Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2021/Fall/Section018/John Fleming

Overview

This interview conducted on John Fleming brought light to a multi-millionaire's lifestyle. He talks about education, womanizing, and the tobacco industry that was all affected by the Great Depression and war.

Biography

Early Life

John Fleming was born into an upper-class family in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father was a plantation owner that grew tobacco. As a child, he did very well in school, but never went to a University to achieve higher education. He believed that private schooling was the best type of schooling as opposed to public because it separated him from from the kids that were poor and did not have the same mindset about money and success. He believed that attending private school was the greatest factor to his success. After high school, he did sales for The American Tobacco Company, but quickly switched to creating his own cigarette company.

Professional Life

At the time, The American Tobacco Company was America's largest producer and distributor of tobacco products. While he was working there, he noticed that that the trimmings from the ends of cigars produced a lot of waste that could be used to roll cigarettes. He pitched this idea to his close friend, Fritz, and they decided to open Red Devil Tobacco. They bought the trimmings from tobacco companies for extremely cheap and reproduced cigarettes that were marketed towards upperclass folks. They assembled a team of twenty-five salesmen and marketed the product heavily across the country; taking one city at a time. Red Devil Tobacco eventually became the most popular and sought after cigarette in America. It was considered a delicacy to smoke Red Devil cigarettes and it was a status symbol to those that smoked them on the regular. After a few months, James B. Duke, the founder of The American Tobacco Company bought out Red Devil Tobacco for a fortune that Fleming could not turn down. The company was short lived, but swept America by its feet.

Social Context

The Tobacco Industry during the Great Depression and WW2

The tobacco industry was an industry that went through great changes during this time period. Before, tobacco was not heavily used and the majority of people that did consume tobacco products chewed leaves. Smoking tobacco through cigarettes and pipes was a very minuscule part of the industry. World War 2 changed the way people used tobacco when they found that the effects of cigarettes were calming and kept them awake for longer. Many soldiers and workers began smoking cigarettes, and it became a staple in the American population's lives. With that being said, cigarettes took over the tobacco industry. By the end of this time, cigarettes made up over 90% of tobacco products that sold. The tobacco industry as a whole also increased in sales by over 500%. This was the industry that made multi-millionaires such as John Fleming. At the time, The American Tobacco Company ran a monopoly on the industry and became one of the original 12 of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Cigarettes took its toll on the American economy and American lives.

Private Education vs. Public Education

The gap between public and private education was at an all-time high. Public schooling was under the "Separate, but Equal" clause and still had major discrimination between blacks and whites. Classrooms were definitely not equal. White kids had access to better classrooms, better teachers, and better resources. When the Great Depression hit, funding was cut heavily among all public schools, and education resources continued to drop. Private schooling however continued to flourish and became a place only for the richest Americans. Kids who went to private schools learned at faster rates and were surrounded by the most successful teachers and parents. Fleming said that the greatest part about private education was being away from the poor kids. It taught better mannerisms and behaviors that ultimately led to his success in the tobacco industry.

Bibliography

Alan, Stuart. A Marketing History of The U.S. Tobacco Industry: From Colonial Times to The Great Depression: Vol. 7. Florida: Florida Atlantic University, 1995.

Granados, Jose and Roux, Ana. “Life and death during the Great Depression.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. October 13, 2009. https://www.pnas.org/content/106/41/17290/.

Higgs, Robert. “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s.” The Journal of Economic History 52, no. 1 (1992): 41–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2123344

Koning, Lydia. “Education in the 1930’s.” Medium. December 9, 2015. https://medium.com/the-thirties/education-in-the-1930-s-bc0e4b94fb2d

“1930s High Society.” PBS. August 8, 2010. https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/1930s-high-society/