Fortune Brands

The U.S. Supreme Court orders the dissolution of the American Tobacco Company. After diversifying into alcohol, office products, and other non-tobacco businesses earlier in the decade, American Tobacco changes its name to American Brands. American Brands greatly increases its distilled spirits business by acquiring seven brands from Seagram Company. Omega Holdings, Inc., the fourth-largest cabinet maker in the United States, is acquired. Fortune acquires Therma-Tru Holdings, Inc., the leading brand of residential entry doors in the United States, in a $924 million transaction. Fortune Brands, Inc., is a widely diversified conglomerate with principal businesses in distilled spirits, home products, hardware, office supplies, and golf equipment. Most of its brands are either number one or number two in their market categories. Fortune's brands include Jim Beam, the world's best-selling bourbon, Swingline staplers, Acco paper clips, Master Lock padlocks, Moen faucets, and Titleist and Pinnacle golf balls. Fortune was a major player in the tobacco industry until the late 1990s, when it sold its domestic and foreign tobacco interests and got out of that business entirely. Nearly 20 of the company's brands generate more than $100 million in sales. Fortune Brands traces its origin to the remarkable career of James Buchanan (Buck) Duke, founder of The American Tobacco Company. Duke was born in 1856 on a small farm outside Durham, North Carolina, where his father, Washington Duke, raised crops and livestock. The Duke farm was ravaged by armies of both North and South at the end of the Civil War, and upon his release from a military prison Washington Duke found that his sole remaining asset was a small barn full of bright leaf tobacco. Bright leaf, so called because of its golden color, had been introduced only recently, but its smooth smoking characteristics were already making it a favorite, and its fame was soon spread by the returning war veterans. Duke set out to peddle what leaf he had, and, pleased with the response, he quickly converted his land to tobacco culture, selling his wares under the name Pro Bono Publico, meaning "for the public good" in Latin. In its first year of operation, W. Duke & Sons sold 15,000 pounds of tobacco and netted a very handsome $5,000. Along with his father, his brother Benjamin, and half-brother Brodie, Buck Duke labored to make the family business succeed, working long hours from childhood and learning every aspect of the tobacco business from crop to smoke. Duke's timing was fortuitous--bright leaf tobacco became the most prized of all U.S. varieties, and Durham was the epicenter of bright leaf country. By far the best-known brand of bright leaf was Bull Durham, the label of William T. Blackwell & Company. Blackwell gained a long lead on the rest of the Durham tobacco merchants, including the Dukes, who did not establish their first true factory in Durham until 1873. The Dukes chose to concentrate their energies on the manufacture and sale of tobacco rather than on raising the crop, which was notoriously erratic in quality and quantity. Buying their leaf from local farmers, the Dukes cured and then shred or compressed the tobacco to form, respectively, smoking or chewing tobacco. As cigarettes were hardly yet known, tobacco smoking was accomplished with a pipe or in cigars, the latter not being made by the Dukes. Buck Duke attended a business school for six months in 1874, when he was 18, and became an increasingly dominant figure in the family business. Intensely ambitious, single-minded, and aggressive, Duke had no interest in anything less than mastery of the tobacco business. In 1878, Buck, Washington, and Ben Duke formed a partnership with businessman George Watts of Baltimore, Maryland, each contributing equally to the capital base of $70,000. Richard H. Wright joined the partnership two years later. The company was profitable and expanding, but Buck Duke was dissatisfied with its rol