T had confidence in myself. l said to myself: If John D. RoclSefeller can do what he is doing in oil, why should I not do 1t in tobacco?' resolved from the time I was a mere lad to do pig business. I loved business better than anything else. I worked from early morning to late at night-I was sorry to have to leave off at night and glad when morning came so that could get at 1t again.
 "At the end of the Civil war little James B., with his father and two brothers-hts mother was dead-lived throughout the winter in a log cabin on the farm. All four slept on straw tick in corner of the cabin.
 "The hardships suffered by the Duke family during the war were heart hreakinR. The soldiers had cleaned up everything eatable for miles aroundd. Parched corn was the staple food of the people in those days. Washington Duke, the father, regained his farm in tho spring and eked out livelihood a for the family by buying small qaunti- ties of tobacco and other goods in one district and bartering 1t in the east 2. ern part of the state for meat and flour, which he brought back and ped dled.
 s'Later Duke came to the metropolis to build up the tobacco business. It was at this stage that MT. Duke lived in his hall bedroom, ate regularly in a Bowery lunchroom near the factory and placed back into the business $4S,ooo of the 900 a year he was making. Not only that, but he insisted, against much opposition, that no other part ner, married or single, be allowed to withdraw more than $1.000 year sal ary."
 $4O,000,0 ,000i