D 



uke enters the scene 



In 1881, James B. Duke of Durham, North CaroHna, 

 son of Washington Duke, entered the cigarette business 

 by hiring 125 immigrant New Yorkers to do hand roll- 

 ing. The Duke company, already an established tobacco 

 business, turned out 9.8 million cigarettes that year, 

 which represented 1.5 percent of the industry total. 



James Albert Bonsack, a young inventor, had de- 

 signed and built a cigarette making machine but was 

 having little luck selling it to the manufacturers. After 

 seeing the machine, Duke had his own mechanics look 

 at it, and after some minor alterations, he put the 

 machine to work. By 1888, in its fifth year of operation, 

 the machine was turning out 774 million cigarettes 





This lithograph, published in 1874 Inj Currier and Ives, depicts part 

 of New York City's husi/ industrial harbor and tvhat was then called 

 the Great East River Suspension Bridge between Manhattan and 

 Brooklyn. 



20 



