State

The Spark That Touched Off an Industrial Revolution The huge Riverbcnd generating plant. II was an electric spark, anti it grew out off a con¬ ference held a lion I Hack Hukc's sore loe. A touch of homesickness and a sore toe helped found the sprawling Duke Power Company fifty years ago this April. These elements were the com¬ mon denominators between James Buchanan Duke and Dr. W. Gill Wylie. The men discovered their interests not in North or South Carolina, but in New Jersey. Mr. Duke, already known the world over for his tobacco interests, was living in New Jersey. He was troubled with a sore toe. His physician. Dr. Wylie, was a young South Carolinian with a fashion¬ able clientele in New York. During treatments of the toe. the men talked nostalgically of the Caro- linas and the great opportunities there. And, among other things, Mr. Duke showed Dr. Wylie a dynamo he had on his New Jersey estate. And Dr. Wylie told Mr. Duke about a young engineer. 32-year-old William States Lee. who knew a lot about this thing called electricity. It was as simple as that. The three men got together on that New Jersey farm, and. with $50,000 apiece from Wylie and Duke, a power firm was planned. First Line The following year, at 6 a.m.. April I, 1904, a power line from a small hydroelectric plant at India Hook Shoals, S. C, to Victoria Cotton Mill at Rock Hill. S. C. was placed in service. By mid-August of the same year the new power firm was ready to take another step and a line was placed in service to Charlotte. In June 1905 the Southern Power Company was founded. Lee, who later became vice-president, Duke and Wylie were on their way. Wylie was the first president of the firm that was soon to become known as Duke Power Company. Through the years Mr. Duke and his associates expanded the pioneer Catawba and Southern Power com¬ panies into the Duke system of today. Electricity generated by the company now turns 40 per cent of the textile spindles of the nation and serves the most densely populated area in the Southeast. Up to lOlh By the time Mr. Duke died in 1925 North Carolina ranked among the nation’s top ten states in the production of electric power. Duke harnessed the great Catawba River and started hopping about the State for new rivers to utilize. With expansion came land conservation and flood control, forestry and land man¬ agement programs. Today much of the state's fresh¬ water fishing is done on Duke con¬ trolled waters with free access areas supplied jointly by the firm and the N. C. Wildlife Resources Commission. A whole colony of sailors ply the waters of the Catawba and live in homes along its banks built on property leased cheaply from Duke Power. By 1925 the system was turning out two billion kilowatt hours, but this was still not enough. By 1937 the switch was under way from hydroelectric generation to steam power and, by 1947, 80 per cent of the system had been converted. Man and Legend As Duke Power grew, so did the legend of James Buchanan Duke, a large, handsome man. He was loved and damned at the same time in North Carolina. His American Tobacco Com¬ pany was known as "The Trust" and he headed that firm from 1900 to 1911 when the Supreme Court cracked down. With this controversial background in tobacco, there were those in the early days who wondered what sort of monster Duke was building now. There were some fights in the early years, but Duke was used to that and continued to build on his dream of industrialization for the state through electric power. James Buchanan Duke wasn’t the first in the power field in North Caro¬ lina. Colonel Francis Fries of Salem was transmitting from his dam at Idols pond on the Yadkin to mills in Salem and Winston six years before Duke went to India Hook Shoals. However, it was Duke’s industrial know-how and his great vision, that led to the rapid expansion of Duke 14 THE STATE. October 23. 1954