James Buchanan Duke

James Buchanan Duke was a tobacco and textile magnate who had built a $100 million fortune through the American Tobacco Company before investing $2 million in Southern Power Company in 1905. His defining contribution was providing the capital and business acumen to scale Wylie's hydroelectric vision, appointing William States Lee as chief engineer and approving the eleven-dam Catawba-Yadkin cascade that would generate 200,000 horsepower. Duke's philosophy was vertical integration and economies of scale, applied first to tobacco and then to electricity.

James Buchanan Duke (1856–1925) was an American industrialist and philanthropist who transformed the tobacco industry, built Duke University, and provided the capital that scaled Southern Power Company into a regional utility giant. Born on a small farm near Durham, North Carolina, Duke built the American Tobacco Company into a monopoly through vertical integration of growing, manufacturing, and distribution. In 1905, he invested $2 million in Southern Power Company, recognizing that cheap electricity would power the textile mills proliferating across the Piedmont. He appointed William States Lee to build eleven hydroelectric dams on the Catawba and Yadkin rivers. The company was renamed Duke Power Company in 1924, a year before his death. Duke's $40 million endowment founded Duke University in 1924.