The fashionably dressed woman pictured below has a delighted expression on her face. Perhaps she was one of the fortunate investors who owned stock issued by an early tobacco company. Beginning in 1878, W. Duke, Sons and Company was a partnership owned by five men. Washington Duke sold his share of the company to Richard Wright in 1880, and Wright turned out to be a very unhappy part-owner. The partnership of James Duke, his brothers Brodie and Ben, George Watts and Wright was dissolved in September 1885. Wright sold his interest to the Dukes and Watts, then promptly invested in the Lone Jack Cigarette Company, becoming a principal stockholder and the company manager. Wright was a burr under James Duke's saddle for many years, and the advantages of a public corporation must have been on his mind when he named his new cigarette, Duke's Preferred Stock. Preferred Stock Cigarettes were packaged in a common clam-shell box picturing a ticker-tape machine, plus a unique hard cardboard box with a slide off cap. With rounded corners, this packet would have been a perfect fit in any vest pocket. Businessmen were targeted with seemingly appropriate advertising. One of the free insert card sets available with Duke's Preferred Stock was the N79 "Histories of Poor Boys." These small booklets were the rags to riches stories of 50 wealthy men and women.