Jaquelin Plummer "J.P." Taylor:
Visionary Builder of the Tobacco Industry and Pioneer
of Post-Civil War Southern Business Enterprise
by
Andrew Call
Introduction
Jaquelin
Plummer Taylor (also known as "J.P." and "Jack")
founded J.P. Taylor Company
in 1886. He managed the company's growth and expansion
until 1918 when he merged
it into the newly created Universal Leaf and Tobacco
Company. He remained on
the board of Universal until his death in 1950.
The reference
source that was used to compile this profile qualifies
both as an excellent biography and as a comprehensive
account of the history of the tobacco industry of
Virginia and North Carolina. The book also contains a considerable amount of municipal
history, as well as short biographical sketches
of other key figures in the development of the tobacco
industry. The first two chapters of the book provide
the fundamental account of the career and vision
of J. P. Taylor. The book cited in this essay provides
a comprehensive history of the Universal Leaf Tobacco
Company from the "root" enterprises which
led up to it all the way up to 1995.
Jack Taylor
was one of the founding fathers of the American
tobacco industry, and the global tobacco industry.
He was a man of vision and integrity who as a young
man overcame the poverty and turmoil of the war-torn
South, became an expert in all facets of an entire
industry, helped build a North Carolina city into
a global market center, transformed Richmond, Virginia,
into the world's foremost tobacco buyer/seller city,
and restored his family's property which had been
lost during the Civil War. Taylor was a man who
believed in giving opportunities to sincere young
people who aspired to business success, and whose
career culminated in the founding of what remains
today as the leading leaf tobacco dealing enterprise
in the world.
General Historical Background
The Confederacy
underwent numerous violent changes during the period
from 1861 until 1865. This period of the American
Civil War could never be said to have been "overlooked"
in historiography. Furthermore, the era immediately
subsequent to the closure of the Civil War, the
Reconstruction Era, also occupies an undeniably
prominent position in American historiography. Commercial
and industrial development in the United
States during the Reconstruction
Era was unparalleled, perhaps in recorded history.
The birth and growth of firms such as the Standard
Oil Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company,
the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, the Southern
Pacific Railroad, and others, provides ample evidence
of this. Moreover, the uniqueness of this period
in United States economic history is shown by the
extraordinary commercial achievements of major population
centers such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia, and St.
Louis. Smaller metropolitan regions such as Akron,
Canton, Toledo, in Ohio, Johnstown, Bethlehem, and Butler, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Peoria,
and Quincy, Illinois, also rose to national and international
prominence and fame through their contributions
to national and foreign commerce and invention.
These cities, along with hundreds of others, have
long been recognized as hotbeds of industrial growth
and innovation.
One characteristic
which all of the enumerated cities share is that
all of them are located in the American North, that
is, in the region which was the decisive victor
in the Civil War. Historiography often neglects
the commercial and industrial achievements and successes
which occurred in the American South, both pre and
post-Civil War.
"Often overshadowed
by the attention given the new industrial giants
were equally enterprising young men who came from
farms rather than factories, from the rural South
rather than the urban North, and whose rise from
modest circumstances was no less dramatic than that
of the captains of industry."
Among
the most important of the post-Civil War business
enterprises was the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company,
of Richmond,
Virginia. More specifically,
among the foremost Southern business visionaries,
and the one who conceived of and built Universal
Leaf, was Jaquelin Plummer Taylor (J. P. Taylor).
"The
least known today of these tobacco barons, Taylor
improved upon his every opportunity until he eventually
founded the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company, which
has long been regarded as the world's largest independent
dealer in leaf tobacco and is now the centerpiece
of a billion-dollar conglomerate with diverse global
operations."
Family Background and History of J. P.
Taylor
Jaquelin
Plummer Taylor was born March 2, 1861, at Meadow
Farm, in Orange County, Virginia. This is located in the
Virginia piedmont regions,
very near Charlottesville, and
approximately 60 miles from Richmond,
Virginia. J. P. was descended
from a prominent Virginia family,
which claimed individuals such as James Taylor II,
who served as a militia colonel and a member of
the House of Burgesses, and was an explorer of the
wilderness regions of Virginia's
Shenandoah Valley and Blue Ridge Mountains. The family settled in Orange County on a
large plantation. The family also included relatives
such as Presidents James Madison and Zachary Taylor,
both of whom had come from Orange County. The Taylors
represented what has been termed "Piedmont
Aristocracy," the landed families who settled
the inland reaches of Virginia. Taylor's father, Erasmus Taylor, had served as
a chief quartermaster for the corps under the command
of Confederate General James Longstreet. The Civil
War ravaged the Virginia Piedmont, as with so many
other Confederate regions, and this affected a vast
number of people. The Civil War reduced the value
of Erasmus Taylor's personal property from over
$26,000 to about $3,000. The family had been devastated.
The educational opportunities that J. P. would have
had otherwise were forever lost. "In an earlier
day he would have likely gone to a private academy
and then to the University
of Virginia, after which he would embarked on a career as gentleman-planter
or lawyer-planter, in time inheriting some piece
of the Taylor legacy." Such prospects would never again be available
to J. P., but the desperation of the postbellum
era in the South was fraught with opportunities
for young visionaries such as Taylor.
"Instead, his education was limited to what
he could absorb within the family and to a brief
stint at The Meadows, a poverty-ridden school operated
in nearby Albemarle.
. ."J. P., or "Jack," as he was known, also witnessed
the reckless speculations of his father, who had
attempted with utter failure to regain wealth through
iron ore mining in Orange County.
Vision
for a New Era: The Road to Richmond
Jack Taylor
left war-torn Orange County
for Virginia's capital city
of Richmond, with an intention to learn the tobacco
trade. "Necessity was his great teacher." It is not known how much Jack knew of the tobacco
trade, but is had been prominent in his native Orange
County. "But first
he would have to learn business from the bottom
up, which would be Richmond's initial contribution to the Taylor story." The cultural perception of tobacco at the time
of Taylor's move to Richmond
was quite positive. "Antebellum Richmond
had been the tobacco capital of the world in an
era when one city resident said the leaf was in
almost everyone's mouth, either for mastication,
fumigation, inhalation, or discussion."
Taylor
came to Richmond
in 1878. He found employment at Alexander Cameron
and Company, one of the "Big Four" of
the tobacco industry, and whose business included
Virginia and Australia,
among other diverse locations. Taylor
entered the tobacco industry as a laborer. He lived
in the attic of the Cameron Home. His first job consisted of placing labels on containers. Despite
the humble position, Taylor took advantage of the opportunity to study the tobacco industry.
"Richmond's
seventy-five tobacco factories ranked first among
American cities and provided, in effect, a school
as well as a testing ground for the fledgling entrepreneur." Taylor remained in Richmond
for three years, having learned a great deal of
the industry from the perspective of the tobacco
leaf and its manufacturing processes. He always
paid close attention to trends in the industry,
and had noticed that Danville,
Virginia, a rival to Richmond in the industry, would be an ideal place to learn the industry
from the vantage point of buying and selling tobacco.
Danville
was at the time known as the "world's best
tobacco market."
The Danville Lessons: The Ways of the Tobacco Dealer
Taylor
was twenty years old when he left for Danville,
and found a position under James Penn, who had become
a leading tobacco purchaser and dealer, on an international
scale, and who was a principal buyer for the Japanese
governmental monopoly on tobacco. Taylor
prospered in Danville
as a tobacco dealer, and earned enough money and
began salvaging the family home, Meadow Farm (his
long-time ambition). After learning the purchasing-selling
aspect of the tobacco industry, Taylor
left for Henderson,
North Carolina.
The Road to Henderson: The Lessons for the New Tobacco Entrepreneur
Arriving
in North Carolina in the 1880s,
Taylor brought knowledge of the tobacco leaf, production,
manufacturing, and dealing, aspects of the industry.
At the age of 25, he formed a business enterprise
under the name of J. P. Taylor & Company. The
business conducted the business of tobacco exportation
and shipping. One decade later, the J. P. Taylor
company was known as one of the largest forms of
its type in the South. While in North Carolina, Taylor befriended James Buchanan
"Buck" Duke, who organized the American
Tobacco Company, and who later endowed Duke
University. Taylor had
built a technologically advanced factory, known
to be one of the most advanced in the South, and
had helped build the city of Henderson as one of
the foremost tobacco centers of the globe. Taylor became the president of the Henderson Storage and Inspection
Company, which was the first organization of its
kind in North Carolina. This was also "evidence of
Taylor's
entrepreneurial spirit."
Taylor
also became an excellent judge of young ability,
and was committed to promoting aspiring young employees
within the industry. He employed the young Rommie
Purefoy Watson in the J. P. Taylor firm, and helped
promote him through the trade. Watson eventually
formed the R. M. Watson Company, with the help,
commitment and dedication of Jack Taylor. The R.
M. Watson Company became one of the tobacco industry's
largest firms. Taylor had helped
bring Watson's positive visions to fruition, as
Alexander Cameron had done for Taylor himself years
earlier in Richmond. Taylor also helped build non-tobacco enterprises in Henderson, and gave back to the town that had given
him so many opportunities.
Return
to Richmond: The Birth of Universal Leaf
Although
Taylor's exact reasons for relocating
to Richmond are not fully understood, it is evident
that he perceived the city's obvious advantages
of geography, variety of tobacco, and capital availability. "In Richmond, dealers
had access to the three most desirable types of
American leaf for cigarette manufacture: the low-nicotine
bright or flue-cured tobacco to the south and southwest;
the highly absorbent, air-cured burley to the west;
and the long-burning, air-cured Maryland
type to the north."
Taylor
succeeded in discerning the market trends yet again
with the onset of World War I. "With the outbreak
of World War I in 1914, demand for American tobacco
soared, and Taylor
took certain steps that served as necessary preliminaries
to the founding of the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company
in 1918." On June 30, 1916, Ernst & Ernst gave a report
on the financial status of J. P. Taylor Company
of North
Carolina. On July 11, 1916, the J. P. Taylor Company
of Virginia was incorporated,
for the purpose of assuming ownership of the J.
P. Taylor firm of North
Carolina. The North Carolina
firm was acquired for $814,815.85, by the Virginia
firm. The new corporation had an authorized capital
of $1,000,000. Taylor assumed the presidency of the new firm, and James I. Miller,
one of Taylor's
protégés, became the firm's secretary/treasurer,
and Lewis C. Williams, the firm's vice president.
The firm was at its inception a multi-state company,
with headquarters in Richmond,
and branch officers located in Henderson,
North Carolina, Lexington,
Maysville, Carrollton, and Shelbyville,
Kentucky. Its corporate purpose
was, "to buy, sell, and deal in, and deal with
leaf tobacco whether for its own account or on commission."
The company's
assets exceeded its liabilities by $720,000, and
Ernst & Ernst had reported that Jack Taylor's
judgment was "sound and conservative." By the time of the organization of the new J.
P. Taylor Company, its trade extended throughout
the United States
and Europe. The corporate structure
and organization was mature and complex. Companies
that were part of the Taylor corporate system were the W. A. Adams Company of Oxford, North Carolina; the C. B. Cheatham Company
of Farmville, North Carolina; the Person-Garrett Company of Greenville, North Carolina; the R. P. Watson Company
of Wilson, North Carolina; the W. A. Willingham Company of Danville, Virginia; and the
W. H. Winstead Company of Baltimore, Maryland, Goldsboro,
North Carolina, and Owensboro, Kentucky.
Company
accounts were maintained at banks in New York, Virginia, and North Carolina. The firm dealt in a variety of
tobacco types. While the firm had become a master of dealing
with diverse regions, other companies, and differing
tobacco types, Taylor himself had become a master
in his own right, dealing with many different tobacco
businessmen.
"Working
with these and other dealers, Taylor
had become a master of the multiple deal sometimes
involving three or more participants. Joint accounts
and ventures were common, as when a local company
or partner might buy and pack the leaf on its own
market with Taylor assuming responsibility for purchase, transportation and storage,
and the ultimate sale. Then, as later, a man's word
was his bond. . ."
Taylor had clearly developed an immense reputation for honest and integrity,
as was evidenced by the extensive network of fellow
entrepreneurs with whom he worked to build the industry.
Once again, by 1916, Jack Taylor was a global operator
in the tobacco industry, and a genuine ambassador
for postbellum Southern business enterprise. He
also had achieved his long-standing hope of returning
Meadow Farm to the family.
"By
1916 Taylor ranked as one of the most prominent and prosperous dealers in
America.
With Meadow Farm reclaimed and his family settled
in comfortable style, Jack Taylor, now in his late
fifties, might reasonably have rested. But his enterprising
spirit dictated yet another move. This move would
be entrepreneurial, not physical, and it would propel
Jack Taylor beyond his previous accomplishment in
America's
tobacco belts. Indeed, it would place him squarely
in the center of a global stage." That entrepreneurial move was the founding of
the Universal Leaf Tobacco Company in 1918.
The Universal Leaf Tobacco Company: 1918
The formation
of Universal Leaf Tobacco Company was comparable
to a Broadway play with an all-star cast. Taylor
and his associates together embodied vast experience
in every aspect of the tobacco industry. The founding
forces, officers, and directors were all true veterans
of the industry, and had exhibited immense success.
Most of them had only limited formal education,
but their collective business education, obtained
through experience and effective "self-study,"
was superior to anything that a year long school
program could offer.
Jack Taylor
collaborated with men such as Joseph Cullman, who
had been an owner of Benson & Hedges; John Blackwell
Cobb, a former chief executive of the leaf department
of the Duke American Tobacco Company, and a president
of the American Cigar Company; James I. Miller,
Taylor's
right-hand man in the J. P. Taylor Company; and
others.
Board
Membership and Successor Management: 1922-1950
Universal
Leaf Tobacco Company was formed during the turmoil
of World War I, as the successor of the J. P. Taylor
Company of Virginia.
What needs to be known at this juncture is that
while J. P. Taylor himself only remained active
with Universal Leaf for a few years. He retired
from active management in 1922 but remained on the
board of directors until his death in 1950. He retired,
but his legacy is what carried the company through
the difficult years after the end of World War I.
Taylor
had been a fine judge of young ability, as has been
noted. Many of the officers who took the helm of
the new Universal proved able and sound corporate
administrators, while others did not. Nonetheless,
Taylor himself must be remembered as having entered
the Universal Leaf era already with a full and illustrious
career in the tobacco industry. He was not merely
starting out for the first time. He provided opportunities
for many younger tobacco entrepreneurs to enter
and prosper in the industry. Universal Leaf itself
is the monument to Taylor's ingenuity and vision within the industry,
even though he was only associated with it officially
for a few years after its inception.
Taylor
envisioned a centralized corporate system of tobacco
leaf buying and selling agents, which would eventually
cover the entire world. The selection of the corporate
name, "Universal," illustrated the founders'
optimism concerning the company's prospective successes.
J. P. Taylor predicted "the business to be
had was limited only by the ability of the organization
to handle and finance it." An early advertisement
described Universal as "Dealers in Leaf Tobacco
from Everywhere to Everywhere."
The company
did in fact develop rapidly into a giant. World
War I turned out to be an excellent time to begin
Universal Leaf, because of the immense global demand
for American tobacco products, and the fading of
the opposition to using tobacco products. Directly on "schedule" according to
Jack Taylor's optimistic vision, Universal Leaf
grew successfully.
"Business
at the fledgling company was at the outset equal
to Taylor's optimism, as Universal purchased about 10 percent of the market
during the 1918 and 1919 crop years. In 1918 the
company bought about 100 million pounds, of which
44 million were in turn sold to the Big Four and
other manufacturers created by the breakup of the
American [Tobacco Company Trust]." The first two-year period was an amazing success,
as the company quickly propelled towards it goal
of being the foremost tobacco buyer of the world.
By 1926, according to a government report, Universal
Leaf had become, "probably the largest leaf
dealer' in America.
. ."
Although
Jack Taylor retired officially in 1922, he remained
active in the direction of the company. He wished
to retire to a more personal and private existence
at Meadow Farm. "Taylor remained an influential
director until his death in 1950, serving along
the way as a conservative voice on the finance committee
and maintaining an interest in (and some influence
on) company affairs. Essentially, he was an elder
statesman in his late years."
Universal
Leaf managed to survive the economically challenging
years that came after the close of World War I,
but not without a certain degree of fear and trepidation.
Nonetheless, the Universal men came through, as
did the enterprise. There were two primary offices
of Universal Leaf; one maintained in New
York City for the purpose of overseeing sales and
company administration, and one in Richmond,
which oversaw the actual purchasing of the tobacco.
"In 1918 New York City was a worldwide center in the tobacco trade." The decision to open the New
York office during this time proved to be an excellent
move for the company. Universal Leaf also took pride
in the hospitality that it accorded its patrons,
and thus helped engender its own brand of comfort
to patrons.
"A
dozen private offices decorated with Persian rugs
opened from a spacious and well-appointed reception
area. The tobacco sample room was as likely to be
stocked with whiskey as with leaf-hospitality was
the hallmark of the leading New York tobacconists." The business which Taylor
had envisioned was certainly among the "leading
tobacconists" by World War I.
The tobacco
industry experienced a reversal in profits after
World War I. This proved to be fatal to many tobacco
companies. "The Great Depression for agriculture
started not in 1929 but years earlier, and the entire
nation buckled under a recession at the outset of
the 1920s." The economic causes of the "Tobacco Depression"
included a glut in the European markets for Bright
Leaf, and general market instabilities. This depression
destroyed the International Planters combination
in 1922. Universal did feel the effects of the Tobacco
Depression, and suffered from and excessive borrowing
and excessive remuneration of corporate officers.
The economy was simply not sufficient anymore, at
least at this time, to sustain the conduct to which
the company had been accustomed previously.
Universal
Leaf, however, through prudent management, survived
the agricultural depression, and marched forward
with growth and success. The strategy of cutting
expenses and seeking out new revenue sources was
put into place by the management, and Universal
Leaf overcame its financial weaknesses. The company
prospered throughout the Great Depression, interestingly,
while so many other firms, in a multitude of industries,
failed entirely. The successes of Universal during
the "tobacco depression" were due predominantly
to Jack Taylor's conservative management, and the
company's wise choice of management.
"Universal's
recovery is all the more striking when viewed within
the context provided by the fate of its rivals.
International Planters was the largest of the dealers
to fall in the early 1920s. From a World War I peak
of 4,139, the number of independent dealers fell
to 2,501; some consolidated and some went under
while Universal sailed forward with a new generation
at the helm." Jack Taylor had envisioned the formation of a
giant corporate system for buying, selling, and
dealing in tobacco, and his vision had been realized,
by 1918; and even in the face of severely discouraging
economic circumstances, Universal Leaf survived,
and grew steadily into the largest independent leaf
tobacco dealer in the entire world, and became a
pace-setter for an entire industry. Taylor's
legacy lives on today, and the success of the company
is the evidence of the excellence of Taylor's management principles, which have carried
on.
Conclusion
In conclusion,
Jack Taylor is one of the founding fathers of the
modern tobacco industry. He was an apostle of the
strategy of consolidated purchasing, selling, and
dealing systems in the industry into centralized
and standardized organizations. Taylor managed to overcome the destitution imposed
upon him and his family by the Civil War, successfully
learn all of the aspects (the production, manufacture,
processing, buying, selling, and the entrepreneurial)
of the tobacco industry. He helped establish many
younger entrepreneurs within the industry, whose
families had also suffered devastation because of
the Civil War. Throughout his life, Taylor overcame immense economic odds, became a learned scholar within
an industry, and helped build Henderson, North Carolina, into one of the foremost
tobacco centers of the world. He also helped build
Henderson as a city by supporting many local institutions.
Taylor then established Richmond,
Virginia, as the leading tobacco dealer center of the world, and created
opportunities for employment for many people of
all ages, throughout the world. He always remained
committed to having a vision for the success of
younger people, and thus invariably exhibited the
Principle of Visionary Succession, mentioned
earlier. He always acted with honor and integrity,
and possessed a reputation for such wherever he
went and worked. He managed to achieve the restoration
of his family home, Meadow Farm, and thus helped
rebuild the morale of Orange
County and its residents.
Overall,
Jack Taylor was a visionary for both people and
places, a consummate ambassador for the tobacco
industry and the commercial vibrancy of North Carolina
and Virginia, and a dedicated son of the South,
who desired to heal the devastation of the South
by rebuilding it as a global center of industry,
and by connecting it firmly to the commercial centers
of the North. Taylor is truly representative of the first generation of post-Civil
War Southern businessmen who achieved international
success, and who helped to heal permanently the
divide between North and South.
Financial
Statistics of Universal Leaf Tobacco Company
 |
The company sales
revenues increased from $14,200,000 in 1923
to $75,335,000 in 1950, the year of Jack Taylor's
death. |
|
The company
revenues had achieved a high of $82,139,000
as early as 1945, and
$108,910,000 by
1951. |
|
Corporate assets grew from
$13,848,000 in 1918 (the year of the company's
inception) to $31,593,000, in 1921. |
|
Company revenues have reached
over $3 billion as of 1993, with assets that
same year of over $1.5 billion. |
Bibliography
Duke,
Maurice, and Daniel P. Jordan, Tobacco Merchant:
The Story of Universal Leaf Tobacco Company,
University Press of Kentucky
(1995).
