Merger

From the rostrum of Duke University's expensive chapel one evening last week Dr. Broadus Mitchell, an economist of Johns Hopkins University, looked with misgiving upon an audience of fur-coated coeds. Said he:

''Your very magnificence is bought at the expense of the underpaid and sacrificing toil of thousands. I'm not sure that North Carolina can afford your magnificence. It's a question of whether the common welfare is to be sacrificed for the opulence of the few. . . . Mr. Duke was lacking in social insight. There can be no doubt that the power he developed is now the rightful property of the people of North and South Carolina and the surrounding States. . . ."

Pleasantly shocked, the college girls nudged each other, exchanged pert grimaces, whispered: "Wasn't that hot stuff? . . . My mama wouldn't want me to hear that. . . . Isn't he cute? . . ."

But if Economist Mitchell was disturbed by what the late James Buchanan ("Buck") Duke created with his tobacco millions on the campus at Durham, N. C., he must have purpled at the thought of what "Buck" Duke had left up North. At Somerville,N. J. was Mr. Duke's 5,000-acre estate with its statues, its fountains, its 35 miles of paved road. At Newport was Mr. Duke's summer place. In Manhattan, at No. i East 78th St., was the classic marble palace "Buck" Duke built for his wife 25 years ago, with its tapestry-hung salons, winding marble staircases, rose-&-gold elevator. And in that house was "Buck" Duke's only child, the richest girl in the world.

Doris Duke is a trustee of the university that disturbed Economist Mitchell. She inherited $53,000,000 from her father. Depression shaved that fortune to $30,000,000, still let Miss Duke remain undisputed No. i heiress in the U. S. Her behavior as such was appropriate. Father Duke's polish was acquired by friction along the rough road to riches. But Mother Duke was born an aristocrat, Nanaline Holt, of a First Family of Macon, Ga. Gracious, conservative, charming, she became the second wife of Tycoon Duke, and five years later Doris was born. For her upbringing, Doris' parents prescribed what they called simplicity. Doris ("Dee-Dee") grew up to be a moderately pretty blue-eyed blonde. Her height (5 ft. 8 in.) limited her dancing partners. Heaping gobs of her favorite dish, spaghetti, never misplaced a bulge in her slim figure. Sure of herself in her New Jersey surroundings, she also managed to enjoy herself at night clubs but rarely rollicked. Other youngsters twitted her as "the good little Duke girl." She avoided theatrical first-nights, rarely wore jewelry, occasionally affected smoked glasses in public, dodged cameras but would yield to a news-photographer's plea that a good picture meant a bonus for him.

Last week she married. The winner: James Henry Roberts Cromwell.

"Jimmy" Cromwell, 38, athletic, affable Manhattan adman, had been the current favorite candidate of newspaper dopesters, but even the Press knew nothing of the wedding until it was over. By certifying that Miss Duke's nerves could not stand the strain of applying for a marriage license in the usual public way, her physician got the license clerk to issue it in the 78th St. palace. There a Supreme Court justice performed the ceremony in the presence of the mothers of the couple. Bride & groom were aboard the Conte di Savoia before ship news reporters smelled out the news. Then it was ubiquitous little Publisher Roy Wilson Howard, aboard to bid a friend ban voyage, who persuaded them to pose for newspictures. The Cromwells sailed for Egypt (the groom was quoted as calling it "the land of romance"), were to continue around the world.

No social climber, no fortune-hunter is "Jimmy" Cromwell. Newsworthy in his own right, he is most newsworthy as the son of Mrs. Edward Townsend Stotesbury. Stately, loquacious Mrs. Stotesbury is richest dowager in rich Philadelphia and formidable No. i of Palm Beach society. Born Eva Roberts of Washington, she first married Oliver Eaton Cromwell, banker-yachtsman. In 1912, a widow, she became the second wife of Philadelphia's Stotesbury, then 62 and the father of two daughters. Drummer-boy in the Civil War E. T. Stotesbury went to work as a clerk in Drexel & Co., rose to be its head man and J. P. Morgan's chief partner in Philadelphia, director of a dozen banks and utility companies. Gossips have done little public guessing at his wealth (lowest plausible guess: $25,000,000), but at 86 (on Feb. 26) E. T. Stotesbury is definitely one of the richest men in the U. S.

Old and rich enough to retire, he lives lavishly with his wife at "Whitemarsh Hall," their Philadelphia estate, with its gardens a replica of Versailles, its 145 rooms, 45 baths, 14 elevators, 35 household servants, 65 outside employes. At Bar Harbor the Stotesburys have "Wingwood House"; at Palm Beach "El Mirasol."

Mrs. Stotesbury has said: "My favorite topic of conversation is my son Jimmy." Since Mrs. Stotesbury also gets along well with Mr. Stotesbury, Son Jimmy & bride should have plenty of money to use for Jimmy's ideas on monetary reform. His business career has been lively. First married to Delphine Dodge, daughter of Motormaker Horace E. Dodge, he stepped in after his father-in-law died, persuaded the widows of the two Dodge brothers to dispose of the company to a stock-selling syndicate for $146,000,000--biggest cash sale in Wall Street history. With his fat profits from the deal, "Jimmy" Cromwell sailed into the Florida land boom, planned to build a city called "Floranada," lost his money in the collapse, lost his illusions in a deluge of lawsuits. Depression infected him with Reform. He dipped into economics, politics, finance, began to preach public ownership of utilities. In a booklet called The Voice of Young America he attacked U. S. business methods, talked State Socialism but called it capitalistic reform. He took to the lecture stand, told the Matinee Musical Club of Philadelphia that "man is his brother's keeper and the old order of greed must pass." He helped found the Sound Money League, allied himself with Inflationist-Priest Charles E. Coughlin. Of his wife, whose safe-deposit boxes are stuffed with public utility stocks, he said: "Doris would agree to public ownership, but not to achieving it through confiscation."

-By him, Mrs. Stotesbury had two sons, James and Oliver Eaton, and a daughter Louise. Thrice married, Louise was the onetime wife of General Douglas MacArthur, is now the wife of Actor Lionel Atwill. For saying that Step-father-in-law Stotesbury pulled Republican wires to get General MacArthur promoted, the Washington Merry-Go-Round gossip column was sued for libel. The General later dropped the suit (TIME, Dec. 31).

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