DuPont Dynasty
Behind the Nylon Curtain
Gerard Colby
Six
THE NEW ORDER
6.1
APPEARETH THE “SAVIOR”
On January 21, 1902, Eugene DuPont, 62-year old president of DuPont Company,
failed to appear at his office. He had a cold, it was reported. One week later he was
dead.
Eugene’s death from pneumonia was more than just a personal shock to his family. It
was also a business crisis, perhaps the greatest the family had ever faced. Decades of
failing to bring young DuPont's into the seats of power now came back to haunt the
elders in their time of greatest need. Eugene’s younger brother Frank, the next in line of
succession, was too ill to take over the firm. In fact, he would join his dead brother at
Sand Hole within two years. Eugene’s other brother, Dr. Alexis, was also ill. He too
would die within weeks of Frank. Their cousin and fellow partner, Charles I. DuPont,
although still in his thirties, was also failing. He would be dead before the year was out.
In all, DuPont’s board of directors was a round table of dying knights unable to rule or
save the family’s industrial kingdom.
Desperate, the elders turned to Colonel Henry A. DuPont, the only remaining
director, but Henry had deeply involved himself in Delaware politics. For years he had
been following to the point of obsession the quest for the political holy grail of his life:
Delaware’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Because of a bitter personal feud with one John
“Gas” Addicks over political control of the state, his obsession had reached the point of
blind fanaticism. With an election approaching, he refused to tie himself down with the
enormous responsibilities of captaining the corporate armada called DuPont.
It was cruel irony for the DuPont's. Henry DuPont, who had devotedly given the
company fifty toilsome years of his life, had actually started this crisis with his policy
of keeping the family youth out of positions of power and favoring his own sons for
succession. Now with one son, William, scandalously exiled, his last remaining and
favorite son, Henry, refused to lead the company at its time of greatest need.
Some in the family looked to Alfred. “Too young,” cautioned Frank,
1 and too
impulsive. With just such a remark, Frank summarily doused what family fires may have
been kept burning for that eldest son of E. I. DuPont II. Alfred was hurt, of course, but
surprisingly kept his opinions to himself. He suspected what was about to happen and
for once in his life kept a cool head in front of his family, then secretly took a train to
New York to visit its leading banks.
While Alfred scrambled about Wall Street, the elders announced the predictable decision. No one in the family, they felt, had the qualifications to run the company. They
were trapped into the most unfortunate of alternatives: sellout. Why lose a family
fortune by turning the company over to inexperienced youth, they reasoned, and their
reasoning was indeed sound. We must sell the company to Laflin and Rand, they
explained, the only firm with enough capital to buy us out at our own price. Actually, it
wasn’t as bad as it sounded at first. Although supposedly a competitor, the DuPont
family actually held a substantial interest in Laflin and Rand. In fact, Laflin’s president,
J. Amory Haskell, had been an employee and lieutenant of Lammot DuPont and had
helped Ethel DuPont’s husband, Hamilton Barksdale, take over Repauno Chemicals
after William du Pont’s exile. Haskell had been transferred to Laflin and Rand after DuPont became the largest, although still minority, stockholder. With Haskell running the
show, nothing would actually change but the name of the firm, and perhaps, with
persuasion, that might also remain.
But it was still a terrific blow to the family’s pride. Sadly they met at a stockholder’s
meeting to write the formal obituary to E. I. DuPont’s powder company. They would ask
$12 million from Laflin and Rand, Frank explained. After some discussion, Colonel
Henry rose to formally move for the record that the company’s assets be offered for sale
to Laflin and Rand, and that Hamilton Barksdale serve as negotiator. Alfred had been
quiet during the meeting, clad in grimy work clothes from the yards. When Henry made
his motion, Alfred closed his eyes, perhaps to help his failing hearing. Then he rose to
offer an amendment: that they be sold “to the highest bidder.” Only a harmless formality,
the elders felt, and Henry accepted the amendment as “friendly” and the motion was
passed. Then the meeting was adjourned, the DuPont's breathing a sigh of relief that
Alfred had not made a scene. They sighed too soon.
Alfred suddenly threw himself in front of the door, blocking it. “Gentlemen,” he
exclaimed, “I’ll buy the business!”
2 Frank’s long face became drawn and irritated. He
said that was impossible. “Besides, it’s cash, you know.”
3 Alfred became furious. The
confrontation with Frank, delayed for years, had finally come. “Why not?” he exploded.
“If you can’t run the company, sell it to someone who can!”
4 His voice rising and
becoming more shrill, Alfred admonished the elders for holding back the family youth
and declared the company to be his birthright. “I pointed out to him [Frank] the fact that
the business was mine by all rights of heritage; that it was my birthright. I told him that I
would pay as much for the business as anybody; that furthermore I proposed to have it. I
told him I would require one week to perfect the necessary arrangements looking
toward the purchase of the business, and asked for that length of time.”
5 Who was better
qualified? Alfred demanded. For the first time in years, Frank was silent.
Colonel Henry had felt guilty during the whole affair. Alfred’s stand gave his
conscience and political ambition a way to redeem themselves.
“All right, I’m with you,”
6 he said, slapping a long hand on Alfred’s broad shoulder.
“Gentlemen, I think I understand Alfred’s sentiment in desiring to purchase the business.
I wish to say that it has my hearty approval. I shall insist that he be given the first
opportunity to acquire the property.”
Alfred had won the first battle, but not the war. Frank DuPont considered it just
another of Alfred’s scenes, making the whole transaction more difficult for everyone. In
the tradition since Antoine Bidermann, a phone call was made to the talented DuPont
in-law Hamilton Barksdale. Barksdale was an able executive and, as far as the elders
were concerned, a good choice for president pro tern. Dr. Alexis offered him the job.
Barksdale, catching the scent of family feud, wisely declined. “In my opinion,” he
told Dr. Alexis, “it would be a great misfortune for the company to place anyone at the
head of the concern until you have exhausted all efforts to secure a man of your own
name to take the helm.”
7
It was obvious that all efforts had not been exhausted. Alfred
still had one week to make good his challenge.
Alfred used every minute of that week. He knew his executive abilities were lacking
and, as his efforts at Wall Street had failed, he needed help in financing his project.
Only one man he had ever known could provide the talents he needed. He hopped into
his automobile and drove through the streets of Wilmington until he came to 808 Broome
Street, the home of his cousin and former schoolmate, T. Colemen du Pont.
6.2
APPEARETH THE KENTUCKY KING
Thomas Coleman DuPont was from the Kentucky branch of the family where Uncle
Fred, Alfred’s guardian, had ruled. The son of Bidermann DuPont, Uncle Fred’s brother,
Coleman had been Alfred’s roommate at M.I.T. But he was more than just a roommate to
his younger cousin. He was Alfred’s teacher and hero. A huge, dark, handsome man,
Coleman was 6 feet, 4 inches of charm and solid muscle. At Urbana College in Ohio he
had captained the football and baseball teams, stroked the crew, and ran the hundred yard
dash in ten seconds flat. Coleman could drink, fight, and play the role of he-man
better than anyone Alfred had ever met, with the possible exception of John L. Sullivan.
After finishing M.I.T., he rivaled Alfred for the hand of their cousin Alice DuPont,
called “Elsie” in the family. Typically, Coleman won and carried his bride off to
Central City, Kentucky, where his father owned coal mines, and his uncle just about
everything else.
Coleman had a reputation for having a big heart. When his father discovered a rich
deposit of coal, for example, Coleman celebrated Thanksgiving by sending each coal
miner just what he needed most—a free bag of coal. When he installed the first tub with
running water in that part of Kentucky, he proudly let in the poor people who had come
from miles around to see and marvel. Coleman could flash the biggest smiles at times like that.
Like Alfred, Coleman worked his way up in business. Starting as a mining
apprentice, he was soon superintendent and chief engineer. He even joined the Knights
of Labor to try to get a feeling for the workers and their thinking. Apparently, Coleman’s
class background prevented him from understanding much. He couldn’t comprehend
why the miners were angry about his father’s paying them only $1.25 to $1.75 a day for
their hazardous labor. He also could not understand why the Knights of Labor finally
struck his father’s mines in 1884.
His past membership notwithstanding, Coleman crushed the Knights’ strike by using
convicts as strikebreakers. Pulling strings in political circles, he forced the prisoners to
march under armed guard from the stockade at Shegog Crossing to his mines, crossing
the angry picket lines. There, under the barrels of shotguns, the prisoners mined for the
DuPont's as slave labor till dusk and then were marched back to prison. Finally one
prisoner was shot to death trying to escape; Coleman remained his usual cool and
indifferent self, but that death was too much for the miners. Faced with starvation in
their homes and the likelihood of more prisoners dying, they gave in. With a bellowing
laugh, Coleman lit up one of his huge cigars in celebration and flashed that famous grin.
In retaliation for lost profits, Coleman then decided to teach the workers who was
boss. Miners in those days were paid by the tonnage of coal remaining on top of
screens. Coleman changed the size of the screens’ holes from 1½ inches to 2 inches.
Thus less coal stayed on top of the screen, returning fewer dollars to the miners for their
labor, forcing the workers to labor twice as fast and hard to make the same wage per
day. Coleman’s scheme was an obvious attack on the workers, an effective wage cut and
speed-up. Again the miners tried to fight back with another strike in 1887, and again
Coleman used scabs to crush the strike. The 2-inch screens remained. Coleman
celebrated by buying control of Central City’s major newspaper, The Argus, and
renaming it the Central City Republican.
Six years later, in 1893, Coleman ran for public office, aspiring to be Central City’s
second mayor. The campaign issue at the time was labor, its rights and its needs.
Predictably, he was defeated, and just as predictably, Coleman couldn’t understand why.
“I won’t stay in a place where that’s all they think of me,”
8 he complained, his ego hurt.
In 1895 T. Coleman DuPont left Central City, never to return and never to be missed.
Coleman went to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to join his friends J. Moxham and Tom
Johnson and take the post of general manager of their Johnson Company, later to become
Lorain Steel and a part of J. P. Morgan’s U.S. Steel. Soon “Coly” was the driving force
and president of a score of companies, always promoting new deals with his huge size,
gusto, and growing management reputation. When he bought Johnstown’s street railway,
he profited so well that he branched out into speculating with its properties, buying low here, selling high there.
In 1900 Coleman moved to Wilmington following his latest acquisition—a local
button factory. For one reason or another, the factory failed to produce a single button,
and Coleman, eager to avoid any tarnish on his image as a financial soldier of fortune,
dropped the company like it had the plague. Instead, he involved himself again in land
speculation and bought a mansion at 808 Broome Street, which he later turned into a
country club for his children and many friends, reigning like a king over weekly dances.
It was here that Alfred went to see Coleman about his plan to buy the family business.
“Al, it’s a big thing,” Coleman said. “I’ll have to talk to Elsie.”
9 Alfred left while
Coleman the Giant ran to his tiny wife for advice. Elsie DuPont, it seemed, was
Coleman’s real source of strength. He completely relied on her, for behind the powerful
bulk of Kentucky steel was a secret weakness—Coleman was frankly a scared little
boy. He was frightened to death of failure. Often he would suffer severe fits of nervous
indigestion during business trips, and Elsie constantly kept a bag packed in case
Coleman telegram for help. In such times only Elsie could shore him up and pull the
deal through.
After Coleman explained Alfred’s proposal, Elsie’s face wrinkled into a frown. “You
know what it is to be in business with your relatives,”
10 she warned. DuPont's do not
make good business partners: each thinks his way is divinely superior. In this regard,
however, Coleman was no exception in the family. “I won’t go in,” he finally resolved,
“unless I get a free hand.”
11 “A free hand” meant the presidency. Alfred could be the
vice-president and general manager, a role close to the mills and one which perfectly
suited Alfred. But Coleman also had one more condition. He wanted his cousin, Pierre DuPont, to join them as treasurer. Alfred agreed. He knew Pierre’s qualifications. Since
leaving the Brandywine, Pierre had become president of the Johnson Company and had
worked closely with Coleman on many other deals. He had an excellent mind for
finances and his calculated caution would be a good balance to Coleman’s boldness.
Too good, as time would prove. Alfred would later regret this decision.
United in common purpose for the present, the cousins then met with the elders. With
the prestige of victory that always bowled over his opposition, Coleman displayed his
best as a slick promoter. Tall and powerfully built, his eyes flashing with emotion as his
body made sweeping gestures, he was an impressive sight and soon dominated the
gathering like any good showman. In a deep booming voice, he proposed to pay more
than the minimum $12 million the elders wanted. The exact amount, he assured them,
would depend on a survey of the company’s assets. With his elders obviously pleased,
Coleman then slipped in his plan. He suggested the sellers accept notes worth $12
million with 4 percent interest plus 28 percent of the common stock in the new
corporation in exchange for their stock. “You wouldn’t want to cripple our plans by tying up all our cash,”
12 he said in a deep, calm voice. The elders looked at each other
for a moment and nodded agreement. Within a few hours it was all over. For a mere
$3,000 in cash, the legal cost of setting up the new company, the three cousins had
acquired the largest gunpowder trust in the history of the world.
6.3
COLEMAN’S FIREWORKS DISPLAY
While Coleman was signing contracts that would bring new life and a new age to DuPont, a new age of wonders had also been born to the world—the twentieth century.
Electricity brought light and teletypes, X rays and radio. The Flatiron Building rose
twenty stories into the Manhattan sky, dwarfing the gilded automobiles of the rich and
the taxi-cabs that sputtered about at its base.
But it was also an age of continued poverty for most Americans. By 1899, 250,000
Americans owned most of America’s wealth, while 50 million earned only $1.50 a day.
Prices fell, but so did wages.
The average family needed $800 a year to survive, yet most unskilled jobs paid no
higher than $500.
13 Starvation forced over a million women into the factories at even
less pay than their male counterparts earned,
14 80 percent of them receiving less than
$16 a week.
15 Even with both parents working there wasn’t enough to meet the basic
needs of most American families. The solution was agonizing. Working-class families
were forced to see their children leaving school to work for ten hours a day in a
sweatshop or a factory. In 1900 the census recorded 1,750,178 “gainfully occupied
children aged ten to fifteen.”
16 By 1910 almost two million children,
17 or 18 percent of
the nation’s total labor force, toiled for the “fat cats” of Wall Street. Working conditions
were horrible,
18 and the federal government knew about them.
19
In fact, the Supreme
Court had openly refused to intervene in child labor. The right of property was blatantly
held more important than the right of life. Some children were killed, many were
maimed for life, and many more were cheated. “At the Marble Coal Company,” for
instance, “twelve-year-old Andrew Chippie’s forty cents a day was regularly credited
against the debt left by his father, killed four years before in a mine accident.”
20 The
debt was to the inevitable company store. Meanwhile, coal mine owners like the DuPont's of Kentucky were enjoying their most profitable year yet as the United States
became the leading industrial nation in the world. Glass output, for example, rose by 52
percent since the depression of the 1890’s. No one but the parents noticed the ten-year old
children who tied stoppers on 300 bottles a day.
And no one could understand why anyone would want to shoot such a kindly old
imperialist like President William McKinley. Portly McKinley had just completed a
visit to the 1901 Pan-American exposition at Buffalo, where the promoters presented a breath-taking display of fireworks called “Our Empire,” filling the sky with exploding
stars and rockets representing Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. “I killed
President McKinley because I done my duty,” exclaimed his radical assassin. “I didn’t
believe one should have so much service and another man should have none.… I don’t
believe we should have any rulers.”
21 Now what was that madman raving about? cried
the rulers. The “public opinion” of the rulers’ yellow press just couldn’t understand.
Neither did the DuPont's.
In fact, Coleman DuPont was too busy building his own empire to even care. Right
after he assumed the presidency, he disappeared from sight. Two weeks later he
reappeared at a director’s meeting in Wilmington and dumped a bag on the table.
“There’s control of Laflin and Rand,”
22 he boasted. The DuPont's were startled.
Coleman explained how he had approached John L. Riker, a major stockholder in Laflin
and Rand, and unfolded his plan to consolidate all powder companies in the United
States. Riker became infected with Coleman’s enthusiasm and the possible returns, and
finally agreed to exchange Laflin shares for those of the new DuPont corporation.
Coleman financed the deal through bonds of new front names, Delaware Investment
Co. and Delaware Securities Co.
23 As part of the deal, he also bought the Moosic
Powder Co.
DuPont now held control of the very company to which the elders would have sold
out.
But more than Laflin and Rand was at stake. Coleman’s decision to absorb DuPont’s
largest competitor implicitly meant that he intended to destroy the Gunpowder Trade
Association and absorb also the entire Powder Trust into DuPont Company. It was a
chilling move for what independent powder firms remained; chilling for them, but for
the DuPont's, breathtaking.
Coleman now controlled fifty companies strung out across the country, each with its
own manufacturing, administrative, and marketing operations. Coly quickly tore into
them, dissolving each operation and binding them together into one DuPont
International Corporation; J. Amory Haskell of Laflin and Rand was made vice president.
Any minority stockholders were bought out by a new dummy company, the E.
I. DuPont de Nemours Powder Co. Among those new companies absorbed were the
California Vizorit Powder Co. (high explosives), the American E. C. & Schultz
Gunpowder Co., and the International Smokeless Powder & Chemical Co.
Then Coleman, paying $240,000 to shake off price and trade agreements, simply
walked out of the Gunpowder Association, leaving behind a hollow shell. And just as
simply, the Powder Trust fell apart—mostly into DuPont hands. Gone now were the
secret trade pacts and ownership's. The DuPont Empire was now open for all to see.
Big, roistering Coleman now basked in the limelight of DuPont attraction. Family praises fed his vanity; he felt he deserved them, and he did. He had done the impossible.
Spending about $8,500 in cash, he had acquired through the issue of stock $35,955,000
in new assets. When the firm’s books had been accounted by Pierre and his small, tight lipped
secretary from Ohio, John J. Raskob, the company’s assets were found to be
worth over $24 million. That made the new total $59,955,000. (Pierre later certified
this amount on December 31, 1905.)
Even the elders, who had received only $15 million in new stocks for the old
company, were more than pleased. That is, Colonel Henry was, for he was the only one
of the old school still alive.
6.4
ADVANCING WITH “CIVILIZATION”
By 1905 “Coleman’s Company,” as it was increasingly being called among the family
(to Alfred’s growing concern), was directly manufacturing 64.6 percent of all U.S. soda
blasting powder, 80 percent of all saltpeter blasting powder, 72.5 percent of all
dynamite, 75 percent of all black sporting powder, 70.5 percent of all smokeless
sporting powder, and 100 percent of all military smokeless powder.
24
This last product, military smokeless powder, was a gift from the United States
government. DuPont, despite the experiments by Pierre, Frank, and Frank’s son, Francis
I. (and despite present claims to the contrary), had never discovered a perfected
smokeless powder. The U.S. government did. Patents covering the manufacture of Navy
and Army smokeless powder were all filed on the discoveries of men hired by the
government. Patent No. 489,684 was issued to Professor Charles E. Munroe, under the
employ of the Navy Department, on January 10, 1893. Its exclusive rights to
manufacture, however, were awarded to DuPont with no available reason given. Patent
No. 550,472 was issued to Lieutenant John B. Bernadou and Captain George A.
Converse of the U.S. Navy on November 26, 1895. Their discovery had been developed
at the U.S. Torpedo Station Laboratory at Newport, Rhode Island. Patent No. 586,586
was issued to Lieutenant Bernadou on July 20, 1895, as were Patents No. 652,455 and
652,505 on June 26, 1900, and Patent No. 673,377 on May 7, 1901.
The first patent by Professor Munroe could not be used by the DuPont's, however, its
specifications differing from those ordered by their greatest customers, the U.S. Army
and Navy. The second patent, filed by Lieutenant Bernadou and Captain Converse, was
more suitable to DuPont needs because it used alcohol-ether and colloid instead of
Munroe’s Metro-benzine colloid. Unfortunately for DuPont, this patent was purchased
by International Smokeless Powder Company, which partly explains Coleman’s
swiftness between 1903 and 1904 in completely buying out International. For the other
patents, Coleman slipped Bernadou $75,000. The Navy and Army, which actually
controlled the patents, were also very helpful. Navy and Army officers were given large blocks of International Smokeless Powder stock. Lieutenant Meigs, inspector at
Bethlehem Steel for the U.S. Navy, for example, was given 1,000 shares worth $100
each, a total value of $100,000.
25 Brigadier General James Reilly
26 and General
Ryan,
27 U.S. Army, were also large stockholders.
Military officers weren’t the only friends the DuPont's had. Patrons for their deadly art were everywhere in Washington, particularly in the White House. President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was met with great approval on the Brandywine. That American warships would protect the DuPont monopoly over Caribbean and Central American powder markets solidified the international cartel arrangements made a decade earlier.
Roosevelt’s Big Stick came down mercilessly in that area, paving the way for future American business expansion. In 1903 alone, Roosevelt landed U.S. troops in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Panama (as well as Syria). His greatest concern, however, was in Panama. There he intended to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific naval and merchant fleets. That Panama was a territory of Colombia presented a problem at first. Attempts to pressure the Colombian senate to pass the Hay-Herrán Treaty giving the United States 100-year rights to the proposed canal met with defeat. Apparently the Colombian senate didn’t scare easily. Roosevelt’s response was typically Kiplan.
“Those jackrabbits—contemptible little creatures of Bogotá preventing the advance of civilization.” 28 Within months he was writing to agents in Panama. “How are things going on that revolution in Panama?” 29 Secretary of State Hay joined in by assuring Varilla, head of the Panama Canal Company, “The United States will not allow a revolution to fail.” 30 It didn’t.
Soon DuPont powder was blasting its way through Panama, and treasurer Pierre DuPont was chalking up higher and higher sales volumes. In the Caribbean, as in America, DuPont had a monopoly, and the digging of the Canal was not made any cheaper by noncompetitive prices for black powder and dynamite paid at taxpayers’ expense.
Between July 1905 and July 1906 the War Department presented the DuPont's with another token of their esteem: an order for 5,947,820 pounds of smokeless powder. The Delaware family showed its appreciation by charging 70 cents per pound for powder costing only 32 cents per pound to produce. Over $2.2 million was netted in profits.
Then another gift was laid on doorsteps along the Brandywine: an order for 300,000 pounds of powder for 32-caliber weapons. The powder had a net cost of 44 cents a pound, the Du Pont's charged 84½ cents per pound, profiteering another $230,000.
Such fraud, the Chicago Chronicle explained, “is greater than any profit ever derived by any seller of any product of staple sold in one year to the government in the history of the republic.” 31 But that wasn’t all. “The monopoly carrying on the business,” the Chronicle added, “was at the same time contracting with foreign nations to furnish ammunition with which they could attack American merchant men on the high seas.”
Where there is a demand, Coleman would say, there will be a supply. E. I. DuPont I would have been proud.
In 1906 Secretary of War William Howard Taft announced that the United States needed a reserve of 30 million pounds of powder to be adequately prepared for war. No one asked which war he was referring to, but one point was obvious: The Indian Head plant built by the government produced only one million pounds a year, all of it consumed in Navy target practice. Unless more government mills were built that could produce powder at cost (35 cents per pound) the War Department would have to pay DuPont’s price of 75 cents a pound. The Family would run off with a huge net profit of $12 million. One-tenth that amount would in one year build government factories that could produce the Secretary’s reserve at one-half the cost. Would the Secretary agree to build the plants? Taft gave his answer at the year’s end: He announced that the War Department had bought 6 million pounds of powder from the DuPont's that year.
Coleman’s head was swimming with power. In 1904, 50 cents was paid per common share of DuPont’s stock; in 1905, $3.50; in 1906, $6.50. One by one, Coly began to kill off the last independent competitors in America. First, American Powder: in 1909 it made $288,500; by 1907 it pulled in barely $30,000. The Lakeside Powder drew $60,000 in sales in 1905; by 1907, $23,500. 32 Then the Burton Powder Company fell under his financial blows; then the Cressona Powder Company; then Connell Powder. Coleman even turned on a member of his own family, Anne Ridgely DuPont, daughter of Eugene. Anne had married William Peyton, President of the Peyton Chemical Company of California. Over her protests, Coleman bought 3,000 of the company’s 6,500 shares and grabbed over $230,000 worth of Peyton’s bonds. Then he used the courts to win his claim of control. Soon Peyton was out of a job and a family rift began that was healed only by the salve of enormous profits under new management. Finally, only the Buckeye Powder Company of Peoria, Illinois, was left. That’s when Coleman’s troubles began.
Waddell was disgusted. As early as March 11, 1902, Coleman was disputing with his sales director, trying to force the stubborn old-timer under his thumb. 33 But Waddell was not a man to bend to anyone, even T. Coleman DuPont. On November 25, 1902, after twenty years of efficient service with DuPont, Waddell resigned. “A definite policy for the conduct of the business along fair and just lines might have evolved,” he wrote Coleman. “Instead of this, your letter indicates that it is the purpose to thrust the heads of departments, like roosters, into a pit to fight for supremacy. The stakes are too small. I have never been involved in such a disgusting condition of business.” 34 Waddell insisted that he would not become “an automaton in a business machine.”
Waddell established his own powder company, the Buckeye Powder Company in Peoria, Illinois. Coleman, of course, was not very happy about this turn of affairs. First he tried to buy into Waddell’s company. Waddell refused. Then Coleman hired lawyers, detectives, and spies to harass Waddell’s young firm. Waddell filed his first formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor on October 19, 1903. “I have no desire to assume the role of a reformer,” he wrote Secretary George Cortelyou, “and have refrained from presenting this matter until it has become a necessity in defense of our business.” 35 But the harassment continued. Coleman sent agents to stir up the Peoria community against Waddell’s plant, spreading rumors that it was dangerous to the town. On March 3, 1905, Waddell filed another complaint against Coleman’s monopoly. “Mr. T. C. DuPont represents the American manufacturers,” he wrote Labor Commissioner James Garfield on DuPont’s trade agreements, “and furnishes the pooling data for associates.” 36 This complaint reached the Department’s Bureau of Corporations, but still no aid was given the beleaguered firm.
In 1906 Waddell’s firm, after two years of profitable business, finally began to falter as DuPont tightened its stranglehold, choking off capital reserves from Buckeye. Waddell then decided to fight back with bigger guns than complaints to government bureaucracies.
On June 16, 1906, Waddell published an open letter to the President and members of Congress exposing the DuPont's for their price fraud on brown and smokeless powder sold to the government. “Here is an absolute and exclusive monopoly,” he wrote, “superior to the government, entrenched at the Capitol, with its representatives in the House, Senate, and Departments.… It is not safe to entrust this DuPont monopoly with the most essential article for national defense, nor is it right to rob the people to build up this monopoly and fatten millionaries.” 37 No one could argue with that. Even Alfred had to admit he had put on a few pounds.
But Waddell’s language and facts grew stronger. “The market for the Government is cornered by a single group of conspirators,” 38 he said. If the government wants powder, Waddell pointed out, it must accept the bid of the DuPont Trust. “The welfare of the nation is in the balance against the DuPont Trust,” he concluded. “Our inquiry is personable and reasonable. Are you with the Powder Monopoly or the people?” 39
Apparently, Congress and the President couldn’t make up their minds. By the time 1907 rolled around, Waddell’s plant was slipping fast, his sales plunging from 1905’s $200,000 to $98,500. 40 One of the big factors in this decline was a mysterious explosion that destroyed Waddell’s plant.
Waddell was being ruined and he wanted revenge. Now no throne of power was too high to challenge—not even the President of the United States. Waddell turned the light on Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 campaign closet and found a $70,000 DuPont skeleton. “If a $70,000 campaign contribution is sufficient,” he announced, “to obligate the executive and legislative department of the government to take $12 million from the taxpayers of the country and give it to the millionaires of this gigantic powder monopoly, the independent powder companies and voters of the country want to know it now.” 41
The earth on Capitol Hill began to tremble. On January 24, 1907, J. Amory Haskell,
vice-president of DuPont International, was called to testify before the House
Appropriations Committee to explain DuPont control over foreign patents that were
available to the government only at prices set by DuPont. Haskell was perfectly
composed as he suggested that DuPont had purchased foreign rights on a “secret
process” powder to protect the United States government. What Haskell did not suggest
but the Congressmen already realized was that DuPont control over those patents
actually restricted the government from their use except under DuPont dictates. “To my
mind,” Waddell later commented, “it represents imbecility, corruption, or collusion
between the Government and the Powder Monopoly.”
42
Waddell blasted the DuPont's again on February 2, calling for government-owned plants to break the government’s curious habit of providing charity for one of the country’s richest families. He charged that the DuPont's were frauding the government of over $2 million a year by charging 75 cents a pound for smokeless powder that only cost 31 cents to manufacture. It hit like a bombshell. The country’s headlines screamed his charges about DuPont donations to Roosevelt. Something had to be done.
On February 4, 1907, a mere two days after Waddell’s attack had rocked the sacred temple on the hill, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 224, directing the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to “investigate and report to Congress what existing patents have been granted to officers and employees of the Government of the United States upon inventions, discoveries, or processes of manufacture or production upon articles used by the Government of the United States, and how and what extent such patents enhance the cost or otherwise interfere with the use by the Government of articles or processes so patented.” 43
The government tried every method of placating Waddell. On February 20, Acting Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Corporations, Herbert Knox Smith, even wrote a personal letter of appreciation to Waddell.
But Waddell was not to be placated, especially since his firm had finally collapsed. There were now no independent powder companies in America. Waddell’s hated enemy, Coleman DuPont, was in absolute control.
Ironically enough, it was the DuPont's who then came to Waddell’s aid by imprudently trying to seize control of the National Rifle Association at its annual convention at Sea Girt, New Jersey. The convention broke up under charges of corruption, which tarnished the DuPont public image. Nevertheless, when it reconvened at the 71st Regiment Armory in Chicago, the battle, with all its slanderous charges and counter charges, erupted again and finally elected was James A. Drain of Olympia. Drain was reportedly the candidate of the DuPont Trust. 44
By mid-1907 a national furor had arisen against the DuPont monopoly. But Coleman still wasn’t worried. After all, he knew the federal government was no trust-buster, despite the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This was the greatest merger era of all times, when mergers horizontal (same market) and vertical (different markets of production) were taking place at a rate of 500 per year. Roosevelt, in his eight years of office, despite all his verbalism about a “Square Deal,” initiated only forty-four legal actions, only twenty of which were strong enough to win indictments. Of these twenty, the Roosevelt administration produced only one anti-trust conviction, against American Tobacco Company, which was allowed to continue as a monopoly anyway using interlocking directorates.
The Justice Department accepted “the rule of reason” in court, holding that not all monopolies were bad. In fact, it contended, some were good. Competition was recognized as an increasing problem of instability and more and more of the new business nobility were coming to agree with J. P. Morgan that industrial stability must replace laissez-faire capitalism. In popular literature, Horatio Alger with his hard work, puritan ideas, and inevitable success became the hero of the age; individualism was no longer self-sufficiency but domination over others. J. P. Morgan became the exceptional individual, given the right to rule by God, a sort of new “divine right” of industrial kings. In social philosophy, social Darwinism warped the theory of evolution into a justification for political domination at home and abroad, and the United States became understood as a unique, higher expression of man’s values, a position that gave support to its “manifest destiny” to control a large portion of the globe. 45 Thus, both monopolies at home and imperialism abroad received the theological and philosophical icing necessary for popular consumption.
“Progress is our most important product” advanced the notion of the business corporation working for the common good, in an effort to improve the poor reputation of the business elite. 46 The individual can manipulate the economy for the common good, monopolists explained. There was nothing wrong now with government and business cooperating to stabilize the economy for the common good, even if that usually meant only Wall Street’s common stock returns.
Roosevelt understood progressivism for what it really was—an instrument of conservatism. It was the rationalization of the old order to meet the needs of a new monopolistic order. Like all American presidents, Roosevelt was no foe of business interests. Even as governor of New York, he stifled an investigation of insurance companies that involved political and business associates. Roosevelt favored an informal détente between corporations and their government to iron out wrinkles in the system. When Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle raised a national outcry over the filthy and dangerous working conditions in the nation’s meatpacking plants, the Pure Food and Drug Act was written in a form acceptable to both Armour and Swift, while providing restrictions that eventually eliminated smaller, fly-by-night competitors. Federal meatpacking regulations, therefore, served the interests of monopoly rule in the long run; workers were soon working in clean white gowns and aprons that were no doubt a victory for them in improving their working conditions, but still went home to tubercular shanty towns.
Often, however, Roosevelt found that not all big businessmen shared Swift’s or Armour’s level of consciousness as a class with a sense of history, consciously adjusting philosophically and politically to the changing needs of industrial growth under private ownership. To develop order and stability in the domestic market, formal regulation sometimes had to take the place of informal detente. The formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission was a conscious attempt to regulate the nation’s railroad system to the benefit of the general corporate order and Roosevelt’s call in 1904 and 1905 for firmer control over rates produced the Hepburn Act of 1906. The functioning of the Federal Trade Commission was along these lines. Its purpose was (and is) to inform business on future contours of domestic economic policy. Some corporations took its advice seriously. Some didn’t. One of these was Du Pont.
The Du Ponts were Neanderthals when it came to understanding Roosevelt’s corporate “liberalism.” They were not against a well-organized society; it was just that their only understanding of benevolent despotism was primitive, or rather, medieval in character, like their social-feudal colony on the Brandywine. Although they fully accepted their “right” to monopolize their respective industry, and fully identified as a class with those who did likewise, they were nevertheless the happy, greedy victims of their own laissez-faire propaganda, embracing the very individualism they used to deter their workers from considering labor unions. It’s not surprising, therefore, that they didn’t respond to Roosevelt’s corporate therapy. In fact, they fought it all the way.
Roosevelt was in a dilemma. He was faced with DuPont obstinacy just when he needed flexibility most from them. Public sentiment had been stirred against the Powder Trust and workers were again in the streets because of a new economic depression. Charges of corruption against his War Department were being raised in the halls of Congress. Even he had been linked to these charges by the exposure of the $70,000 DuPont contribution to his 1904 campaign. The President was frankly embarrassed by the whole affair. He had to act.
He did. On July 30, 1907, Roosevelt’s Justice Department filed suit against the DuPont's and their companies for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Coleman DuPont was in a foam. Roosevelt’s Attorney General, Charles Bonaparte, had promised to allow DuPont lawyers to present their case before a government suit was initiated, but the Attorney General had pressed ahead on Roosevelt’s orders. “We then knew from actual experience,” wrote Coleman in a company memorandum, “that the Attorney General was not to be depended upon and placed no more confidence in his department.” 47 At least, that Attorney General. Under the next administration, Coleman would find the Attorney General’s office very dependable. He would also receive the valuable services of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on War Department Expenditures, Colonel Henry A. DuPont.
It has been said that of all the DuPont's, none made such an impact on the political
life of the state of Delaware as Henry Algernon DuPont. The son of “General” Henry DuPont, the president of Delaware’s largest railroad, the rewriter of the state constitution,
Henry was above all the Junker of Delaware.
Henry was one of those vain men who loved military titles and insisted on being called “Colonel” even after he retired from the Army in 1875 and joined the family firm. With his silver-rimmed glasses and carefully waxed Van Dyke beard, he looked as stern and stiff as the high collars he wore. A military man in posture since his West Point training, he took his talents for command with him into the family firm.
Henry’s first job with his father’s company was to demand rebates from railroads which freighted DuPont products. These railroads were at the mercy of their largest customers along their lines, the monopolies, including DuPont. When such giants of industry as DuPont demanded rebates, the rails had little choice but to bend. Henry was particularly good at whipping his swagger stick, so good that he even became president of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad and from 1898 to 1913 served on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
With these railroad and DuPont offices, Henry inherited his father’s political power in Delaware. He made good use of it, apparently, for by 1889, the year of his father’s
death, he was already casting his eyes on Dover, the state capital, where the legislature
was then arguing over who was going to be the next U.S. Senator, popular election of
senators not having been introduced yet. It was at this time that Henry first crossed
swords with his lifelong foe, John Edward O’Sullivan Addicks.
John “Gas” Addicks was the son of a minor Philadelphia politician. Born in 1841, he quit school at the age of 14 to go to work. But Addicks developed an energy and cunning that soon made up for his wooden spoon. At the age of 19, he went to work for a Philadelphia flour mill merchant, Levi Knowles. Within two years, he was Knowles’s partner.
Addicks was as clever as he was ruthlessly ambitious. It was he who introduced Minnesota Spring wheat to eastern farmers. From profits he accrued and political favors for local political ward-heeling, he was rewarded with gas franchises in Boston, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Chicago. John Addicks then went into the illuminating gas business, from whence came his nickname, “Gas.” By watering stocks and manipulating contracts, he grew rich and maintained an eight-acre estate near Claymont, Delaware. He sold this estate in 1888, three years after moving to Boston.
The next year “Gas” Addicks rediscovered Delaware. Back from Europe, where he made millions from Siberian railroad stock, he used $25,000 to buy Dover legislation that netted him a return of $2 million. 48 Now this was the kind of state he liked! Unfortunately, he didn’t know that it was already claimed turf—DuPont turf.
Addicks was a big man. At least he looked big, with his expensive clothes and huge pearl stuck in his ascot tie. With a broad forehead and jutting brow, he was as impressive a character as ever walked into the sleepy town of Dover. Soon Addicks was a big name in Delaware. What he didn’t know as he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate was that another name was even bigger—DuPont.
When the 1892 election rolled around, Addicks offered $10,000 per legislature vote. He wanted the DuPont man, Anthony Higgins, out. Spending over $100,000, he gained control of the Republican organizations in the downstate counties Kent and Sussex. Only New Castle remained as solidly opposed as Henry DuPont’s stone walls. Colonel Henry had been at work. He even wrote a letter to President Benjamin Harrison requesting that Watson Sperry, editor of the Wilmington Morning News, be given a federal appointment that would take the independent editor out of Delaware politics. 49 Sperry had been supporting another Republican by the name of Massey for senator. Such a factional dispute could hurt Higgins just when Addicks was mounting his attack. Harrison, a Republican, took the hint. Sperry became a special envoy on a secret mission to Persia. The long arm of DuPont can take one very far. Higgins, meanwhile, was reelected.
In 1895 a new senator had to be picked by the legislature. These were the days when U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures. It would be almost twenty years before the Seventeenth Amendment would give this power to the people, and until then, Delaware’s legislators jealously guarded their prerogative. (In fact, the Seventeenth Amendment was rejected by the legislatures of only two states: Utah, the dominion of conservative Mormons and Guggenheim copper interests, and Delaware, the Duchy of DuPont.)
Addicks now controlled six votes, not enough to elect him but enough to check a clear Republican majority and prevent anyone’s election. Higgins was then made to step aside and Colonel Henry DuPont announced his candidacy, expecting Addicks’s house of money to collapse. To Henry’s surprise, Addicks’s camp suffered only one desertion. It was still a deadlock. Henry was furious and just as stubborn as Addicks—and richer. At this point, either Henry or Addicks—depending on whom one takes as source—but probably Addicks, made a statement that would resound in infamy through Delaware’s history to this day: “Me or nobody!” Delaware got nobody. The personal feud between two individuals would keep Delaware from being fully represented in the U.S. Senate for twelve long years. One, and only one, each insisted, would be the victor; as it turned out, in either case Delaware was the loser.
After thirty-five ballots, the Speaker of the Senate, William T. Watson, declared no election and adjourned the legislature. Henry was outraged, insisting he would have his election. He got the Speaker of the House to declare that Watson’s decision was invalid. The grounds were amazing. During the balloting, Governor Marvel had died and Watson, as Speaker of the Senate, succeeded him under the state constitution. But the constitution did not prohibit Watson from continuing on as Speaker of the Senate and he did, casting his ballots during the election. At no time was his vote ever challenged. But after his ruling, DuPont forces, including the Speaker of the House, declared Watson had no right to rule as Speaker of the Senate and declared both his ruling and right to vote invalid. That gave Henry the majority he needed. The Speaker of the House issued a certificate of election and Henry moved to Washington demanding the Senate seat him.
Delaware was shocked by DuPont’s dishonesty. The Wilmington Every Evening repeated Watson’s right to vote. 50 The country was shocked also. The Philadelphia Public Ledger reiterated the position of the Wilmington paper, 51 and even the New York Times charged that Watson’s voting rights and ruling were “according to the state constitution and laws of all precedents in the state.” 52 Apparently the U.S. Senate agreed. On May 15, 1896, the Senate voted to refuse to seat Henry and sent him packing.
Colonel Henry returned to Wilmington a bitter man. For ten more years he waged a relentless war for the Senate seat. In 1898 his image was boosted when he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Civil War. The medal was a little late—thirty-four years, to be exact. But it was noted that this was a time when newspaper headlines were warning, “WAR IS NOW INEVITABLE,” and the government needed good relations with the DuPont's to prepare munitions at “reasonable” rates for war with Spain and expansion overseas. Nevertheless, Henry proudly wore his medal at all public appearances.
The following year Addicks controlled twenty-one of fifty votes in the Legislature; Henry DuPont held only eight. But the Colonel had inherited his father’s stubbornness; now it was definitely Henry who cried “Me or nobody!” In 1901 Addicks had twenty two votes but again Henry denied Delaware its right to Senate representation. In fact for the next two years Delaware had no representative at all in the U.S. Senate. By 1903 Delaware had become a national scandal; under Theodore Roosevelt’s pressure, compromise senators James Frank Allee and L. Heister Ball were selected for remaining Senate terms. By 1905, however, the feud was renewed for one of the seats and still a deadlock persisted. The stubborn Junker of Delaware refused to surrender, especially when he was about to bring up his biggest gun, the president of DuPont Company.
With Coleman DuPont, Addicks finally met his match. Coly’s first move was to
smash Addicks’s machine by luring his hacks away with bribes. Henry gave thousands
to Sussex County Republicans.
53 Coleman then had George Kennan, the old secretary
for deceased Lammot DuPont, write a now-famous article in Outlook magazine
charging Addicks with “Holding Up a State.”
Coleman was as efficient in organizing the campaign as he was ruthless in his threats. Henry felt things were going so well, he sailed off on a European cruise to relax his nerves. In June, Addicks announced he was pulling out in the interest of the Republican Party, his twelve-year hold on the party smashed in one short year by T. Coleman DuPont. On June 12 the Republican caucus nominated Henry by a vote of twenty to ten. On June 13, 1906, he was elected U.S. Senator.
Eight hours before, Addicks boarded a Dover train bound for New York. He never returned. The copper market soon fell as the 1907 depression began, and Addicks’s fortune disappeared. As Henry sat in the halls of federal government, the government began to hound Addicks right out of business. A legal fight arose out of his gas deals and resulted in a federal court awarding $4 million against him.
Addicks was reduced to hiding from subpoenas, living in poverty. Still the hunt went on. Two years after his defeat in Delaware, process servers found him in a dreary Hoboken tenement, living under an assumed name, his gas and light turned off for nonpayment by a company he had once owned. For eleven more years the harassment went on, “Gas” Addicks finally dying in the slums of New York on August 7, 1919, a forgotten and broken man.
For Delaware, as for DuPont Company, Coleman’s “new order” had arrived.
Right from the beginning of the new order under the three cousins, differences arose between Coleman and Alfred. Coleman wanted to close the Brandywine mills. Alfred objected. Coleman wanted to move the company’s headquarters to New York. Alfred again objected. In both cases, Alfred won.
Alfred, in turn, was worried about Coleman’s increasing power in the firm. Frank, Charles I., and Dr. Alexis were all dead. Colonel Henry had left for Washington. To replace them, Coleman brought his western clerk, Lewis L. Dunham, and his father’s friend, Arthur J. Moxham, into the company. Furthermore, Moxham joined the board of directors, as did J. Amory Haskell, former president of Laflin and Rand, and L. R. Beardslee and James G. Reilly, both from companies which Coleman had bought out, as well as Henry F. Baldwin, Coleman’s brother-in-law, and Hamilton Barksdale, Mrs. Coleman DuPont’s brother-in-law. Baldwin, Haskell, Barksdale, and Moxham were all given bonuses to make them shareholders, and Moxham, Barksdale, and Haskell were appointed to the executive committee as vice-presidents.
Pierre also brought his brothers into this circle, Irénée taking the post of assistant treasurer, and Henry Belin, William Kemble, and Lammot donning overalls for the powder works. J. Amory Haskell also brought in his brother, Harry Haskell, and his trusted assistant, Charles Copeland, later to marry Pierre’s sister Louisa.
Alfred was relieved that Francis I. DuPont, Frank’s son and Delaware’s single tax pioneer, headed the Carney’s Point plant and joined him on the executive committee. But there were many new young DuPont's that Coleman was bringing into the company whose first loyalty seemed to be to the big man from Kentucky: A. Felix DuPont, second son of deceased Frank; Eugene, Jr. and Alexis I. DuPont III, sons of deceased Eugene; Eugene E. DuPont, son of Dr. Alexis; Victor DuPont, Jr., of the exiled Victor line; and Colonel Henry’s son, Henry Francis DuPont. And the newest addition to the Board, fat and lazy Victor DuPont, Sr., was no help whatsoever. Clear warning flags flew when Coleman set up his Delaware Securities Co. and Delaware Investment Co. Of each, Moxham was president, Coleman vice-president, and Pierre treasurer. Alfred had been left out.
Alfred was worried. He knew about Coleman’s infamous card tricks. He did not want to deal with a man who held a stacked deck, which is what the board of directors and junior executives were beginning to appear to be.
Other disputes arose. Alfred and Coleman debated over the eight-hour work day, the cause célèbre of the rising labor unions. Coleman felt it was better to take the steam out of labor organizers approaching DuPont plants by voluntarily instituting the eight-hour day. Alfred bitterly opposed Coleman’s plan. In 1904 an eight-hour bill was before Congress. On November 2 Alfred wrote the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of his opposition and hope that the workers’ bill would be killed in Committee and never reach the floor for a vote. Alfred’s argument was typically patronizing. He insisted that he, not the workers, knew what was best for them. All the stale arguments were aired again, including the “right” of the worker to work as long as he liked. (The bill did not rule out compulsory overtime, however.) But his chief argument was from his class side of economics: it would necessitate costly reorganization, force DuPont to raise prices and employ more men in the mills, increase the chance of accidents (true only if DuPont increased its line speed-up—which, of course, it did as Alfred knew it would), and finally—the real point—it would “abridge the right of the employer to offer labor such terms and wages as he saw fit.” 1
Coleman and his directors disagreed, believing the eight-hour law would cut unemployment while still allowing the employer to extract through speed-up ten hours worth of labor in eight hours. Eventually, DuPont voluntarily decreased its ten-hour work day to eight hours, but not before Alfred had been forced out of control over the company’s production.
Another contention was a new invention by Alfred, a steel glazing barrel. Naturally, Alfred was very enthusiastic about it. The barrel cut the cost of a 25-pound keg of black powder from 84 cents in 1907 to 78 cents in 1910. It also cut workers to pieces when it exploded, as it was much more dangerous than the old wooden barrels. After four accidents, Coleman abandoned the barrel despite Alfred’s voiced disappointment.
By 1909 Alfred’s worth to the company was quickly fading. In 1902, when he rose to prominence in the firm, Alfred’s black powder was king. But for the next eight years, dynamite sales increased 300 percent while black powder’s sales rose by only 25 percent. By 1909 dynamite sales topped those of black powder by ten million pounds. Black powder had reached its all-time high in 1907 and now was declining.
So was Alfred. With no dynamite experience, he was becoming less indispensable to the firm and was increasingly irritating to Coleman now reigning in his new four-story offices in Wilmington. And what family ties had bound Alfred to the company were now quickly being frayed over the issue of Alfred’s marriage and his relationship with another young DuPont cousin, Alicia Heyward Bradford, the daughter of Eleuthera DuPont and Judge E. G. Bradford.
By 1902 Alfred and Bessie were seldom speaking. For one thing, Louis’s suicide had soured their marriage. Further, Bessie’s rudeness to Alfred’s sister Marguerite, and her cold manner to Alfred, kept his relatives away from Swamp Hall, effecting an isolation that Alfred resented. Then Alfred’s hearing failed in 1904 and he had to give up his amateur band. Drifting from ties in Wilmington, he began spending more time writing to and visiting with the Ball family, particularly young Jessie Ball. An old Virginian family, the Balls were friends who lived near his private hunting retreat at Cherry Island. It was there in November of 1904 that Alfred suffered his second physical blow within a year.
He was hunting with Bill Scott, superintendent of DuPont’s Pennsylvania mills, and some other friends. The men were spread out on the trail of game, Alfred and a friend on one side of a hedge, Scott thirty yards away on the opposite side. Suddenly Scott thought he heard something and wheeled and fired at the hedge. Alfred’s friend ducked, and as he did, he saw Alfred’s hat fly off. Then Alfred dropped his gun and fell, blood pouring from his face.
He was rushed to the University of Pennsylvania, where surgeons performed an operation on his left eye. Bessie hurried from Europe with their daughter, Maddie, but the visit was not a happy one for Alfred. While Maddie weeped at her father’s bedside, Bessie just stared at him coldly. Understandably, Alfred grew depressed.
When he returned to Swamp Hall, the family threw a Christmas party to cheer him up. It only made matters worse. He suffered a relapse and had to return to the hospital. There, Alfred had his eye removed and replaced with a glass one.
By September 1905 Alfred had left Swamp Hall and made financial arrangements with Bessie. Although he was by then a millionaire, his settlement for his wife and children was not generous: only $24,000 a year. A $600,000 trust fund for his four children, Alfred Victor, Maddie, Bessie, and Victorine, was set up, Alfred choosing a Philadelphia lawyer for his trustee. Bessie chose Pierre DuPont. It was to be the beginning of a long friendship between the two, as well as the opening shot of the greatest civil war in the history of the clan.
As early as 1901, Alfred had begun seeing Alicia Bradford and they in turn were seen on picnics together. Rumors started to fly along the Brandy-wine. Alicia’s mother was Eleuthera DuPont, daughter of the original Alexis I. Alicia’s father was the stern judge of the U.S. Circuit Court, Edward Green Bradford. The Judge got wind of the meetings and became furious. He wanted them stopped—immediately! Alfred was still a married man, and if he wasn’t, that was worse: then he was a divorced man!
Alicia became very frightened. Her father was a domestic tyrant who ruled over her life. “As a child,” she said years later, “I was frightened all the time—terrified of everything. Suddenly it came to me that my father was the cause of this. He had wanted me to be a boy.” 2 Alicia could not see Alfred, at least not this way.
Alfred then introduced Alicia to George A. Maddox, a handsome but not too bright boy employed by DuPont Company. Over the Judge’s objections, he arranged clandestine meetings for her and Maddox. Suddenly they shocked the family with their announcement of plans to marry. Alfred made all the arrangements, even setting up the Christ Church for the wedding. After the ceremony, he gave them a DuPont home, Louviers, the estate of Admiral Samuel DuPont. When word came that Alicia was almost immediately pregnant, the whispers along the Brandywine flew faster than the river itself.
Alfred immediately rewarded Maddox with a promotion. He became regional superintendent of black powder plants in the Midwest, jumping over more experienced men in line for the job. This position kept Maddox away from Alicia most of the time. But Alicia was seldom alone. Alfred became a constant visitor.
In 1903, the year Bessie gave birth to Alfred’s fourth child, Victorine, Alicia Maddox also gave birth to a daughter. She was named Alicia, and reportedly had unmistakable DuPont characteristics, obviously from her mother’s side.
For the next three years, while Maddox was usually hundreds of miles away, Alicia continued playing hostess to Alfred. In April 1906 Alicia lost her second child, a boy. The death must have been a shattering blow to her. She publicly drew ever closer to Alfred. It must have also affected Alfred. Within a month, moved out of pity for Alicia’s unhappiness, he filed for divorce.
In December Alfred’s divorce from Bessie was granted on the grounds of mental cruelty. From that day, Coleman grew less tolerant of his troublesome cousin. Then Maddox suddenly handed Coleman his resignation. A Philadelphia newspaper later reported that he was bringing suit against Alfred, but that he suddenly withdrew the suit before filing a bill of particulars.
The mystery grows deeper. Alicia suddenly disappeared. Far from prying family eyes, she was secluded in a mansion in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She had secretly filed for divorce from Maddox and was awaiting its approval. On October 8, 1907, her waiting was ended. One week later Alfred and Alicia were in New York together. There they were married. The indefatigably improper Maurice DuPont was the best man.
The news hit the Brandywine like a blockbuster. “Al, now you’ve done it,” Coleman warned his cousin when he returned. “The family will never stand for this. Don’t you think you’d better sell out to me and get away from here?” 3
“I’ll see the family in hell first!” replied Alfred.
That kind of talk was family treason. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Alfred also turned his back on the company. He announced that he would not stand by the firm or accept any responsibility for it in the coming U.S. federal suit. Instead, he filed a motion to have his individual case separated from the company’s and dismissed. He denied knowing anything of the Gunpowder Trust, of Coleman’s companies, Delaware Securities and Delaware Investment, of any wrongdoing—of which the government was proving there was plenty. After three days of testimony, Alfred’s case was dropped by the government.
Coleman and Pierre were speechless. Although Coleman had also taken leave, claiming illness, and never appeared in court, at least he didn’t separate his claim of innocence from that of the company. In retaliation, Alfred was soon dropped from the company’s finance committee, allegedly for his deafness. Coleman’s in-law, Hamilton Barksdale, took Alfred’s place, while Pierre was made acting president during Coleman’s absence.
“The Count,” as Alfred was called by the family, was not through yet. After marrying Alicia, he refused to visit his children at Swamp Hall, probably at Alicia’s encouragement. Alfred’s daughter Maddie finally left Swamp Hall to join her father at his new Brandywine estate, Rock Farms. But Maddie didn’t stay long. She soon eloped to France with a Princeton undergraduate, John Bancroft, Jr., son of a wealthy textile manufacturer in Wilmington. Despite a hurried announcement of her pregnancy, Maddie’s marriage didn’t work out. Her husband soon threatened to sue her for divorce on the grounds of her admitted adultery with a young German student, Max Heibler, during their honeymoon. Bancroft cited Maddie’s newly born infant as a co-defendant named Max Heibler, Jr. Alicia, anxious to avoid scandal, intervened with promises of treasure and threats to “rip the hinges from any Delaware closet, DuPont cabinets among them.” Bancroft’s adultery suit was suddenly amended to desertion, and subsequently withdrawn. But by the arrival of a second child, Bancroft could take no more. A divorce was applied for and granted. Maddie remained in Germany, eventually marrying Max Heibler.
Somehow, Maddie’s letters on her marriage woes reached Coleman’s hands. It is not known whether he immediately turned them over to Alfred, but when he did, Alfred was furious, believing the letters had run the family gauntlet.
Alfred’s relations with Coleman deteriorated even further after that. By 1911 the two cousins were bidding against each other for property along the Brandywine. Coleman, as usual, won.
Alfred realized his grip on the company was slipping fast, but he was helpless to stop it. His previous indispensability in the firm continued to decrease with the decline of black powder. In 1910, despite the fact that black powder sold 500,000 pounds less than in 1904, Alfred built a half million dollar plant at Welpen, Minnesota. It was a triumph of monumental vanity and stupidity. At this point only the ties of family could hold him in the firm, and those he had literally told to go to hell.
Awaiting his inevitable fate with the company, Alfred contented himself with buying a new yacht, which he named “Alicia.” Then he halted his donations to the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra because of a snub to Alicia by Wilmington society circles. As a result, the orchestra was forced to disband.
Ugly rumors began to float around about Alicia’s previous marriage, causing Alicia to cringe and Alfred to grow frantic in rage. He traced them all down to two people, Mrs. Mary Bush, a widow of a Wilmington manufacturer, and Alicia’s stout aunt of 57 years, Elizabeth Bradford DuPont. Then Alfred did the unthinkable. He publicly filed legal suit against both women for slander. It wasn’t long before Philadelphia papers picked up their hottest “society” story of the year. The Philadelphia North American called it “The Women’s War that convulses Delaware.” 4 Even the New York World reported that the rumors about Alicia DuPont “are of such a nature that they cannot be published.” 5 The New York Sun exposed the family’s futile efforts to hold off Alfred, and named more DuPont women who could be expected to become involved: Victorine DuPont Foster, sister of Senator Henry A. DuPont; Alice DuPont Oritz, Elizabeth Bradford DuPont’s daughter; Eugenie Roberts, niece of Elizabeth Amy DuPont, spinster daughter of the late Eugene; and Mrs. Henry A. Thompson. 6
There was a family outcry. Alfred had gone too far. Elizabeth was the widow of the late Dr. Alexis DuPont, and Mrs. Bush’s adopted son had also married Alicia’s younger sister, Joanna DuPont Bradford. Alfred had involved the whole clan and it could not stand by and allow him to publicly drag the name of DuPont through the gutter. Private rumors were one thing; public suits were quite another.
Alicia’s aunt ran to her son-in-law, attorney Thomas F. Bayard, Jr., of an old distinguished family that had placed four of its members in the U.S. Senate. Bayard, a Democrat, wanted to be number five, but he needed DuPont support. He took the case gladly.
Mrs. Bush ran to May DuPont’s husband, attorney Willard Saulsbury. Although Saulsbury was no friend of “that tribe” which Coleman, Colonel Henry, and Pierre represented, he agreed to take the case. Saulsbury, it seems, also had designs on a Senate seat.
The case dragged on for months, and still Alfred filed no bill of particulars. The newspapers were slaughtering the carefully cultured DuPont image, which didn’t help build popular sympathy for the clan’s defense against the government’s anti-trust suit. The family begged Alfred to come to reason, to think of the family as a whole. When that didn’t work, they tried threats, Finally, Bayard and Saulsbury wrote to Alfred’s lawyer, J. Harvey Whiteman, warning him that unless a bill was filed within thirty days, the defense would move for nonprosecution.
Whether Alfred had proof or not will never be known. Four days later he withdrew the suit in the interest of “family honor.”
But Alfred had his personal revenge. He moved into Nemours, his new $2 million palatial estate of five square miles. It included sunken gardens, greenhouses, and two grilled gateways of bronze, one from Wimbledon Manor in England, the other from the Russian Imperial Palace of Catherine the Great. But the center of attraction was the mansion itself. Built of limestone, an architectural blend of French chateau and Southern plantation, it stood three stories high, had seventy-seven rooms, and housed scores of servants. Art treasures were scattered throughout. The drawing room alone, for instance, had a seventeenth-century rug worth $100,000. In the basement, “the Count” kept an arsenal of weapons, including a machine gun and a small cannon. As if that were not enough to discourage unwelcome visitors, Alfred surrounded the entire estate with a nine-foot-high stone wall at the top of which were embedded pieces of sharp broken glass “to keep out intruders, mainly of the name of DuPont.” 7
The family took the hint and stayed away. But Alfred had just begun to take his personal revenge. As he moved into Nemours, he evicted Bessie and the children from Swamp Hall. Then he had their home completely demolished. Alfred, of course, met his family obligation. He increased Bessie’s annuity by $1,200 to cover the rent for a home in Wilmington, a very generous offer, he believed, from a man then grossing over $400,000 every year from his holdings in DuPont Company alone.
The clan was appalled. Never had such ruthlessness been seen within the family since the original Irénée had cheated his stepsister. The family feared it was plunging to new lows.
Not low enough, as far as Alfred was concerned. When the federal antitrust case ended with a conviction after four years and sixteen volumes of testimony, Alfred refused to agree to an appeal.
It was the final act of family heresy. Family feuds could always be healed, but company rifts required deliberate action. The appeal went on, but not Alfred. In a prearranged meeting of the executive committee in January 1913, Alfred was relieved of all operating duties as general manager and vice-president. Crushed, “the Count” sailed for France to lick his wounds.
They had good reason to hope. After distinguishing himself with his anti-labor decisions on the Ohio bench, Taft became head of Roosevelt’s War Department in 1904. It was he who showered DuPont with such profitable contracts. When this great admirer of John D. Rockefeller ran for the presidency in 1908, T. Coleman DuPont offered a donation of $20,000. Taft, however, decided not to repeat Roosevelt’s mistake and risk the possibility of bad publicity, but assured Coleman of his sincere friendship with the Delaware family.
Coleman was more than a friend. He was the national director of the Republican Party’s Speaker Bureau and a member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee. When criticism arose over his affiliation because of the anti-trust case, Coleman prudently handed in his resignation to Taft on September 22, 1908. Six days later he wrote Taft of his full support in the coming election. Coleman’s support meant something. “The General,” as he was later called because of his appointment as general of the Delaware National Guard, controlled Delaware politics like a feudal lord since he became Colonel Henry’s campaign manager in 1906.
After his election, Taft showed his appreciation by offering the office of Secretary of State to a DuPont lawyer, John C. Spooner. The former senator from Wisconsin decided to decline, the DuPont's bowing to the demands of John Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon, who wanted to put in their own man, Senator Philander Knox. Instead, the office of Attorney General was given to George W. Wickersham, the very DuPont lawyer who had counseled the building of the Powder Trust.
President Taft and Colonel Henry DuPont were close political colleagues. When Taft was campaigning for president, it was Colonel Henry who hosted a dinner in Delaware in Taft’s honor attended by many DuPont luminaries. Henry, a supporter of high tariffs that would protect industries like DuPont, felt no hesitation about writing Taft at Hot Springs, Virginia, right after the election explaining his position on reciprocity. 8 Henry even enjoyed occasional music and dinner at the White House. 9 When the old Junker of Delaware was maneuvering for reelection in 1911, Taft feared another national scandal and suggested that it would be “very advantageous” to Henry if his aides were to pay a visit to that maker of presidents and public image, Senator Mark Hanna, so that Henry’s candidacy would be handled “in the proper light.” 10
The visits were made but the light was not very proper. Henry bought the election and everyone knew it. “It is common testimony that in all the shameful history of the State,” wrote the New York Evening Post, “money was never used more freely and more openly about the polls than this year.…"
The only person who had the most at stake in the election of a Republican Legislature in Delaware is Senator Henry A. DuPont who is a candidate for reelection,and the only Republican candidate whose name will go before the Legislature, so far as is known. The only known reason for spending large sums of money to elect a Republican Legislature is to insure the choice of a Republican for U.S. Senator.
“Who is so interested,” the Post went on, “in the choice of a Republican for Senator as the candidate upon whom the choice will fall? That is why one hears such bitter talk in the State about the way money was used to buy votes to make Republican the next legislature which, barring the unforeseen, will reelect Senator DuPont.” 11
Beverly Robinson, a niece of Henry’s, was in New York at the time this article appeared. She was a lawyer with the Wall Street firm of Mason and Nichols. Embarrassed, she wrote her uncle suggesting he sue for libel. Henry chose not to take her advice.
Instead, Henry launched a purge in Delaware’s Republican Party, ousting all but the most loyal. One of those less fortunate was R. Layton, U.S. Treasury Department auditor for the state records. Henry told Layton the party could frankly do without him. 12 President Taft didn’t mind this attack on a government official, especially when the Delaware platform carried such praise for the President. For this support Henry received Taft’s personal gratitude. 13 On Henry’s reelection, Taft wrote him a warm note of congratulations. 14
But the Colonel’s woes were not over with his reelection. His crude methods during the campaign inspired the founding of the Anti-Bribery League after the election. The DuPont's were worried. Charges of corruption and federal suits were flying around their heads. It had to stop. A new public image had to be built about them, one that would bring them respect, the kind of respect that protects wealth.
Coleman had already begun the campaign. On February 11, 1910, he wrote Bessie, Alfred’s divorced wife, for information that she might have for the company’s publicity. 15 Colonel E. G. Buckner, DuPont’s military salesman, wrote Coleman on March 21 regarding the company’s efforts to supply propaganda to the press concerning the country’s munitions buildup. “I think you should be very guarded in giving anyone the impression that Admiral Evans was being in any way coached by you or any member of the Company.” 16 Buckner knew that if Coleman’s name was associated with Evans’ article, it wouldn’t be used.
Coleman liked a professional job, so he hired the public relations firm of James J. Archibald. “We have tried to develop a plan,” wrote Archibald’s L. B. Lewis to Vice President Haskell, “that would result in getting into the general newspaper field, and have made headway. We have in mind a proposition that would, if carried out, comprise about 1,500 newspapers, through which avenues we would be able to reach the public with such matters as would be of general newspaper interest and of benefit to the Company.” 17
By May 13, 1910, the campaign was underway. Coleman wrote instructions to his public relations firm on an article by Admiral Evans, former Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet and its famous tour of the world in 1907–8. The article, entitled “Preparedness,” was complimentary to DuPont Company and stressed the need for having military supplies like DuPont powder constantly available in huge stockpiles. Coleman affirmed that Admiral Evans should be subsidized for his efforts and then listed specific magazine targets for its publication: Harpers, Century, Hampton, World’s Week, and Scribners. 18 Although the article was never printed, it is an example of DuPont’s method of manipulating its public image.
DuPont was a pioneer in corporate deception of the public. In 1915 Pierre asked Bessie to write a complimentary history of the company. 19 She complied.
Coleman’s publicity campaign probably bolstered Taft’s inclination to go easy on DuPont in the anti-trust case. Taft wanted to basically continue the progressivism of Roosevelt and frowned on the thought of formal regulation completely replacing informal détente between monopoly’s collective government and individual monopolies. Taft preferred cooperation, and this extended to the DuPont case.
On June 12, 1911, the U.S. District Court in Delaware (with Du Pont in-law Judge Bradford markedly in absentia) found the DuPont's guilty of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But the court offered the first family of the state a back door. It emphasized that since over a hundred corporations had been taken over by DuPont, “the impossibility of restoring original conditions in the explosives trade narrows the field of operation of any decree we may make.” 20 The decree was indeed narrowed. It directed the government and the family to jointly decide how the Trust should be reorganized. That meant that the DuPont's would be allowed to decide their own sentence!
Coleman perhaps chose not to tip his hand and applaud the verdict. Actually, he was genuinely angry about being found guilty. He still could not see anything illegal about the Powder Trust. In a memorandum to company employees, he handed down the company line, charging Taft and the federal courts with corruption. “The Courts are human beings with ambitions and desiring to go forward. Their only chances of going forward are two, first, by popularity getting a nomination in a good political position, second, by being appointed to a higher judicial position. Neither of these would be possible if a decision was rewarded in opposition to the policy of the administration or in opposition to the popular cry against corporations.” 21 Coleman claimed the court hadn’t even read the evidence 22 and charged that Waddell was really a blackmailer who left the company in order to force DuPont to buy him out at a profit. 23 Waddell’s letter of resignation showed another kind of man, however, a man who was simply disgusted with Coleman’s heavy-handed policies. And Coleman’s charge did not belie the fact that Waddell had refused to accept Coleman’s offer to buy into Waddell’s Buckeye Powder Company.
Coleman cooled his temper, however, long enough to meet Taft’s Attorney General at the wealthiest, most fashionable and prominent social club in Washington. Both Coleman and George Wickersham were members of the Metropolitan Club at 17th and H Street. There, they conversed on the case, Coleman even handing his former employee the company’s legal position. 24
That done, Coleman next wrote a letter to his business partner in building the McAlpin Hotel in New York—Charles P. Taft, the President’s brother. “I feel so morally certain that your brother does not want to do an injustice to anybody and if he was morally certain that the rectifying of an injustice could be of the greatest benefit to him as well as to ourselves.… my judgment is that it would be of great help to him in the future.” 25
Indeed, Coleman was a great help in the coming year’s presidential election. He geared the political machine he had built in Delaware to absolute support for Taft and, as a Republican national committeeman, personally endorsed him for renomination.
The President, however, was not interested in publicly endorsing Coleman DuPont. To Senator Frank Allee he denounced “the General” as “slippery as an eel and crooked as a ram’s horn.” 26 He had good reason to feel this way. The latest episode of DuPont corruption had been written in the halls of the Senate just a month before.
In a public blast against “that tribe,” Willard Saulsbury had charged Senator Henry A. DuPont with buying votes during the 1910 election. Colonel Henry had selected a Sussex County Republican, Cornelius Swain, as U.S. Marshal; Saulsbury claimed that Swain had used DuPont money to buy votes. The charges, coming in the wake of the previous electoral scandals and DuPont’s monopoly conviction, were splashed across the nation’s headlines. Now it was all out, and just when Henry was thinking of another ocean cruise.
A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections investigated, as Henry broke into a cold sweat. Witness after witness took the stand, including Senator Frank Allee, testifying under oath that on November 5, 1909, Henry gave Kent and Sussex County Republicans $53,000 for illegal use in the state elections the following Tuesday. At a meeting at DuPont offices in Wilmington, according to the testimony, Swain was handed his $3,000 share by Coleman DuPont and Caleb Layton.
Swain’s attorney, Daniel O. Hastings, admitted that his client was given the money. But Swain himself never testified. A secret conference between Colonel Henry and Attorney General Wickersham resulted in Swain’s being allowed instead to submit a written defense claiming he wasn’t aware of the contents of the package Coleman had given him. 27 Henry, in turn, admitted giving the money, but claimed ignorance as to the purpose for which it was used. 28 Coleman never testified and the case was dropped.
On February 23 an enraged Senator James Reed of Missouri called for a more thorough investigation of Henry’s election. He repeated his demand on February 28, but the “Senate Club” was not to be moved. The honor of the Senate itself was now at stake. Reed finally gave up.
President Taft found little comfort in Senator Reed’s defeat. Whitewashes can be politically dangerous, particularly when they protect a leading member of the infamous Powder Trust. He wanted no part of a suggested secret meeting with the Powder Trust’s president and rumored briber, Coleman DuPont. Senator Allee was in sympathy with the President’s fears and, after consultation with Pierre, who was wiser than Coleman about effecting a settlement with the government, suggested a meeting with Alfred DuPont instead. With the government-DuPont recommendation due in court in two months, Taft had little choice.
Alfred arrived at the White House looking fully the role of the economic power elite. Splendidly attired in a silk hat and morning coat, Alfred was out to do what most businessmen were doing to William Taft: bluff him into submission. With former DuPont lawyer Wickersham on hand as Taft’s Attorney General, Alfred took his seat in a conference room, looked firmly into the President’s eyes, and calmly threatened to throw a million people out of work unless DuPont was permitted to keep its 100 percent monopoly on military smokeless powder.
“Do you mean to threaten the United States government?”
29
thundered Taft.
Of course not, replied Alfred quietly, and then calmly repeated his threat of closing the plants the nation depended upon for commercial explosives. Taft’s resistance collapsed; he never dared to mention the possibility of government intervention to reopen DuPont plants as it had reopened the country’s railroads during the Pullman strike. The Dollar Diplomacy of armed intervention was for Big Business, not against it. The government of the United States, which could invade whole countries in Latin America, was simply no match for the DuPont's of Delaware. Within a few hours it meekly surrendered.
Supplemental court hearings then began for DuPont’s reorganization. It was a colorful circus with Alfred as ringmaster. A long line of army and navy officials paraded before the Court, including Admiral Knight, President of the Joint Army and Navy Board on Smokeless Powder; Admiral Twining, Chief of the Navy Ordnance Bureau; General Crozier, Chief of Ordnance of the Army; and many reputed DuPont stockholders clothed in brass—all demanding that DuPont be allowed to continue its monopoly over smokeless powder.
Coleman, with victory within his grasp, was still not satisfied. While shying away from the court (and therefore by legal necessity, the company), he still insisted that DuPont had a right to be a monopoly, Sherman Anti-Trust Act be damned. Taft by now felt Coleman should be damned. Twice before the Court’s decision, on April 15 and June 10, he tried to reassure Coleman with the favor of special exemptions for DuPont from the official prohibition on exports to Mexico, which was torn at the time by revolution inspired by contending American and British interests. In both cases, shipments of DuPont fuses for dynamite were excused as “not to be used in promoting conditions of domestic violence which I have found to exist in Mexico.” 30 But Coleman still wasn’t satisfied.
“The businessmen are fools,” Taft wrote angrily to his brother Charles, “like some of the voters. For a time they don’t see their real interest; they don’t have the power of discrimination. That man T. Coleman DuPont is one such man. I have no use for him whatsoever. They do not see beyond their noses. They only think of their own particular interest and don’t take a broader view. They are in favor of special privilege in the sense of having themselves favored and everybody else prosecuted. That is the attitude of Gary and Perkins* and DuPont and others.” 31
On June 13 the Court handed down its final decree, called by one family historian “one of the outstanding farces of American judicial history.” 32 DuPont, the Court held, would be broken up into three separate companies: DuPont, Atlas, and Hercules. The two new companies were given plants for general explosives, but DuPont was allowed to keep its entire monopoly on military smokeless powder. Coleman’s trust had all but survived the ordeal unscathed. In fact, Atlas and Hercules were new in name only. DuPont executives filled their ranks from top to bottom. DuPont family members still controlled the stocks and bonds of both companies. Alfred DuPont, for example, alone held $757,000 worth of Hercules’ 6 percent bonds. Atlas and Hercules even set up their central offices in Wilmington, right across the street from DuPont headquarters.
It was an exemplary step in the pattern of progressivism: keeping companies separate does not necessarily mean competition. 33 Through government and business cooperation the marketplace is temporarily stabilized through overseas expansion which allows a modicum of domestic rationalization. Taft understood this when two days before the DuPont decision he wrote that “operations are sometimes necessary to save the life of the patient.” 34
Generally, though the family disagreed, the patient certainly was healthy. DuPont’s assets in 1810 were some $109,000. Now they were well over $81 million with sixty plants in twenty-two states, and all at the bargain cost of over four hundred workers killed, thousands more maimed or wounded. Dividends reached $12 per share in 1910 and remained so for the next three years.
Parties and formal balls with French champagne flowing became frequent occasions for the DuPont's in their hotel’s rathskeller. Even Alfred agreed that this was more like Berlin than sleepy Wilmington. Alfred was actively back in the firm now as a member of the finance committee, his reward for the Taft negotiations. Coleman, having purged the company of Alfred’s followers, now felt that his cousin raised no real threat to his rule. Meanwhile, Alfred quietly bought the Wilmington Morning News and six downstate papers for the final battle he considered inevitable.
Coleman outpaced all the other DuPont's when it came to lavish spending in those
“golden days.” His gallstone operation in 1910 had kept him “sick” and out of court for
two years. But as soon as the case was over, Coleman emerged as healthy as a bull. He
immediately hit New York and set up a command post in a penthouse on top of his 21-
story McAlpin Hotel. Coleman became a big man in the world’s biggest town. He and
Charles Taft began building other hotels, including the famous Waldorf-Astoria. His
penthouse became the scene of frequent wild parties, often filled with the entire chorus
of a Broadway play. As for Elsie, his wife and former adviser, Coleman discarded her.
“One never sees her, never hears of her,”
35 commented a New York newspaper. Once,
when a manager showed him to a hotel suite, Coleman handed him two fetching
negligees left by a former occupant and told him, “Take these out and have them
filled.”
36
Every New Year’s Eve “the General,” as he became known, rode about the city in his plush limousine handing out $20 gold pieces to policemen for keeping order in an age of poverty and rebellion. Coleman was even made New York’s honorary police commissioner.
Coly was having a grand time. Sometimes he liked to share his good cheer by embarrassing others. He kept a box of loaded cigars on his desk for just such occasions. Sometimes he served flannel cakes to guests with genuine pieces of flannel in them. Once, during a vacation at his estate on the southerly marshes of Maryland, a New York banker friend complained that the privy at Coleman’s shooting box was too cold. Later the banker was startled when he sat on what he thought was some wild animal. Coleman had had the privy seat lined with genuine fur. Coleman’s jokes even extended to his family. Lammot DuPont, not the brightest member of the family, once arrived in New York only to realize he had forgotten who he was to meet. “Have forgotten name my 4:00 appointment,” he wired Coleman. “Please advise.” “Name your 4:00 appointment —J. P. Morgan,” Coleman replied. “Your name Lammot du Pont.” 37
But Coleman knew where his bread was buttered. “I exist in New York,” he explained, “but I live in Delaware.” 38 Wilmington was Coleman’s political base, and his ego could not be confined to the largest city in the world. “I’m going to build a monument one hundred miles high,” he boasted, “and lay it on the ground.” 39 The result was a 200-foot-wide highway smashing through Delaware’s farms from Wilmington to the border of Maryland, bringing the lower part of the “first state” under heavier DuPont influence. Coleman merely wrote it off his taxes as “charity” but years later that charity would greatly benefit the family’s attempt at centralizing the state and connecting the company’s nylon plant at downstate Seaford with the major eastern highways.
Colonel Henry also found Delaware to be a good political base. After the court’s 1912 decision, Henry more openly served his family’s company in the U.S. Senate. That year, Henry was one of the Senate’s leading opponents against a bill proposing that the Army and Navy build their own powder plants to supply their needs at cost. In 1913 Senator DuPont’s committee struck out a provision in a bill that would have placed a ceiling on the amount the government would pay for DuPont powder, while later establishing a $100,000 allotment for the crude beginning of an American air force.
In June 1914 Henry voted for exemption for American ships from Panama Canal tolls, in direct violation of the original canal treaty with Great Britain still legally in effect at the time. Clearly, Henry’s first allegiance was to the company, not to international legal rights. A fleet of DuPont ships used the canal as the main gateway to Chilean nitrate resources. Since the first Lammot DuPont had discovered soda powder, DuPont had been extensively involved in exploiting Chile’s nitrate. DuPont works were set up about eight miles inland from the port of Taltal, and by 1912 DuPont imported 77,578 tons of Chilean nitrate of soda. 40 Henry’s vote and influence were important to the company’s profits. Through its use of Chilean nitrate, DuPont had captured a monopoly on fertilizer in America. The government exemption on canal tolls was a subsidy to that monopoly.
In 1916 a revenue bill was pending that sought to raise $26 million partly by taxing the profit of munitions manufacturers. It wasn’t long before the Junker of Delaware was angrily snapping his riding whip. First he tried to have the bill killed in committee. When that didn’t work, he launched a vicious attack on July 24 on the Senate floor against those unpatriotic enough to support the bill; he forced a reduction in the tax.
Henry DuPont, of course, denied any connection with DuPont Company. When the federal anti-trust suit named him as a co-defendant, he moved to have his case dismissed because he had resigned from the company a year earlier to take his Senate seat. The Delaware court granted his motion, despite the fact that Colonel Henry had been on DuPont’s board of directors since the 1870’s and was a director at the time of Coleman’s incorporation of January 1906. Even Coleman’s attorneys admitted that Henry had “attended meetings of the Board of Directors of said Company from time to time.” 41 Henry didn’t even deny his knowledge of the Powder Trust; he merely claimed the Trust hadn’t intended to monopolize the powder market. 42 It was just an accident.
Some people weren’t fooled. As early as June 17, 1906, the Wilmington Sunday Star asserted “the powder trust knows the new senator intimately, as a child knows its father, and he knows the powder trust.” 43
Such revealing light made Henry wince. In 1912 he turned the light off. He bought a controlling interest in his journalistic critic. The Sunday Star was never critical again. But other Delawareans were not to be silenced. Henry should have gotten wind of the national tempo in 1912. That year, two DuPont's, Alfred and Coleman, headed the Delaware delegation to the Republican convention that renominated their friend William Taft. Taft, however, was no match for Woodrow Wilson. Upset by Taft’s incompetence, William Rockefeller had deserted Taft for an alliance with Wilson’s supporters from the National City Bank: Cleveland Dodge, J. P. Morgan, Jr., J. Armour, James Stillman, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co. Morgan forces also backed Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, which cut into Taft’s vote.
Taft’s support from the Mellon's and Carnegie was simply not enough. The DuPont's, although definitely among the social elite, were not yet in the same super league as Rockefeller or Morgan.
Colonel Henry disliked Wilson for being one of those “progressives.” Henry was proud to point to his record as being one of the least progressive in the history of the U.S. Senate. He was a violent opponent of women’s suffrage, voting against a proposed constitutional amendment in 1913. When women suffragettes asked to see him in Wilmington, he refused. Finally, in January 1914 he consented to honor them with an audience in Washington. After traveling all the way from Delaware, the women were greeted by the Junker’s icy stare and cold remark that he was firmly opposed to giving the vote to two million illiterate women.
But what Henry did not mention was that most of those women worked in factories, and Senator Henry, like most DuPont's, was no friend of the working class. As president of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad, he had forced railroad workers to toil for only a dollar a day if they wanted a job at a time when unemployment was high and starvation seen everywhere. Henry voted against many supposedly pro-labor bills, including the Clayton Anti-Trust Bill of 1914 and the eight-hour day of the Adamson Bill of 1916. Instead, Senator DuPont helped draw up the Volunteer Army Act of 1914 that paved the way for universal conscription of working-class youth into the Army. A rigid hawk, Henry had vigorously supported McKinley’s war in 1898, the “Big Stick” of Roosevelt, and the “Dollar Diplomacy” of Taft. When war broke out in Europe, this key member of the leading munitions family in America was as pro-war as anyone in the halls of Congress.
The country’s population wanted peace, however, especially the workers, and 1916 was a bad year for DuPont political ambitions. Wilson was reelected. Henry, now required by the Seventeenth Amendment to face election by the people, was not.
Henry’s machine had easily won him the nomination on the Republican ticket. By stuffing ballot boxes, shipping repeaters from one polling place to another, and intimidating independent voters at the polls, Henry’s forces captured a majority of the primary’s delegates to the Dover convention. There, his Committee on Credentials refused to seat fourteen independent Republicans from Kent County and the convention gave Henry the nomination. It also gave the people of Delaware nausea.
“WHAT HAS H. A. DUPONT EVER DONE FOR THE LABORING CLASSES?” asked one Delaware newspaper. 44 Another announced that it could no longer support Henry’s “DuPont or nobody” philosophy. 45 Then the antiwar Wilmington Every Evening revealed that Henry’s record of absenteeism in the Senate was the highest of any senator in the country running for reelection. 46 That year Henry bought control of the Every Evening, changing its position overnight from dove to hawk.
But other forces joined in on the attack, including labor unions. The Central Union and four brotherhoods of trainmen denounced Henry as “labor’s enemy.” 47 When the electoral returns finally came in, Henry’s ambitions had been thoroughly swamped by a tidal wave of rejection. But even more shattering to Henry was his belief that his defeat had been engineered by a member of his own family—Alfred I. DuPont.
He was right.
Alicia’s life grew sadder. Because of her failing eyesight, Alicia also was forced to give up her favorite pastime of riding thoroughbreds. Probably from all this, she had a bitter quarrel with Maddie, who then eloped to Germany. To add to the embarrassment, it was Coleman’s wife, Elsie, who paid for her passage.
Alfred also grew increasingly bitter, especially over the death of his last infant. He turned his wrath onto his son, Alfred Victor. He demanded Victor be sent to the Hallock School in Massachusetts, which Alfred had helped establish with a Morgan deputy, Charles Mellen, president of the New Haven Railroad. Bessie objected, but as Alfred was Victor’s guardian under Delaware law, the boy was sent.
With Victor out of Delaware, Alfred then began a secret campaign in Dover. There, in the sleepy House of Representatives, only the name of DuPont ever seemed to raise an air of excitement. This time it was an uproar.
Alfred had Democratic boss Thomas Bayard Heisel quietly support a bill to change Victor’s name to Dorsey Cazenove DuPont, hinting that Bessie was guilty of infidelity. Representative Swain of Delaware City and bribery fame rammed the bill through the Miscellaneous Committee and the House, assured by Alfred that there would be no opposition. “The Count,” however, had made one mistake: he underestimated his former wife. Bessie got word of Alfred’s action and frantically began contacting the DuPont's. The family was furious and, as if by some magic DuPont hand, the bill was recalled from the Senate to the House Miscellaneous Committee for hearings. In February 1913 Alfred DuPont appeared and testified that he believed his son would “bring disgrace” to his name, but refused details. The Committee was not moved by his arguments, especially when Bessie read a heartbreaking letter from Victor at school asking why his father was doing this to him. Alfred remained obstinate and forced the bill to the House floor for a vote, where it was finally defeated 17 to 15. Alicia’s brother, Representative Edward Bradford, Jr., was the only Republican who voted for it. Defeated, Alfred returned to Wilmington and the ire of the entire DuPont family.
Through this whole ugly affair, Coleman and Pierre had been Bessie’s staunchest defenders, but it was an uneasy alliance. Friction was beginning to build up between the talented cousins, for while Coleman was partying in New York, Pierre was facing the courts and was building the company as acting president in Wilmington. Then another point of friction arose in the person of William DuPont.
Willie, now shaggy in middle age, wearing a walrus mustache and gold-rimmed glasses, had been out of the firm since his divorce and second marriage, but he was still one of its largest stockholders and was entitled by all rights to a seat on the Board of Directors. Perhaps at Alfred’s urging, he requested that seat in 1911. Pierre flatly turned him down. Willie then appealed to Coleman. Coleman, always eager to show his heavy hand and generosity to family, agreed to support his claim.
It was a bad mistake for Coly. He was acting like an absentee landlord, countermanding Pierre’s decision in his typically insensitive manner. His brother-in law, Hamilton Barksdale, objected strongly and as a result of this quarrel he and Coleman were never close again. Pierre, knowing that Coleman would win, diplomatically chose the role of mediator. Pierre liked to side with winners, even if he didn’t agree with them. Willie was seated.
Three years later, like a modern King Richard returning from unholy crusades along Broadway, Coleman decided to journey to Wilmington and claim his throne. Pierre had actually been running the company for over six years by then, and he was soon at odds with his older cousin. Within a few months, relations between the two grew very tense. “In the summer of 1914,” Pierre later wrote, “T.C. [Coleman] suggested sale of his entire holdings in the Powder Company to me. The conversation leading to this suggestion had, as subject, the organizing of the company. He and I differed in our estimate of the value of some of our men and in our opinion as to the method of handling the company’s affairs. Without an intention to overestimate the situation, I might say that relations in regard to the company’s affairs were and had been somewhat strained … he evidently, in fact, openly did not desire to sell but explained his opinion that it was best under the circumstances.” 48
Coleman held off these plans when war broke out in Europe in 1914, feeling his organizational ideas were now crucial. Pierre disagreed, but Coleman went ahead with his restructuring anyway. His first target was the firm’s executive committee. Coleman felt that with an average age of 52, the committee needed younger blood. He suggested an incentive for younger DuPont executives. He would offer to sell to them 20,700 shares of his common stock at $160 a share. There was a reason other than company interest that compelled this move by the company president. Coleman needed cash for another of his big deals—the largest office structure in the world. Looming forty stories high over New York’s streets, the Equitable Building would have 2,300 rooms, according to Coleman’s plans, and it would cost over $30 million.
On December 10, 1914, Coleman put his offer in writing. By then DuPont stock had risen to 163 from November’s 127, with more rises expected in the next year with the war’s continuance. Coleman made his offer to the finance committee, also reorganized by him. Under Coleman’s new program, this committee now bypassed the executive committee, reporting directly to the board of directors. Control of the purse strings, Coleman explained, meant control of the company and that should always be in the hands of directors, not executives. He, Pierre, and Alfred were its members, and Coleman also added William. This shift left Barksdale, a member of the old executive committee who had now fallen out of Coleman’s favor, slated for green pasture. Barksdale had only one recourse: to support Pierre’s next series of moves to seize complete control of the company.
Coleman soon expected to have cash from DuPont Company, so he severed negotiations for the Equitable loan with his New York banker friends. Since his health was deteriorating, however, Coleman decided to leave the matter in the hands of the finance committee while he went to the Mayo Clinic for lung tests. “As I am going away today,” he wrote Pierre on December 14, “and do not know how long I will be gone, I have left the matter in Mr. L. L. Dunham’s hands.” 50 Dunham was Coleman’s secretary. Quietly, his ambition whetted by opportunity, Pierre watched Coleman’s departure like a hawk after prey. Already, he knew, wheels had been set in motion. Between the date of Coleman’s offer and his departure, Pierre had his brother Irénée offer to buy Coleman’s stock for $125 a share before the finance committee could meet. Coleman refused, but Pierre may well have foreseen Coleman’s rejection and may have only wanted Alfred to get wind through the family grapevine of the price he had offered.
At any rate, on December 23, a fateful day in Alfred DuPont’s life, the finance committee met to consider Coleman’s offer. Alfred introduced a resolution to accept Coleman’s offer but to advise “that we do not feel justified in paying more than $125 per share for this stock at this time.” 51 On an $8 dividend basis (which the company had paid to shareholders that year), Alfred pointed out that this was little more than a 6 percent return on investment. He did not think a smaller yield was attractive to the men, he explained; he considered the war’s duration uncertain and refused to stake everything on its continuation. Willie agreed, while Pierre craftily chose to vote negatively, as if he really wanted the company to purchase the stock and knew nothing of Irénée’s offer.
After the meeting, Pierre wired Coleman news of the two-to-one vote and his sentiment of support. He failed, however, to mention the all-important words of the resolution: “at this time.” This gave Coleman the impression that the offer had been turned down permanently. He also left the words out of the official minutes of the meeting, and skillfully managed to have them signed by Alfred and William unnoticed. The coup was under way.
Dear Coleman,
I have been intending to write you about the reception of your proposition by the Finance Committee. Unfortunately, Alfred, who approved the plan before you went away, got somewhat crosswise in the meeting and I think it best to let the matter rest for the moment, preferably until I can see you, before taking another step. 52
This was no confirmation of a “definite rejection” by the committee, as Pierre later claimed. Nor did Pierre mention Willie’s position in agreeing with the temporary rejection. Instead, only Alfred, who was already in bad straits with Coleman, was mentioned.
Pierre’s report from the finance committee to the board of directors also never implied a final rejection. “The committee expressed the feeling that we were not justified in paying more than $125 per share and asked Mr. P. S. DuPont to take the matter up with Mr. T. C. DuPont further.” 53
On January 6 Coleman had replied that he was disappointed with Alfred’s position and charged that “Alfred has some ulterior motive in mind” 54 and suggested withdrawal of his offer to the younger executives. Always appearing the model of integrity before Coleman, Pierre had written back on January 9 that Coleman should wait until he had a chance to talk with Willie. 55 Finally, at that point, Pierre did mention Willie, but only to secure enough time to gather financial support from Morgan banks for the purchase of Coleman’s stock. Although Coleman had agreed to wait, 56 Pierre never contacted Willie, who had left town for a few weeks, believing the matter would not be settled until Coleman returned.
On January 15, Coleman again offered to withdraw unless Pierre had talked to Willie and was already committed. 57 With his financial backing and DuPont securities now set up as a holding company for the coup, Pierre replied on January 18 that he had done neither. 58 Pierre then waited for Coleman to finalize the withdrawal to the executives and drop control of the company into his lap. He must have broken into a cold sweat when Coleman wrote back on January 20 that he should wait until he returned East “when I am sure we can work out some plan.” 59
Pierre immediately stepped up the operation. Pierre unleashed phase two of his coup.With Coleman’s offer to the company effectively stalled, Pierre now needed only some “emergency” to prod Coleman into selling to him.
At about this time a rumor began circulating around Wall Street that a prominent DuPont stockholder was about to sell his entire holdings to Germany. As DuPont was a major supplier to the British war effort, it was not long before Nobel, the great British explosives manufacturer (now called Imperial Chemicals), sent word to Pierre that one of its officials, a Mr. Kraftmeier, was en route for a secret meeting with him in New York.
On January 23 Pierre and Irénée met Kraftmeier at his New York hotel. With a personal discipline that would have swelled his great-grandfather, E. I. DuPont, with pride, Pierre managed a straight face as Kraftmeier explained that British Secret Service had uncovered plans to sell DuPont to German interests through Kuhn, Loeb, & Co.
Pierre told the Englishman he was mistaken and assured him of DuPont’s loyalty to the British cause. Two weeks later, however, on February 5, Pierre wrote to Coleman DuPont that the company was willing to sell munitions to Germany.
Pierre was also already aware that in the fall of 1914 one Captain Fritz von Rintelin, a German agent, had approached J. Amory Haskell, a major DuPont stockholder and director, to see if DuPont could be bought out. Haskell had rejected the offer.
Such belated rumors, however, were a great opportunity to throw suspicion on Alfred. Now Pierre could explain to Irénée why he wanted Coleman’s stock by any means. In the interests of patriotism to clients, he also contacted Coleman and informed him of the grave meeting with Kraftmeier. He never mentioned the Haskell affair; instead, he asked Coleman to sell his entire holdings for $200 a share to prevent Alfred either from buying another director’s holdings or perhaps from selling his to the Germans. Coleman, alarmed by Pierre’s warnings, gave his consent to a complete divestiture of his stocks.
Why did Coleman agree to sell out? Originally, he had only intended to sell 20,000 to 40,000 common shares. Pierre later claimed that Coleman was in financial need. But that seems hardly the case. The Equitable Building was not a crucial matter to Coleman’s finances. Pierre had used some 14,000 preferred and 54,000 common shares as collateral for Morgan’s $8.5 million loan. Coleman could easily have done likewise. In fact, 26,400 of that 54,000 common used by Pierre as collateral was Coleman’s.
The answer lies in an obscure letter from Coleman to Pierre, held by the younger cousin until its release on April 2, 1947. In this letter, dated March 17, 1915, Coleman wrote that Pierre was “in the saddle running things possibly against some opposition.” What opposition? Alfred’s? Undoubtedly, but Coleman realized he himself had opposed Pierre on many decisions. Pulling out was best for both the company and his own health.
Probably all this was sped along by Pierre’s hint that Alfred might be buying stock or dealing with the Germans to sell his stock. Coleman must have had more than a little doubt as to where Alfred’s sympathies lay. After all, Alfred’s daughter was in Germany and her husband was fighting for Germany, and Alfred had allied himself with anti-war forces in the Democratic Party. Besides, Alfred was always out to wrong him, Coleman commented at the time. Alfred and William “were after the stock,” he wrote Pierre. Pierre must have smiled.
On February 10 the finance committee met. As the meeting drew to a close, Alfred asked, almost as an afterthought, “How are the negotiations for the Coleman DuPont stock progressing?”
“Why, they are all off,” Pierre replied.
Alfred was shocked. “Since when?”
“They were called off shortly after you and Willie turned down the offer in December.”
Alfred exploded. “But they were not turned down! There was merely a difference of opinion as to price, and it was my understanding that you were to convey to T.C., through Mr. Dunham, that we believe the price of $160 a share excessive, and we suggested $125 as a proper price at that time.”
“That was not my understanding,” said Pierre calmly. “My understanding was that you turned down T.C.’s offer definitely.” 60
Willie then agreed that Pierre was mistaken and Alfred suggested that Pierre correct the mistake immediately. Pierre complied. Alfred then asked for copies of Pierre’s letters to Coleman on the matter.
Predictably, Alfred never received the letters. What Alfred had no way of knowing was that his younger cousin had made no simple mistake, but had acted with cold deliberation. Pierre had already set up his holding company, DuPont (Christiana) Securities, with which he planned to purchase Coleman’s stock and buy the loyalty of company executives with pieces of Coleman’s pie.
Instead of the Coleman stock letters, Pierre sent Alfred some of the letters pertaining to the Kraftmeier meeting. Alfred repeated his request, but Pierre never sent them. The draft of his January 4, 1915, letter to Coleman shows why: Pierre’s manicured fingers had clearly been planting the seeds of Alfred’s downfall. Pierre’s tight-lipped treasurer, J. J. Raskob, was hurriedly finalizing the arrangements for the sale, while Pierre and his associates, his brother-in-law R. R. Carpenter, his brothers Irénée and Lammot DuPont, and one or two others landed a $8.5 million loan from J. P. Morgan & Company. On February 20 Pierre was able to telegram Coleman affirming the purchase of all of Coleman’s stock, 63,300 common, 14,600 preferred, for $13.9 million: $8 million in cash, $5.9 million in notes payable. On February 22 Coleman replied with his own final confirmation.
On February 28 Alfred DuPont opened his morning newspaper to receive the shock of his life. “Coleman DuPont sells out to P. S. DuPont and others in company.” Pierre had seized control of the firm.
The “others” were executives that Pierre had frankly bribed with $125,000 pieces of
the Coleman DuPont pie. These men, Harry F. Brown (smokeless powder manager),
Harry G. Haskell (high explosives), William Coyne (nonmilitary sales), W. G. Ramsey
(engineering), and F. G. Tallman (purchasing), joined Pierre, Irénée, Lammot, and J. J.
Raskob in forming the DuPont (Christiana) Securities Company. Also on hand as
members were Robert Ruliph (Ruly) Morgan Carpenter, Pierre’s brother-in-law, and
Alexis Felix DuPont, brother of Francis I.
Alfred spent that Monday at his desk anxiously waiting to hear from Pierre. Finally, when no contact had been made by 4:00 P.M., Alfred telephoned Pierre and asked him to walk down to his office. Pierre arrived calm and composed.
“Pierre DuPont,” Alfred exclaimed, “don’t do this thing … It is wrong!”
Pierre quietly asked why.
“Because you have accomplished something by virtue of the power and influence vested in you as an officer of the company … For that reason the stock which you have acquired does not belong to you but to the company which you represent. I therefore ask you to turn this stock over to the company.” 61
Pierre calmly refused and left.
Alfred was not the only DuPont shocked by news of the purchase. Willie DuPont
discovered the news a day after Alfred did and he wired Pierre from his Georgia home:
“Paper states you have purchased Coleman’s stock. I presume for the company. Any
other action I should consider a breach of faith.”
62 Faith or not, Pierre was sticking to
his financial guns.
Francis I. DuPont called a meeting of all family members not in Pierre’s syndicate for March 4 at Alfred’s office. That night, Francis, Alfred, William, Eugene E., Henry F., Philip F., and Alexis I. du Pont were present. Soon, however, two uninvited callers walked in—Pierre and Irénée. After politely asking if they could be seated, they began a friendly chat on trite family affairs with their astonished relatives. For almost an hour this small talk went on, Alfred losing the initiative over the meeting’s direction. In despair, he disconnected his hearing box and stared at the ceiling. Pierre then suddenly asked Willie to explain his allegation of bad faith. Willie stated that Pierre’s use of the company name was in bad faith. Alfred and Francis supported Willie’s claim. Pierre obviously did not, despite the fact that all but one of the fourteen banks associated with Morgan Company in floating the $8.5 million loan to Pierre were depositories of DuPont Company, and that right after the loan the banks enjoyed increased DuPont deposits of over $7.4 million. But then, as Pierre later explained, any new injection of funds into DuPont’s treasury would result in a rise in bank balances.
In desperation, Alfred asked Pierre if he would sell the stock to the company. Pierre calmly replied that he would not and asked if there were any further charges against him. The room was silent, too silent for Alfred. Feeling he had the upper hand, Pierre added a touch of drama to the occasion by warning his relatives not to say behind his back what they could not say to his face. Then, as quietly as he had come, he left. 63 From that moment on, it was clear to all who was in the seat of power.
Two days later, trying to appear fair, Pierre announced he had decided to reverse his previous refusal to sell the stock. But at the following directors’ meeting, the offer was jeopardized by an alleged—and undoubtedly calculated—legal technicality. At a prearranged time, it seems, in walked John P. Laffey, the company lawyer, with a marked law book in hand and pockets bulging with a $100,000 share in Coleman’s stock. The lawyer explained that he considered it illegal for the company to invest more than its surplus of $7.5 million. For that remark, Laffey was soon rewarded with a director’s seat. Then William Coyne, his pockets likewise bulging, added insult to Alfred’s injury by insisting the board give a full vote of confidence to their leader, Pierre Samuel DuPont. It was unanimous. Alfred left the room in complete disgust.
Pierre’s offer was referred to the finance committee for a final decision. Only now the finance committee had a newly appointed member, Irénée DuPont. When Alfred and William moved to accept Pierre’s offer, Irénée blocked it. A clear majority of the complete four-man committee was necessary and Pierre, as seller, had abstained. It was all over. Pierre’s coup was now complete.
Alfred and Willie knew it was only a matter of time before it would be all over for them. Pierre had already replaced Coleman officially as president and had bought control of the board of directors. He even lured Henry F. and Eugene DuPont and three other in-laws, Charles Copeland, William Winder Laird, and Hugh Rodney Sharp, into his camp. In all the scrambling for Coleman’s power, Pierre’s shrewdness had put him on top.
Alfred’s cause won over quite a few members of the family. William, Francis I., Paul, Archibald, Ernest, Eleanor DuPont Perot, and Philip all lined up on Alfred’s side and all were to share his permanent exile from the family firm.
Alfred and William also continued the battle on fronts other than the courts.
To rival Pierre’s Wilmington Trust Company, they set up the Delaware Trust Company and built an office building in Wilmington across the street from DuPont Building. It was two stories higher so that Alfred and William could cast an aloof eye down on their hated neighbor. The buildings still stand to this day, both banks dominating northern Delaware’s finances.
Next, Alfred heard that Coleman was planning to run for President of the United States. The press, he read, had found Coleman at his new office in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. “I have received thousands of letters from small businessmen and farmers,” he said with all due modesty, “asking that I permit my name to be used.” 65 Two weeks later the Business Men’s Presidential League opened its lavish offices at Coleman’s Waldorf-Astoria, announcing that T. Coleman DuPont was one of America’s great businessmen and a likely presidential candidate. Coleman agreed. In June 1916 one of Delaware’s senators rose in Congress to make a speech calling for Coleman’s presidency. Coly, as humble as ever, was delighted.
At first, Alfred was confused. Could Coleman really believe he was a serious contender? Alfred considered Coly’s ego and answered in the affirmative. Yet there had to be another angle, one where Coleman could get something out of the campaign besides probable defeat.
The answer came on the wind of rumors that 78-year-old Colonel Henry, if reelected in 1916, would serve only half his Senate term and then have his hand-picked governor appoint Coleman in his stead. “That was my chief reason for throwing the Colonel out,” Alfred later explained.
If Alfred lacked cleverness in business, he was amply endowed when it came to politics. In alliance with J. Frank Allee, he button-holed twenty of the thirty-five New Castle caucus members at the Richardson Hotel in Dover and captured the election as National Republican delegate from New Castle County.
Colonel Henry was virtually caught with his pants down. He had been so sure of that election for himself that he hadn’t even bothered to attend. He left everything to Coleman, who was there to make sure the caucus sent its delegate to vote for his own nomination at the national convention. When Coleman threatened to take the fight to the Dover convention’s floor, Allee used the General’s presidential ambitions against him. Make it a floor fight, he told Coly, and you lose New Castle’s vote at the national convention.
Coleman retreated, but he failed to capture Alfred’s vote anyway. Alfred had the caucus’s resolution of “instruct” for Coleman changed to “endorse.” When Alfred went to the convention as New Castle’s delegate, he claimed the resolution’s wordage was too vague to be binding and voted instead for Theodore Roosevelt. Coleman received only 13 of 987 votes at the convention. “Bang! T. C. DuPont’s boom blows up!” ran the headline on Alfred’s Morning News. Coleman’s Business Men’s Presidential League closed its doors at the Waldorf, never to reopen. 66
Alfred used the same tactic to split the Republican Party on the state level and crush Colonel Henry’s reelection bid. He fully endorsed Theodore Roosevelt right up to the Republican national convention. Then he switched “loyalty” to the Democratic nominee for Henry’s Senate seat, Josiah Wolcott. Alfred was actually not too happy about Wolcott. He had proposed Alicia’s first cousin, Thomas F. Bayard, Jr., husband of Elizabeth Bradford DuPont, for the Democratic nomination. Instead, Wolcott, a supposed friend of labor, won. Faced with the choice of Wolcott or Colonel Henry, Alfred easily chose the former.
Almost at once, Alfred began feverishly writing a steady stream of checks for Wolcott’s campaign. His seven newspapers constantly played up union charges that Henry was “labor’s enemy,” and local labor leaders like railroad brakeman Ed Davis stomped through Delaware factories and churches repeating the question: “What has H. A. DuPont ever done for the working class?” To further split the Republican vote on which Henry’s machine was counting, Alfred raised the Progressive Party banner and ran Ed Bradford for Congress and Dr. R. R. Burton of Lewes for Henry’s seat in the Senate.
On election night Alfred invited family and friends to his Nemours estate to hear the returns. The first results came from Wilmington, Henry’s stronghold. The Colonel was having a hard time, a clear indicator of his impending doom statewide. By the last tallies it was clear that Wolcott had won, 25,416 votes to Henry’s 22,925. Burton pulled in 2,361 votes, but they weren’t even necessary to beat the old Colonel. Every Republican endorsed by Alfred’s Progressive Party won; all opposed by Alfred lost.
Nemours broke into celebration. Champagne popped and Alfred lit up one of his 50- cent cigars. “Nothing like a great occasion for turning over a new leaf. This is the last cigar I’m ever going to light.” 67 It was.
It was also one of Alfred’s last great victories in Delaware. For while Alfred was turning over a new leaf, cousin Pierre, undaunted and untouched, was turning the family business into a new order that was to dominate Delaware’s economy—and its politics —for most of the next sixty years. Building from Coleman’s careful blueprint, Pierre streamlined the company’s organization according to his own liking now, erecting one of America’s first modern corporations while racing to prepare DuPont for its crucial role in that worldwide orgy of mass slaughter known as World War I
Next
MERCHANTS OF DEATH
notes
Chapter 6
1. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Defendant’s Record, Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, II, 964.
2. Ibid., Testimony of Alfred I. du Pont, I, 446.
3. Marquis James, Alfred I. du Pont—Family Rebel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1941), p. 145.
4. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Testimony of Alfred I. du Pont.
5. Ibid.
6. Charles Wertenbaker, “Du Pont,” Fortune, November 1934, p. 180.
7. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 147.
8. John W. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor—A Profile of Coleman du Pont (Wilmington: privately printed, 1964), p. 8.
9. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 149.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (Baltimore: Reynal & Hitchcock, Inc., 1935), p. 160.
13. Walter Lord, The Good Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), p. 299.
14. See “The Industrial Replacement of Men by Women,” Industrial Commission of New York, March 1914.
15. Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor, April 17, 1920.
16. Lord, The Good Years.
17. Ibid.
18. See John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1907) and J. Van Vorst, The Cry of the Children (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1908).
19. See “Child Labor in Canneries,” Child Labor Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 4, February 1913.
20. Lord, The Good Years, p. 76.
21. Ibid., p. 51.
22. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor, p. 11.
23. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Petitioner’s Record Exhibits, IV, 1788, Government Exhibit No. 166, “Resolution of the Directors of the Delaware Investment Company”: also Ibid., p. 1756, “Resolution of the Directors of the Delaware Securities Company.”
24. Philip du Pont vs. Pierre S. du Pont, Petitioner’s Brief, II, 330–33.
25. Records of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Interview with R. S. Waddell, President of Buckeye Powder Company and former General Sales Manager of Du Pont Company; August 28, 1907, Selections from the National Archives.
26. Ibid.
27. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
28. See Leonard Leopold, “The Growth of American Foreign Policy and American Imperialism,” Problems in American Civilization (Boston: Heath & Company), 1969. 2
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
32. U.S. vs. Du Pont, et al. Petitioner’s Record, Government Exhibit No. 212, IV, 1959.
33. Ibid., I, 206.
34. Ibid., IV, 2106.
35. Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library.
36. Ibid.
37. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
38. Ibid.
39. R. S. Waddell, “More Facts on the Powder Trust,” June 1906, Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library. 40. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Petitioner’s Record, Government Exhibit No. 212, IV, 1959.
41. R. S. Waddell, “More Facts on the Powder Trust,” January 1907, Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library.
42. R. S. Waddell to Herbert Smith, Records of the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Corporations, National Archives, File No. 0–40-7, Record Group 122.
43. Calendar No. 6435, House Joint Resolution 224, 59th Congress, 2nd Session.
44. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
45. See Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945).
46. See Sigmund Diamond, The Reputation of the American Businessman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).
47. T. Coleman du Pont, “The Powder Case Briefly Stated,” Du Pont Company memorandum to employees, October 5, 1911.
48. “Du Pont—The Powder and the Glory,” Fortune, January 1935, p. 125.
49. Henry A. du Pont to Benjamin Harrison, July 11, 1892, Papers of Benjamin Harrison, pp. 31754–55, Library of Congress (photo print), Accession 825, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
50. Wilmington Every Evening, May 11, 1895.
51. Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 19, 1895.
52. New York Times, May 18, 1896.
53. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
Chapter 7
1. Marquis James, Alfred I. du Pont—Family Rebel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1941), p. 214.
2. Ibid., p. 193.
3. Ibid., p. 201.
4. Philadelphia North American, October 31, 1909.
5. New York World, December 5, 1909.
6. New York Sun, October 31, 1909.
7. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 227.
8. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
9. Taft’s visits were on May 11, 13; December 1, 1910.
10. Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Accession of letters from W. H. Taft, 442,665, R. 973, Library of Congress.
11. New York Evening Post, November 14, 1910.
12. Robert G. Houston to Congressman W. H. Heald, Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Taft letters, op. cit.
13. W. H. Taft to H. A. du Pont, September 8, 1910, Ibid.
14. Ibid., November 25, 1910.
15. Linda Diane Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont’s Correspondence, 1907–12” (Master’s thesis, University of Delaware, June 1969), p. 48.
16. Ibid., p. 50.
17. Ibid., p. 57.
18. Ibid., p. 60.
19. Ibid., p. 48.
20. U.S. vs. Du Pont, et al.
21. Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont,” p. 92.
22. Ibid., p. 94.
23. Ibid.
24. George W. Wickersham to T. C. du Pont, October 20, 1911, Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont,” p. 95.
25. T. C. du Pont to C. P. Taft, October 26, 1911, Ibid., p. 103.
26. J. F. Alee to A. I. du Pont, July 13, 1921, Papers of A. I. du Pont, quoted in James, p. 244.
27. Wilmington Morning News, February 14, 1912.
28. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
29. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 245.
30. W. H. Taft, Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Taft letters.
31. Ibid., W. H. Taft to Charles Taft, June 2, 1912.
32. John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (Baltimore: Reynal & Hitchcock, Inc., 1935), p. 167.
33. This fact remains to disprove William S. Dutton’s claim in his Du Pont—One Hundred and Forty Years (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942) that “Today, as diversified chemical manufacturers as well as producers of explosives, Hercules and Atlas rank among Du Pont’s most aggressive and respectful competitors” (p. 197). The modern interlocks between both firms and the Du Ponts persist for Hercules just as strongly today as they did in 1912, if not more strongly. It is of little surprise that Dutton, himself a Du Pont executive, described his own book as “the Du Pont Company as seen by Du Pont men. It is an ‘inside’ view” (“Introduction,” p. vii).
34. W. H. Taft to George W. Marshall, June 12, 1912, Taft letters.
35. William H. Carr, The Du Ponts of Delaware (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1964), p. 268.
36. John W. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor—A Profile of Coleman du Pont (Wilmington: privately printed, 1964), p. 4.
37. Ibid.
38. Carr, p. 279.
39. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty, p. 296.
40. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Records of the Bureau of Corporations, Entry 1, Department of Commerce, Social and Economic Branch. Selections: 1903, 1906–8, 1912–13, 1915. File No. 4480, M-62.11, R.G.122, Reel 1 (microfilm), EleutherianMills Library.
41. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Answer of E. I. du Pont & Co., et al., Pleadings, p. 108.
42. Ibid., p. 319.
43. Wilmington Sunday Star, June 17, 1906.
44. Wilmington Every Evening, October 30, 1916.
45. Milford Chronicle, October 13, 1916.
46. Wilmington Every Evening, September 19, 1916.
47. Wilmington Morning News, October 18, 1916.
48. Donaldson, Cave’at Venditor, p. 17.
49. Ibid., p. 18.
50. Ibid., p. 20.
51. Du Pont vs. Du Pont, Testimony of William du Pont.
52. Du Pont vs. Du Pont, I, 97.
53. Ibid., Testimony of P. S. du Pont, VIII, 19.
54. Ibid., I, 100.
55. Ibid., VI, 104.
56. Ibid., p. 114.
57. Ibid., p. 118.
58. Ibid., p. 126.
59. Ibid., p. 130.
60. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 259.
61. Ibid., Testimony of P. S. du Pont, VII, 25.
62. Ibid., Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, IV, 83–86.
63. Ibid., Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, VII, 89–92, 134.
64. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 281.
65. Ibid., p. 282.
66. Wilmington Morning News, May 20, 1916.
67. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 296.
Military officers weren’t the only friends the DuPont's had. Patrons for their deadly art were everywhere in Washington, particularly in the White House. President Theodore Roosevelt’s Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was met with great approval on the Brandywine. That American warships would protect the DuPont monopoly over Caribbean and Central American powder markets solidified the international cartel arrangements made a decade earlier.
Roosevelt’s Big Stick came down mercilessly in that area, paving the way for future American business expansion. In 1903 alone, Roosevelt landed U.S. troops in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Panama (as well as Syria). His greatest concern, however, was in Panama. There he intended to build a canal linking the Atlantic and Pacific naval and merchant fleets. That Panama was a territory of Colombia presented a problem at first. Attempts to pressure the Colombian senate to pass the Hay-Herrán Treaty giving the United States 100-year rights to the proposed canal met with defeat. Apparently the Colombian senate didn’t scare easily. Roosevelt’s response was typically Kiplan.
“Those jackrabbits—contemptible little creatures of Bogotá preventing the advance of civilization.” 28 Within months he was writing to agents in Panama. “How are things going on that revolution in Panama?” 29 Secretary of State Hay joined in by assuring Varilla, head of the Panama Canal Company, “The United States will not allow a revolution to fail.” 30 It didn’t.
Soon DuPont powder was blasting its way through Panama, and treasurer Pierre DuPont was chalking up higher and higher sales volumes. In the Caribbean, as in America, DuPont had a monopoly, and the digging of the Canal was not made any cheaper by noncompetitive prices for black powder and dynamite paid at taxpayers’ expense.
Between July 1905 and July 1906 the War Department presented the DuPont's with another token of their esteem: an order for 5,947,820 pounds of smokeless powder. The Delaware family showed its appreciation by charging 70 cents per pound for powder costing only 32 cents per pound to produce. Over $2.2 million was netted in profits.
Then another gift was laid on doorsteps along the Brandywine: an order for 300,000 pounds of powder for 32-caliber weapons. The powder had a net cost of 44 cents a pound, the Du Pont's charged 84½ cents per pound, profiteering another $230,000.
Such fraud, the Chicago Chronicle explained, “is greater than any profit ever derived by any seller of any product of staple sold in one year to the government in the history of the republic.” 31 But that wasn’t all. “The monopoly carrying on the business,” the Chronicle added, “was at the same time contracting with foreign nations to furnish ammunition with which they could attack American merchant men on the high seas.”
Where there is a demand, Coleman would say, there will be a supply. E. I. DuPont I would have been proud.
In 1906 Secretary of War William Howard Taft announced that the United States needed a reserve of 30 million pounds of powder to be adequately prepared for war. No one asked which war he was referring to, but one point was obvious: The Indian Head plant built by the government produced only one million pounds a year, all of it consumed in Navy target practice. Unless more government mills were built that could produce powder at cost (35 cents per pound) the War Department would have to pay DuPont’s price of 75 cents a pound. The Family would run off with a huge net profit of $12 million. One-tenth that amount would in one year build government factories that could produce the Secretary’s reserve at one-half the cost. Would the Secretary agree to build the plants? Taft gave his answer at the year’s end: He announced that the War Department had bought 6 million pounds of powder from the DuPont's that year.
Coleman’s head was swimming with power. In 1904, 50 cents was paid per common share of DuPont’s stock; in 1905, $3.50; in 1906, $6.50. One by one, Coly began to kill off the last independent competitors in America. First, American Powder: in 1909 it made $288,500; by 1907 it pulled in barely $30,000. The Lakeside Powder drew $60,000 in sales in 1905; by 1907, $23,500. 32 Then the Burton Powder Company fell under his financial blows; then the Cressona Powder Company; then Connell Powder. Coleman even turned on a member of his own family, Anne Ridgely DuPont, daughter of Eugene. Anne had married William Peyton, President of the Peyton Chemical Company of California. Over her protests, Coleman bought 3,000 of the company’s 6,500 shares and grabbed over $230,000 worth of Peyton’s bonds. Then he used the courts to win his claim of control. Soon Peyton was out of a job and a family rift began that was healed only by the salve of enormous profits under new management. Finally, only the Buckeye Powder Company of Peoria, Illinois, was left. That’s when Coleman’s troubles began.
6.5
ROBERT THE GIANT KILLER
The president of Buckeye was Robert S. Waddell. For twenty years Waddell had
served Eugene DuPont well as a sales agent, rising to become DuPont’s general sales
director. Because of his own shortcomings, Eugene gave a lot of independence to
individual department heads. But with Eugene’s death, the company drastically changed.
Waddell found the new president didn’t want men, but “puppets dancing on strings,”
puppets that sometimes were pitted against each other. Coleman swaggered into the
company molding everything in his own image, slashing here and building there, all the
while maintaining his characteristic insensitivity to employees.Waddell was disgusted. As early as March 11, 1902, Coleman was disputing with his sales director, trying to force the stubborn old-timer under his thumb. 33 But Waddell was not a man to bend to anyone, even T. Coleman DuPont. On November 25, 1902, after twenty years of efficient service with DuPont, Waddell resigned. “A definite policy for the conduct of the business along fair and just lines might have evolved,” he wrote Coleman. “Instead of this, your letter indicates that it is the purpose to thrust the heads of departments, like roosters, into a pit to fight for supremacy. The stakes are too small. I have never been involved in such a disgusting condition of business.” 34 Waddell insisted that he would not become “an automaton in a business machine.”
Waddell established his own powder company, the Buckeye Powder Company in Peoria, Illinois. Coleman, of course, was not very happy about this turn of affairs. First he tried to buy into Waddell’s company. Waddell refused. Then Coleman hired lawyers, detectives, and spies to harass Waddell’s young firm. Waddell filed his first formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor on October 19, 1903. “I have no desire to assume the role of a reformer,” he wrote Secretary George Cortelyou, “and have refrained from presenting this matter until it has become a necessity in defense of our business.” 35 But the harassment continued. Coleman sent agents to stir up the Peoria community against Waddell’s plant, spreading rumors that it was dangerous to the town. On March 3, 1905, Waddell filed another complaint against Coleman’s monopoly. “Mr. T. C. DuPont represents the American manufacturers,” he wrote Labor Commissioner James Garfield on DuPont’s trade agreements, “and furnishes the pooling data for associates.” 36 This complaint reached the Department’s Bureau of Corporations, but still no aid was given the beleaguered firm.
In 1906 Waddell’s firm, after two years of profitable business, finally began to falter as DuPont tightened its stranglehold, choking off capital reserves from Buckeye. Waddell then decided to fight back with bigger guns than complaints to government bureaucracies.
On June 16, 1906, Waddell published an open letter to the President and members of Congress exposing the DuPont's for their price fraud on brown and smokeless powder sold to the government. “Here is an absolute and exclusive monopoly,” he wrote, “superior to the government, entrenched at the Capitol, with its representatives in the House, Senate, and Departments.… It is not safe to entrust this DuPont monopoly with the most essential article for national defense, nor is it right to rob the people to build up this monopoly and fatten millionaries.” 37 No one could argue with that. Even Alfred had to admit he had put on a few pounds.
But Waddell’s language and facts grew stronger. “The market for the Government is cornered by a single group of conspirators,” 38 he said. If the government wants powder, Waddell pointed out, it must accept the bid of the DuPont Trust. “The welfare of the nation is in the balance against the DuPont Trust,” he concluded. “Our inquiry is personable and reasonable. Are you with the Powder Monopoly or the people?” 39
Apparently, Congress and the President couldn’t make up their minds. By the time 1907 rolled around, Waddell’s plant was slipping fast, his sales plunging from 1905’s $200,000 to $98,500. 40 One of the big factors in this decline was a mysterious explosion that destroyed Waddell’s plant.
Waddell was being ruined and he wanted revenge. Now no throne of power was too high to challenge—not even the President of the United States. Waddell turned the light on Theodore Roosevelt’s 1904 campaign closet and found a $70,000 DuPont skeleton. “If a $70,000 campaign contribution is sufficient,” he announced, “to obligate the executive and legislative department of the government to take $12 million from the taxpayers of the country and give it to the millionaires of this gigantic powder monopoly, the independent powder companies and voters of the country want to know it now.” 41
Waddell blasted the DuPont's again on February 2, calling for government-owned plants to break the government’s curious habit of providing charity for one of the country’s richest families. He charged that the DuPont's were frauding the government of over $2 million a year by charging 75 cents a pound for smokeless powder that only cost 31 cents to manufacture. It hit like a bombshell. The country’s headlines screamed his charges about DuPont donations to Roosevelt. Something had to be done.
On February 4, 1907, a mere two days after Waddell’s attack had rocked the sacred temple on the hill, Congress passed House Joint Resolution 224, directing the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to “investigate and report to Congress what existing patents have been granted to officers and employees of the Government of the United States upon inventions, discoveries, or processes of manufacture or production upon articles used by the Government of the United States, and how and what extent such patents enhance the cost or otherwise interfere with the use by the Government of articles or processes so patented.” 43
The government tried every method of placating Waddell. On February 20, Acting Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Corporations, Herbert Knox Smith, even wrote a personal letter of appreciation to Waddell.
But Waddell was not to be placated, especially since his firm had finally collapsed. There were now no independent powder companies in America. Waddell’s hated enemy, Coleman DuPont, was in absolute control.
Ironically enough, it was the DuPont's who then came to Waddell’s aid by imprudently trying to seize control of the National Rifle Association at its annual convention at Sea Girt, New Jersey. The convention broke up under charges of corruption, which tarnished the DuPont public image. Nevertheless, when it reconvened at the 71st Regiment Armory in Chicago, the battle, with all its slanderous charges and counter charges, erupted again and finally elected was James A. Drain of Olympia. Drain was reportedly the candidate of the DuPont Trust. 44
By mid-1907 a national furor had arisen against the DuPont monopoly. But Coleman still wasn’t worried. After all, he knew the federal government was no trust-buster, despite the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. This was the greatest merger era of all times, when mergers horizontal (same market) and vertical (different markets of production) were taking place at a rate of 500 per year. Roosevelt, in his eight years of office, despite all his verbalism about a “Square Deal,” initiated only forty-four legal actions, only twenty of which were strong enough to win indictments. Of these twenty, the Roosevelt administration produced only one anti-trust conviction, against American Tobacco Company, which was allowed to continue as a monopoly anyway using interlocking directorates.
The Justice Department accepted “the rule of reason” in court, holding that not all monopolies were bad. In fact, it contended, some were good. Competition was recognized as an increasing problem of instability and more and more of the new business nobility were coming to agree with J. P. Morgan that industrial stability must replace laissez-faire capitalism. In popular literature, Horatio Alger with his hard work, puritan ideas, and inevitable success became the hero of the age; individualism was no longer self-sufficiency but domination over others. J. P. Morgan became the exceptional individual, given the right to rule by God, a sort of new “divine right” of industrial kings. In social philosophy, social Darwinism warped the theory of evolution into a justification for political domination at home and abroad, and the United States became understood as a unique, higher expression of man’s values, a position that gave support to its “manifest destiny” to control a large portion of the globe. 45 Thus, both monopolies at home and imperialism abroad received the theological and philosophical icing necessary for popular consumption.
“Progress is our most important product” advanced the notion of the business corporation working for the common good, in an effort to improve the poor reputation of the business elite. 46 The individual can manipulate the economy for the common good, monopolists explained. There was nothing wrong now with government and business cooperating to stabilize the economy for the common good, even if that usually meant only Wall Street’s common stock returns.
Roosevelt understood progressivism for what it really was—an instrument of conservatism. It was the rationalization of the old order to meet the needs of a new monopolistic order. Like all American presidents, Roosevelt was no foe of business interests. Even as governor of New York, he stifled an investigation of insurance companies that involved political and business associates. Roosevelt favored an informal détente between corporations and their government to iron out wrinkles in the system. When Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle raised a national outcry over the filthy and dangerous working conditions in the nation’s meatpacking plants, the Pure Food and Drug Act was written in a form acceptable to both Armour and Swift, while providing restrictions that eventually eliminated smaller, fly-by-night competitors. Federal meatpacking regulations, therefore, served the interests of monopoly rule in the long run; workers were soon working in clean white gowns and aprons that were no doubt a victory for them in improving their working conditions, but still went home to tubercular shanty towns.
Often, however, Roosevelt found that not all big businessmen shared Swift’s or Armour’s level of consciousness as a class with a sense of history, consciously adjusting philosophically and politically to the changing needs of industrial growth under private ownership. To develop order and stability in the domestic market, formal regulation sometimes had to take the place of informal detente. The formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission was a conscious attempt to regulate the nation’s railroad system to the benefit of the general corporate order and Roosevelt’s call in 1904 and 1905 for firmer control over rates produced the Hepburn Act of 1906. The functioning of the Federal Trade Commission was along these lines. Its purpose was (and is) to inform business on future contours of domestic economic policy. Some corporations took its advice seriously. Some didn’t. One of these was Du Pont.
The Du Ponts were Neanderthals when it came to understanding Roosevelt’s corporate “liberalism.” They were not against a well-organized society; it was just that their only understanding of benevolent despotism was primitive, or rather, medieval in character, like their social-feudal colony on the Brandywine. Although they fully accepted their “right” to monopolize their respective industry, and fully identified as a class with those who did likewise, they were nevertheless the happy, greedy victims of their own laissez-faire propaganda, embracing the very individualism they used to deter their workers from considering labor unions. It’s not surprising, therefore, that they didn’t respond to Roosevelt’s corporate therapy. In fact, they fought it all the way.
Roosevelt was in a dilemma. He was faced with DuPont obstinacy just when he needed flexibility most from them. Public sentiment had been stirred against the Powder Trust and workers were again in the streets because of a new economic depression. Charges of corruption against his War Department were being raised in the halls of Congress. Even he had been linked to these charges by the exposure of the $70,000 DuPont contribution to his 1904 campaign. The President was frankly embarrassed by the whole affair. He had to act.
He did. On July 30, 1907, Roosevelt’s Justice Department filed suit against the DuPont's and their companies for violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
Coleman DuPont was in a foam. Roosevelt’s Attorney General, Charles Bonaparte, had promised to allow DuPont lawyers to present their case before a government suit was initiated, but the Attorney General had pressed ahead on Roosevelt’s orders. “We then knew from actual experience,” wrote Coleman in a company memorandum, “that the Attorney General was not to be depended upon and placed no more confidence in his department.” 47 At least, that Attorney General. Under the next administration, Coleman would find the Attorney General’s office very dependable. He would also receive the valuable services of the Chairman of the Senate Committee on War Department Expenditures, Colonel Henry A. DuPont.
6.6
THE JUNKER OF DELAWARE
Henry was one of those vain men who loved military titles and insisted on being called “Colonel” even after he retired from the Army in 1875 and joined the family firm. With his silver-rimmed glasses and carefully waxed Van Dyke beard, he looked as stern and stiff as the high collars he wore. A military man in posture since his West Point training, he took his talents for command with him into the family firm.
Henry’s first job with his father’s company was to demand rebates from railroads which freighted DuPont products. These railroads were at the mercy of their largest customers along their lines, the monopolies, including DuPont. When such giants of industry as DuPont demanded rebates, the rails had little choice but to bend. Henry was particularly good at whipping his swagger stick, so good that he even became president of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad and from 1898 to 1913 served on the Board of Directors of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
John “Gas” Addicks was the son of a minor Philadelphia politician. Born in 1841, he quit school at the age of 14 to go to work. But Addicks developed an energy and cunning that soon made up for his wooden spoon. At the age of 19, he went to work for a Philadelphia flour mill merchant, Levi Knowles. Within two years, he was Knowles’s partner.
Addicks was as clever as he was ruthlessly ambitious. It was he who introduced Minnesota Spring wheat to eastern farmers. From profits he accrued and political favors for local political ward-heeling, he was rewarded with gas franchises in Boston, Brooklyn, Jersey City, and Chicago. John Addicks then went into the illuminating gas business, from whence came his nickname, “Gas.” By watering stocks and manipulating contracts, he grew rich and maintained an eight-acre estate near Claymont, Delaware. He sold this estate in 1888, three years after moving to Boston.
The next year “Gas” Addicks rediscovered Delaware. Back from Europe, where he made millions from Siberian railroad stock, he used $25,000 to buy Dover legislation that netted him a return of $2 million. 48 Now this was the kind of state he liked! Unfortunately, he didn’t know that it was already claimed turf—DuPont turf.
Addicks was a big man. At least he looked big, with his expensive clothes and huge pearl stuck in his ascot tie. With a broad forehead and jutting brow, he was as impressive a character as ever walked into the sleepy town of Dover. Soon Addicks was a big name in Delaware. What he didn’t know as he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate was that another name was even bigger—DuPont.
When the 1892 election rolled around, Addicks offered $10,000 per legislature vote. He wanted the DuPont man, Anthony Higgins, out. Spending over $100,000, he gained control of the Republican organizations in the downstate counties Kent and Sussex. Only New Castle remained as solidly opposed as Henry DuPont’s stone walls. Colonel Henry had been at work. He even wrote a letter to President Benjamin Harrison requesting that Watson Sperry, editor of the Wilmington Morning News, be given a federal appointment that would take the independent editor out of Delaware politics. 49 Sperry had been supporting another Republican by the name of Massey for senator. Such a factional dispute could hurt Higgins just when Addicks was mounting his attack. Harrison, a Republican, took the hint. Sperry became a special envoy on a secret mission to Persia. The long arm of DuPont can take one very far. Higgins, meanwhile, was reelected.
In 1895 a new senator had to be picked by the legislature. These were the days when U.S. senators were chosen by state legislatures. It would be almost twenty years before the Seventeenth Amendment would give this power to the people, and until then, Delaware’s legislators jealously guarded their prerogative. (In fact, the Seventeenth Amendment was rejected by the legislatures of only two states: Utah, the dominion of conservative Mormons and Guggenheim copper interests, and Delaware, the Duchy of DuPont.)
Addicks now controlled six votes, not enough to elect him but enough to check a clear Republican majority and prevent anyone’s election. Higgins was then made to step aside and Colonel Henry DuPont announced his candidacy, expecting Addicks’s house of money to collapse. To Henry’s surprise, Addicks’s camp suffered only one desertion. It was still a deadlock. Henry was furious and just as stubborn as Addicks—and richer. At this point, either Henry or Addicks—depending on whom one takes as source—but probably Addicks, made a statement that would resound in infamy through Delaware’s history to this day: “Me or nobody!” Delaware got nobody. The personal feud between two individuals would keep Delaware from being fully represented in the U.S. Senate for twelve long years. One, and only one, each insisted, would be the victor; as it turned out, in either case Delaware was the loser.
After thirty-five ballots, the Speaker of the Senate, William T. Watson, declared no election and adjourned the legislature. Henry was outraged, insisting he would have his election. He got the Speaker of the House to declare that Watson’s decision was invalid. The grounds were amazing. During the balloting, Governor Marvel had died and Watson, as Speaker of the Senate, succeeded him under the state constitution. But the constitution did not prohibit Watson from continuing on as Speaker of the Senate and he did, casting his ballots during the election. At no time was his vote ever challenged. But after his ruling, DuPont forces, including the Speaker of the House, declared Watson had no right to rule as Speaker of the Senate and declared both his ruling and right to vote invalid. That gave Henry the majority he needed. The Speaker of the House issued a certificate of election and Henry moved to Washington demanding the Senate seat him.
Delaware was shocked by DuPont’s dishonesty. The Wilmington Every Evening repeated Watson’s right to vote. 50 The country was shocked also. The Philadelphia Public Ledger reiterated the position of the Wilmington paper, 51 and even the New York Times charged that Watson’s voting rights and ruling were “according to the state constitution and laws of all precedents in the state.” 52 Apparently the U.S. Senate agreed. On May 15, 1896, the Senate voted to refuse to seat Henry and sent him packing.
Colonel Henry returned to Wilmington a bitter man. For ten more years he waged a relentless war for the Senate seat. In 1898 his image was boosted when he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Civil War. The medal was a little late—thirty-four years, to be exact. But it was noted that this was a time when newspaper headlines were warning, “WAR IS NOW INEVITABLE,” and the government needed good relations with the DuPont's to prepare munitions at “reasonable” rates for war with Spain and expansion overseas. Nevertheless, Henry proudly wore his medal at all public appearances.
The following year Addicks controlled twenty-one of fifty votes in the Legislature; Henry DuPont held only eight. But the Colonel had inherited his father’s stubbornness; now it was definitely Henry who cried “Me or nobody!” In 1901 Addicks had twenty two votes but again Henry denied Delaware its right to Senate representation. In fact for the next two years Delaware had no representative at all in the U.S. Senate. By 1903 Delaware had become a national scandal; under Theodore Roosevelt’s pressure, compromise senators James Frank Allee and L. Heister Ball were selected for remaining Senate terms. By 1905, however, the feud was renewed for one of the seats and still a deadlock persisted. The stubborn Junker of Delaware refused to surrender, especially when he was about to bring up his biggest gun, the president of DuPont Company.
Coleman was as efficient in organizing the campaign as he was ruthless in his threats. Henry felt things were going so well, he sailed off on a European cruise to relax his nerves. In June, Addicks announced he was pulling out in the interest of the Republican Party, his twelve-year hold on the party smashed in one short year by T. Coleman DuPont. On June 12 the Republican caucus nominated Henry by a vote of twenty to ten. On June 13, 1906, he was elected U.S. Senator.
Eight hours before, Addicks boarded a Dover train bound for New York. He never returned. The copper market soon fell as the 1907 depression began, and Addicks’s fortune disappeared. As Henry sat in the halls of federal government, the government began to hound Addicks right out of business. A legal fight arose out of his gas deals and resulted in a federal court awarding $4 million against him.
Addicks was reduced to hiding from subpoenas, living in poverty. Still the hunt went on. Two years after his defeat in Delaware, process servers found him in a dreary Hoboken tenement, living under an assumed name, his gas and light turned off for nonpayment by a company he had once owned. For eleven more years the harassment went on, “Gas” Addicks finally dying in the slums of New York on August 7, 1919, a forgotten and broken man.
For Delaware, as for DuPont Company, Coleman’s “new order” had arrived.
Seven
DUPONT CIVIL WAR
7.1
ROUND ONE
THE BATTLE OVER OPERATION
All was not victory for Coleman DuPont in the first few years of his reign over DuPont
Company. In fact, the 1907 federal suit against the company would make these first
years with DuPont his only years. But perhaps his greatest thorn was his cousin and
vice-president, Alfred I. DuPont. Right from the beginning of the new order under the three cousins, differences arose between Coleman and Alfred. Coleman wanted to close the Brandywine mills. Alfred objected. Coleman wanted to move the company’s headquarters to New York. Alfred again objected. In both cases, Alfred won.
Alfred, in turn, was worried about Coleman’s increasing power in the firm. Frank, Charles I., and Dr. Alexis were all dead. Colonel Henry had left for Washington. To replace them, Coleman brought his western clerk, Lewis L. Dunham, and his father’s friend, Arthur J. Moxham, into the company. Furthermore, Moxham joined the board of directors, as did J. Amory Haskell, former president of Laflin and Rand, and L. R. Beardslee and James G. Reilly, both from companies which Coleman had bought out, as well as Henry F. Baldwin, Coleman’s brother-in-law, and Hamilton Barksdale, Mrs. Coleman DuPont’s brother-in-law. Baldwin, Haskell, Barksdale, and Moxham were all given bonuses to make them shareholders, and Moxham, Barksdale, and Haskell were appointed to the executive committee as vice-presidents.
Pierre also brought his brothers into this circle, Irénée taking the post of assistant treasurer, and Henry Belin, William Kemble, and Lammot donning overalls for the powder works. J. Amory Haskell also brought in his brother, Harry Haskell, and his trusted assistant, Charles Copeland, later to marry Pierre’s sister Louisa.
Alfred was relieved that Francis I. DuPont, Frank’s son and Delaware’s single tax pioneer, headed the Carney’s Point plant and joined him on the executive committee. But there were many new young DuPont's that Coleman was bringing into the company whose first loyalty seemed to be to the big man from Kentucky: A. Felix DuPont, second son of deceased Frank; Eugene, Jr. and Alexis I. DuPont III, sons of deceased Eugene; Eugene E. DuPont, son of Dr. Alexis; Victor DuPont, Jr., of the exiled Victor line; and Colonel Henry’s son, Henry Francis DuPont. And the newest addition to the Board, fat and lazy Victor DuPont, Sr., was no help whatsoever. Clear warning flags flew when Coleman set up his Delaware Securities Co. and Delaware Investment Co. Of each, Moxham was president, Coleman vice-president, and Pierre treasurer. Alfred had been left out.
Alfred was worried. He knew about Coleman’s infamous card tricks. He did not want to deal with a man who held a stacked deck, which is what the board of directors and junior executives were beginning to appear to be.
Other disputes arose. Alfred and Coleman debated over the eight-hour work day, the cause célèbre of the rising labor unions. Coleman felt it was better to take the steam out of labor organizers approaching DuPont plants by voluntarily instituting the eight-hour day. Alfred bitterly opposed Coleman’s plan. In 1904 an eight-hour bill was before Congress. On November 2 Alfred wrote the Secretary of Commerce and Labor of his opposition and hope that the workers’ bill would be killed in Committee and never reach the floor for a vote. Alfred’s argument was typically patronizing. He insisted that he, not the workers, knew what was best for them. All the stale arguments were aired again, including the “right” of the worker to work as long as he liked. (The bill did not rule out compulsory overtime, however.) But his chief argument was from his class side of economics: it would necessitate costly reorganization, force DuPont to raise prices and employ more men in the mills, increase the chance of accidents (true only if DuPont increased its line speed-up—which, of course, it did as Alfred knew it would), and finally—the real point—it would “abridge the right of the employer to offer labor such terms and wages as he saw fit.” 1
Coleman and his directors disagreed, believing the eight-hour law would cut unemployment while still allowing the employer to extract through speed-up ten hours worth of labor in eight hours. Eventually, DuPont voluntarily decreased its ten-hour work day to eight hours, but not before Alfred had been forced out of control over the company’s production.
Another contention was a new invention by Alfred, a steel glazing barrel. Naturally, Alfred was very enthusiastic about it. The barrel cut the cost of a 25-pound keg of black powder from 84 cents in 1907 to 78 cents in 1910. It also cut workers to pieces when it exploded, as it was much more dangerous than the old wooden barrels. After four accidents, Coleman abandoned the barrel despite Alfred’s voiced disappointment.
By 1909 Alfred’s worth to the company was quickly fading. In 1902, when he rose to prominence in the firm, Alfred’s black powder was king. But for the next eight years, dynamite sales increased 300 percent while black powder’s sales rose by only 25 percent. By 1909 dynamite sales topped those of black powder by ten million pounds. Black powder had reached its all-time high in 1907 and now was declining.
So was Alfred. With no dynamite experience, he was becoming less indispensable to the firm and was increasingly irritating to Coleman now reigning in his new four-story offices in Wilmington. And what family ties had bound Alfred to the company were now quickly being frayed over the issue of Alfred’s marriage and his relationship with another young DuPont cousin, Alicia Heyward Bradford, the daughter of Eleuthera DuPont and Judge E. G. Bradford.
By 1902 Alfred and Bessie were seldom speaking. For one thing, Louis’s suicide had soured their marriage. Further, Bessie’s rudeness to Alfred’s sister Marguerite, and her cold manner to Alfred, kept his relatives away from Swamp Hall, effecting an isolation that Alfred resented. Then Alfred’s hearing failed in 1904 and he had to give up his amateur band. Drifting from ties in Wilmington, he began spending more time writing to and visiting with the Ball family, particularly young Jessie Ball. An old Virginian family, the Balls were friends who lived near his private hunting retreat at Cherry Island. It was there in November of 1904 that Alfred suffered his second physical blow within a year.
He was hunting with Bill Scott, superintendent of DuPont’s Pennsylvania mills, and some other friends. The men were spread out on the trail of game, Alfred and a friend on one side of a hedge, Scott thirty yards away on the opposite side. Suddenly Scott thought he heard something and wheeled and fired at the hedge. Alfred’s friend ducked, and as he did, he saw Alfred’s hat fly off. Then Alfred dropped his gun and fell, blood pouring from his face.
He was rushed to the University of Pennsylvania, where surgeons performed an operation on his left eye. Bessie hurried from Europe with their daughter, Maddie, but the visit was not a happy one for Alfred. While Maddie weeped at her father’s bedside, Bessie just stared at him coldly. Understandably, Alfred grew depressed.
When he returned to Swamp Hall, the family threw a Christmas party to cheer him up. It only made matters worse. He suffered a relapse and had to return to the hospital. There, Alfred had his eye removed and replaced with a glass one.
By September 1905 Alfred had left Swamp Hall and made financial arrangements with Bessie. Although he was by then a millionaire, his settlement for his wife and children was not generous: only $24,000 a year. A $600,000 trust fund for his four children, Alfred Victor, Maddie, Bessie, and Victorine, was set up, Alfred choosing a Philadelphia lawyer for his trustee. Bessie chose Pierre DuPont. It was to be the beginning of a long friendship between the two, as well as the opening shot of the greatest civil war in the history of the clan.
As early as 1901, Alfred had begun seeing Alicia Bradford and they in turn were seen on picnics together. Rumors started to fly along the Brandy-wine. Alicia’s mother was Eleuthera DuPont, daughter of the original Alexis I. Alicia’s father was the stern judge of the U.S. Circuit Court, Edward Green Bradford. The Judge got wind of the meetings and became furious. He wanted them stopped—immediately! Alfred was still a married man, and if he wasn’t, that was worse: then he was a divorced man!
Alicia became very frightened. Her father was a domestic tyrant who ruled over her life. “As a child,” she said years later, “I was frightened all the time—terrified of everything. Suddenly it came to me that my father was the cause of this. He had wanted me to be a boy.” 2 Alicia could not see Alfred, at least not this way.
Alfred then introduced Alicia to George A. Maddox, a handsome but not too bright boy employed by DuPont Company. Over the Judge’s objections, he arranged clandestine meetings for her and Maddox. Suddenly they shocked the family with their announcement of plans to marry. Alfred made all the arrangements, even setting up the Christ Church for the wedding. After the ceremony, he gave them a DuPont home, Louviers, the estate of Admiral Samuel DuPont. When word came that Alicia was almost immediately pregnant, the whispers along the Brandywine flew faster than the river itself.
Alfred immediately rewarded Maddox with a promotion. He became regional superintendent of black powder plants in the Midwest, jumping over more experienced men in line for the job. This position kept Maddox away from Alicia most of the time. But Alicia was seldom alone. Alfred became a constant visitor.
In 1903, the year Bessie gave birth to Alfred’s fourth child, Victorine, Alicia Maddox also gave birth to a daughter. She was named Alicia, and reportedly had unmistakable DuPont characteristics, obviously from her mother’s side.
For the next three years, while Maddox was usually hundreds of miles away, Alicia continued playing hostess to Alfred. In April 1906 Alicia lost her second child, a boy. The death must have been a shattering blow to her. She publicly drew ever closer to Alfred. It must have also affected Alfred. Within a month, moved out of pity for Alicia’s unhappiness, he filed for divorce.
In December Alfred’s divorce from Bessie was granted on the grounds of mental cruelty. From that day, Coleman grew less tolerant of his troublesome cousin. Then Maddox suddenly handed Coleman his resignation. A Philadelphia newspaper later reported that he was bringing suit against Alfred, but that he suddenly withdrew the suit before filing a bill of particulars.
The mystery grows deeper. Alicia suddenly disappeared. Far from prying family eyes, she was secluded in a mansion in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. She had secretly filed for divorce from Maddox and was awaiting its approval. On October 8, 1907, her waiting was ended. One week later Alfred and Alicia were in New York together. There they were married. The indefatigably improper Maurice DuPont was the best man.
The news hit the Brandywine like a blockbuster. “Al, now you’ve done it,” Coleman warned his cousin when he returned. “The family will never stand for this. Don’t you think you’d better sell out to me and get away from here?” 3
“I’ll see the family in hell first!” replied Alfred.
That kind of talk was family treason. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Alfred also turned his back on the company. He announced that he would not stand by the firm or accept any responsibility for it in the coming U.S. federal suit. Instead, he filed a motion to have his individual case separated from the company’s and dismissed. He denied knowing anything of the Gunpowder Trust, of Coleman’s companies, Delaware Securities and Delaware Investment, of any wrongdoing—of which the government was proving there was plenty. After three days of testimony, Alfred’s case was dropped by the government.
Coleman and Pierre were speechless. Although Coleman had also taken leave, claiming illness, and never appeared in court, at least he didn’t separate his claim of innocence from that of the company. In retaliation, Alfred was soon dropped from the company’s finance committee, allegedly for his deafness. Coleman’s in-law, Hamilton Barksdale, took Alfred’s place, while Pierre was made acting president during Coleman’s absence.
“The Count,” as Alfred was called by the family, was not through yet. After marrying Alicia, he refused to visit his children at Swamp Hall, probably at Alicia’s encouragement. Alfred’s daughter Maddie finally left Swamp Hall to join her father at his new Brandywine estate, Rock Farms. But Maddie didn’t stay long. She soon eloped to France with a Princeton undergraduate, John Bancroft, Jr., son of a wealthy textile manufacturer in Wilmington. Despite a hurried announcement of her pregnancy, Maddie’s marriage didn’t work out. Her husband soon threatened to sue her for divorce on the grounds of her admitted adultery with a young German student, Max Heibler, during their honeymoon. Bancroft cited Maddie’s newly born infant as a co-defendant named Max Heibler, Jr. Alicia, anxious to avoid scandal, intervened with promises of treasure and threats to “rip the hinges from any Delaware closet, DuPont cabinets among them.” Bancroft’s adultery suit was suddenly amended to desertion, and subsequently withdrawn. But by the arrival of a second child, Bancroft could take no more. A divorce was applied for and granted. Maddie remained in Germany, eventually marrying Max Heibler.
Somehow, Maddie’s letters on her marriage woes reached Coleman’s hands. It is not known whether he immediately turned them over to Alfred, but when he did, Alfred was furious, believing the letters had run the family gauntlet.
Alfred’s relations with Coleman deteriorated even further after that. By 1911 the two cousins were bidding against each other for property along the Brandywine. Coleman, as usual, won.
Alfred realized his grip on the company was slipping fast, but he was helpless to stop it. His previous indispensability in the firm continued to decrease with the decline of black powder. In 1910, despite the fact that black powder sold 500,000 pounds less than in 1904, Alfred built a half million dollar plant at Welpen, Minnesota. It was a triumph of monumental vanity and stupidity. At this point only the ties of family could hold him in the firm, and those he had literally told to go to hell.
Awaiting his inevitable fate with the company, Alfred contented himself with buying a new yacht, which he named “Alicia.” Then he halted his donations to the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra because of a snub to Alicia by Wilmington society circles. As a result, the orchestra was forced to disband.
Ugly rumors began to float around about Alicia’s previous marriage, causing Alicia to cringe and Alfred to grow frantic in rage. He traced them all down to two people, Mrs. Mary Bush, a widow of a Wilmington manufacturer, and Alicia’s stout aunt of 57 years, Elizabeth Bradford DuPont. Then Alfred did the unthinkable. He publicly filed legal suit against both women for slander. It wasn’t long before Philadelphia papers picked up their hottest “society” story of the year. The Philadelphia North American called it “The Women’s War that convulses Delaware.” 4 Even the New York World reported that the rumors about Alicia DuPont “are of such a nature that they cannot be published.” 5 The New York Sun exposed the family’s futile efforts to hold off Alfred, and named more DuPont women who could be expected to become involved: Victorine DuPont Foster, sister of Senator Henry A. DuPont; Alice DuPont Oritz, Elizabeth Bradford DuPont’s daughter; Eugenie Roberts, niece of Elizabeth Amy DuPont, spinster daughter of the late Eugene; and Mrs. Henry A. Thompson. 6
There was a family outcry. Alfred had gone too far. Elizabeth was the widow of the late Dr. Alexis DuPont, and Mrs. Bush’s adopted son had also married Alicia’s younger sister, Joanna DuPont Bradford. Alfred had involved the whole clan and it could not stand by and allow him to publicly drag the name of DuPont through the gutter. Private rumors were one thing; public suits were quite another.
Alicia’s aunt ran to her son-in-law, attorney Thomas F. Bayard, Jr., of an old distinguished family that had placed four of its members in the U.S. Senate. Bayard, a Democrat, wanted to be number five, but he needed DuPont support. He took the case gladly.
Mrs. Bush ran to May DuPont’s husband, attorney Willard Saulsbury. Although Saulsbury was no friend of “that tribe” which Coleman, Colonel Henry, and Pierre represented, he agreed to take the case. Saulsbury, it seems, also had designs on a Senate seat.
The case dragged on for months, and still Alfred filed no bill of particulars. The newspapers were slaughtering the carefully cultured DuPont image, which didn’t help build popular sympathy for the clan’s defense against the government’s anti-trust suit. The family begged Alfred to come to reason, to think of the family as a whole. When that didn’t work, they tried threats, Finally, Bayard and Saulsbury wrote to Alfred’s lawyer, J. Harvey Whiteman, warning him that unless a bill was filed within thirty days, the defense would move for nonprosecution.
Whether Alfred had proof or not will never be known. Four days later he withdrew the suit in the interest of “family honor.”
But Alfred had his personal revenge. He moved into Nemours, his new $2 million palatial estate of five square miles. It included sunken gardens, greenhouses, and two grilled gateways of bronze, one from Wimbledon Manor in England, the other from the Russian Imperial Palace of Catherine the Great. But the center of attraction was the mansion itself. Built of limestone, an architectural blend of French chateau and Southern plantation, it stood three stories high, had seventy-seven rooms, and housed scores of servants. Art treasures were scattered throughout. The drawing room alone, for instance, had a seventeenth-century rug worth $100,000. In the basement, “the Count” kept an arsenal of weapons, including a machine gun and a small cannon. As if that were not enough to discourage unwelcome visitors, Alfred surrounded the entire estate with a nine-foot-high stone wall at the top of which were embedded pieces of sharp broken glass “to keep out intruders, mainly of the name of DuPont.” 7
The family took the hint and stayed away. But Alfred had just begun to take his personal revenge. As he moved into Nemours, he evicted Bessie and the children from Swamp Hall. Then he had their home completely demolished. Alfred, of course, met his family obligation. He increased Bessie’s annuity by $1,200 to cover the rent for a home in Wilmington, a very generous offer, he believed, from a man then grossing over $400,000 every year from his holdings in DuPont Company alone.
The clan was appalled. Never had such ruthlessness been seen within the family since the original Irénée had cheated his stepsister. The family feared it was plunging to new lows.
Not low enough, as far as Alfred was concerned. When the federal antitrust case ended with a conviction after four years and sixteen volumes of testimony, Alfred refused to agree to an appeal.
It was the final act of family heresy. Family feuds could always be healed, but company rifts required deliberate action. The appeal went on, but not Alfred. In a prearranged meeting of the executive committee in January 1913, Alfred was relieved of all operating duties as general manager and vice-president. Crushed, “the Count” sailed for France to lick his wounds.
7.2
A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
Coleman and Pierre were now in absolute control of the firm, but the federal
conviction had jeopardized what that control actually meant. Since the government had
filed suit in 1907, the DuPont's had stalled the case, hoping for a more lenient administration under William Howard Taft. They had good reason to hope. After distinguishing himself with his anti-labor decisions on the Ohio bench, Taft became head of Roosevelt’s War Department in 1904. It was he who showered DuPont with such profitable contracts. When this great admirer of John D. Rockefeller ran for the presidency in 1908, T. Coleman DuPont offered a donation of $20,000. Taft, however, decided not to repeat Roosevelt’s mistake and risk the possibility of bad publicity, but assured Coleman of his sincere friendship with the Delaware family.
Coleman was more than a friend. He was the national director of the Republican Party’s Speaker Bureau and a member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee. When criticism arose over his affiliation because of the anti-trust case, Coleman prudently handed in his resignation to Taft on September 22, 1908. Six days later he wrote Taft of his full support in the coming election. Coleman’s support meant something. “The General,” as he was later called because of his appointment as general of the Delaware National Guard, controlled Delaware politics like a feudal lord since he became Colonel Henry’s campaign manager in 1906.
After his election, Taft showed his appreciation by offering the office of Secretary of State to a DuPont lawyer, John C. Spooner. The former senator from Wisconsin decided to decline, the DuPont's bowing to the demands of John Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon, who wanted to put in their own man, Senator Philander Knox. Instead, the office of Attorney General was given to George W. Wickersham, the very DuPont lawyer who had counseled the building of the Powder Trust.
President Taft and Colonel Henry DuPont were close political colleagues. When Taft was campaigning for president, it was Colonel Henry who hosted a dinner in Delaware in Taft’s honor attended by many DuPont luminaries. Henry, a supporter of high tariffs that would protect industries like DuPont, felt no hesitation about writing Taft at Hot Springs, Virginia, right after the election explaining his position on reciprocity. 8 Henry even enjoyed occasional music and dinner at the White House. 9 When the old Junker of Delaware was maneuvering for reelection in 1911, Taft feared another national scandal and suggested that it would be “very advantageous” to Henry if his aides were to pay a visit to that maker of presidents and public image, Senator Mark Hanna, so that Henry’s candidacy would be handled “in the proper light.” 10
The visits were made but the light was not very proper. Henry bought the election and everyone knew it. “It is common testimony that in all the shameful history of the State,” wrote the New York Evening Post, “money was never used more freely and more openly about the polls than this year.…"
The only person who had the most at stake in the election of a Republican Legislature in Delaware is Senator Henry A. DuPont who is a candidate for reelection,and the only Republican candidate whose name will go before the Legislature, so far as is known. The only known reason for spending large sums of money to elect a Republican Legislature is to insure the choice of a Republican for U.S. Senator.
“Who is so interested,” the Post went on, “in the choice of a Republican for Senator as the candidate upon whom the choice will fall? That is why one hears such bitter talk in the State about the way money was used to buy votes to make Republican the next legislature which, barring the unforeseen, will reelect Senator DuPont.” 11
Beverly Robinson, a niece of Henry’s, was in New York at the time this article appeared. She was a lawyer with the Wall Street firm of Mason and Nichols. Embarrassed, she wrote her uncle suggesting he sue for libel. Henry chose not to take her advice.
Instead, Henry launched a purge in Delaware’s Republican Party, ousting all but the most loyal. One of those less fortunate was R. Layton, U.S. Treasury Department auditor for the state records. Henry told Layton the party could frankly do without him. 12 President Taft didn’t mind this attack on a government official, especially when the Delaware platform carried such praise for the President. For this support Henry received Taft’s personal gratitude. 13 On Henry’s reelection, Taft wrote him a warm note of congratulations. 14
But the Colonel’s woes were not over with his reelection. His crude methods during the campaign inspired the founding of the Anti-Bribery League after the election. The DuPont's were worried. Charges of corruption and federal suits were flying around their heads. It had to stop. A new public image had to be built about them, one that would bring them respect, the kind of respect that protects wealth.
Coleman had already begun the campaign. On February 11, 1910, he wrote Bessie, Alfred’s divorced wife, for information that she might have for the company’s publicity. 15 Colonel E. G. Buckner, DuPont’s military salesman, wrote Coleman on March 21 regarding the company’s efforts to supply propaganda to the press concerning the country’s munitions buildup. “I think you should be very guarded in giving anyone the impression that Admiral Evans was being in any way coached by you or any member of the Company.” 16 Buckner knew that if Coleman’s name was associated with Evans’ article, it wouldn’t be used.
Coleman liked a professional job, so he hired the public relations firm of James J. Archibald. “We have tried to develop a plan,” wrote Archibald’s L. B. Lewis to Vice President Haskell, “that would result in getting into the general newspaper field, and have made headway. We have in mind a proposition that would, if carried out, comprise about 1,500 newspapers, through which avenues we would be able to reach the public with such matters as would be of general newspaper interest and of benefit to the Company.” 17
By May 13, 1910, the campaign was underway. Coleman wrote instructions to his public relations firm on an article by Admiral Evans, former Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet and its famous tour of the world in 1907–8. The article, entitled “Preparedness,” was complimentary to DuPont Company and stressed the need for having military supplies like DuPont powder constantly available in huge stockpiles. Coleman affirmed that Admiral Evans should be subsidized for his efforts and then listed specific magazine targets for its publication: Harpers, Century, Hampton, World’s Week, and Scribners. 18 Although the article was never printed, it is an example of DuPont’s method of manipulating its public image.
DuPont was a pioneer in corporate deception of the public. In 1915 Pierre asked Bessie to write a complimentary history of the company. 19 She complied.
Coleman’s publicity campaign probably bolstered Taft’s inclination to go easy on DuPont in the anti-trust case. Taft wanted to basically continue the progressivism of Roosevelt and frowned on the thought of formal regulation completely replacing informal détente between monopoly’s collective government and individual monopolies. Taft preferred cooperation, and this extended to the DuPont case.
On June 12, 1911, the U.S. District Court in Delaware (with Du Pont in-law Judge Bradford markedly in absentia) found the DuPont's guilty of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But the court offered the first family of the state a back door. It emphasized that since over a hundred corporations had been taken over by DuPont, “the impossibility of restoring original conditions in the explosives trade narrows the field of operation of any decree we may make.” 20 The decree was indeed narrowed. It directed the government and the family to jointly decide how the Trust should be reorganized. That meant that the DuPont's would be allowed to decide their own sentence!
Coleman perhaps chose not to tip his hand and applaud the verdict. Actually, he was genuinely angry about being found guilty. He still could not see anything illegal about the Powder Trust. In a memorandum to company employees, he handed down the company line, charging Taft and the federal courts with corruption. “The Courts are human beings with ambitions and desiring to go forward. Their only chances of going forward are two, first, by popularity getting a nomination in a good political position, second, by being appointed to a higher judicial position. Neither of these would be possible if a decision was rewarded in opposition to the policy of the administration or in opposition to the popular cry against corporations.” 21 Coleman claimed the court hadn’t even read the evidence 22 and charged that Waddell was really a blackmailer who left the company in order to force DuPont to buy him out at a profit. 23 Waddell’s letter of resignation showed another kind of man, however, a man who was simply disgusted with Coleman’s heavy-handed policies. And Coleman’s charge did not belie the fact that Waddell had refused to accept Coleman’s offer to buy into Waddell’s Buckeye Powder Company.
Coleman cooled his temper, however, long enough to meet Taft’s Attorney General at the wealthiest, most fashionable and prominent social club in Washington. Both Coleman and George Wickersham were members of the Metropolitan Club at 17th and H Street. There, they conversed on the case, Coleman even handing his former employee the company’s legal position. 24
That done, Coleman next wrote a letter to his business partner in building the McAlpin Hotel in New York—Charles P. Taft, the President’s brother. “I feel so morally certain that your brother does not want to do an injustice to anybody and if he was morally certain that the rectifying of an injustice could be of the greatest benefit to him as well as to ourselves.… my judgment is that it would be of great help to him in the future.” 25
Indeed, Coleman was a great help in the coming year’s presidential election. He geared the political machine he had built in Delaware to absolute support for Taft and, as a Republican national committeeman, personally endorsed him for renomination.
The President, however, was not interested in publicly endorsing Coleman DuPont. To Senator Frank Allee he denounced “the General” as “slippery as an eel and crooked as a ram’s horn.” 26 He had good reason to feel this way. The latest episode of DuPont corruption had been written in the halls of the Senate just a month before.
In a public blast against “that tribe,” Willard Saulsbury had charged Senator Henry A. DuPont with buying votes during the 1910 election. Colonel Henry had selected a Sussex County Republican, Cornelius Swain, as U.S. Marshal; Saulsbury claimed that Swain had used DuPont money to buy votes. The charges, coming in the wake of the previous electoral scandals and DuPont’s monopoly conviction, were splashed across the nation’s headlines. Now it was all out, and just when Henry was thinking of another ocean cruise.
A subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections investigated, as Henry broke into a cold sweat. Witness after witness took the stand, including Senator Frank Allee, testifying under oath that on November 5, 1909, Henry gave Kent and Sussex County Republicans $53,000 for illegal use in the state elections the following Tuesday. At a meeting at DuPont offices in Wilmington, according to the testimony, Swain was handed his $3,000 share by Coleman DuPont and Caleb Layton.
Swain’s attorney, Daniel O. Hastings, admitted that his client was given the money. But Swain himself never testified. A secret conference between Colonel Henry and Attorney General Wickersham resulted in Swain’s being allowed instead to submit a written defense claiming he wasn’t aware of the contents of the package Coleman had given him. 27 Henry, in turn, admitted giving the money, but claimed ignorance as to the purpose for which it was used. 28 Coleman never testified and the case was dropped.
On February 23 an enraged Senator James Reed of Missouri called for a more thorough investigation of Henry’s election. He repeated his demand on February 28, but the “Senate Club” was not to be moved. The honor of the Senate itself was now at stake. Reed finally gave up.
President Taft found little comfort in Senator Reed’s defeat. Whitewashes can be politically dangerous, particularly when they protect a leading member of the infamous Powder Trust. He wanted no part of a suggested secret meeting with the Powder Trust’s president and rumored briber, Coleman DuPont. Senator Allee was in sympathy with the President’s fears and, after consultation with Pierre, who was wiser than Coleman about effecting a settlement with the government, suggested a meeting with Alfred DuPont instead. With the government-DuPont recommendation due in court in two months, Taft had little choice.
Alfred arrived at the White House looking fully the role of the economic power elite. Splendidly attired in a silk hat and morning coat, Alfred was out to do what most businessmen were doing to William Taft: bluff him into submission. With former DuPont lawyer Wickersham on hand as Taft’s Attorney General, Alfred took his seat in a conference room, looked firmly into the President’s eyes, and calmly threatened to throw a million people out of work unless DuPont was permitted to keep its 100 percent monopoly on military smokeless powder.
Of course not, replied Alfred quietly, and then calmly repeated his threat of closing the plants the nation depended upon for commercial explosives. Taft’s resistance collapsed; he never dared to mention the possibility of government intervention to reopen DuPont plants as it had reopened the country’s railroads during the Pullman strike. The Dollar Diplomacy of armed intervention was for Big Business, not against it. The government of the United States, which could invade whole countries in Latin America, was simply no match for the DuPont's of Delaware. Within a few hours it meekly surrendered.
Supplemental court hearings then began for DuPont’s reorganization. It was a colorful circus with Alfred as ringmaster. A long line of army and navy officials paraded before the Court, including Admiral Knight, President of the Joint Army and Navy Board on Smokeless Powder; Admiral Twining, Chief of the Navy Ordnance Bureau; General Crozier, Chief of Ordnance of the Army; and many reputed DuPont stockholders clothed in brass—all demanding that DuPont be allowed to continue its monopoly over smokeless powder.
Coleman, with victory within his grasp, was still not satisfied. While shying away from the court (and therefore by legal necessity, the company), he still insisted that DuPont had a right to be a monopoly, Sherman Anti-Trust Act be damned. Taft by now felt Coleman should be damned. Twice before the Court’s decision, on April 15 and June 10, he tried to reassure Coleman with the favor of special exemptions for DuPont from the official prohibition on exports to Mexico, which was torn at the time by revolution inspired by contending American and British interests. In both cases, shipments of DuPont fuses for dynamite were excused as “not to be used in promoting conditions of domestic violence which I have found to exist in Mexico.” 30 But Coleman still wasn’t satisfied.
“The businessmen are fools,” Taft wrote angrily to his brother Charles, “like some of the voters. For a time they don’t see their real interest; they don’t have the power of discrimination. That man T. Coleman DuPont is one such man. I have no use for him whatsoever. They do not see beyond their noses. They only think of their own particular interest and don’t take a broader view. They are in favor of special privilege in the sense of having themselves favored and everybody else prosecuted. That is the attitude of Gary and Perkins* and DuPont and others.” 31
On June 13 the Court handed down its final decree, called by one family historian “one of the outstanding farces of American judicial history.” 32 DuPont, the Court held, would be broken up into three separate companies: DuPont, Atlas, and Hercules. The two new companies were given plants for general explosives, but DuPont was allowed to keep its entire monopoly on military smokeless powder. Coleman’s trust had all but survived the ordeal unscathed. In fact, Atlas and Hercules were new in name only. DuPont executives filled their ranks from top to bottom. DuPont family members still controlled the stocks and bonds of both companies. Alfred DuPont, for example, alone held $757,000 worth of Hercules’ 6 percent bonds. Atlas and Hercules even set up their central offices in Wilmington, right across the street from DuPont headquarters.
It was an exemplary step in the pattern of progressivism: keeping companies separate does not necessarily mean competition. 33 Through government and business cooperation the marketplace is temporarily stabilized through overseas expansion which allows a modicum of domestic rationalization. Taft understood this when two days before the DuPont decision he wrote that “operations are sometimes necessary to save the life of the patient.” 34
Generally, though the family disagreed, the patient certainly was healthy. DuPont’s assets in 1810 were some $109,000. Now they were well over $81 million with sixty plants in twenty-two states, and all at the bargain cost of over four hundred workers killed, thousands more maimed or wounded. Dividends reached $12 per share in 1910 and remained so for the next three years.
7.3
WILMINGTON’S GOLDEN DAYS
Wilmington had never been merrier. The new twelve-story DuPont Building had
been completed, containing 2,000 rooms and a 300-room hotel—DuPont Hotel, of
course. With its stores along the street front and a playhouse in its court, DuPont
Building stuck out like an elephant against the small red brick houses of Wilmington. At
dusk, no one could doubt that the DuPont's were clearly overshadowing the people of
Delaware. Parties and formal balls with French champagne flowing became frequent occasions for the DuPont's in their hotel’s rathskeller. Even Alfred agreed that this was more like Berlin than sleepy Wilmington. Alfred was actively back in the firm now as a member of the finance committee, his reward for the Taft negotiations. Coleman, having purged the company of Alfred’s followers, now felt that his cousin raised no real threat to his rule. Meanwhile, Alfred quietly bought the Wilmington Morning News and six downstate papers for the final battle he considered inevitable.
Every New Year’s Eve “the General,” as he became known, rode about the city in his plush limousine handing out $20 gold pieces to policemen for keeping order in an age of poverty and rebellion. Coleman was even made New York’s honorary police commissioner.
Coly was having a grand time. Sometimes he liked to share his good cheer by embarrassing others. He kept a box of loaded cigars on his desk for just such occasions. Sometimes he served flannel cakes to guests with genuine pieces of flannel in them. Once, during a vacation at his estate on the southerly marshes of Maryland, a New York banker friend complained that the privy at Coleman’s shooting box was too cold. Later the banker was startled when he sat on what he thought was some wild animal. Coleman had had the privy seat lined with genuine fur. Coleman’s jokes even extended to his family. Lammot DuPont, not the brightest member of the family, once arrived in New York only to realize he had forgotten who he was to meet. “Have forgotten name my 4:00 appointment,” he wired Coleman. “Please advise.” “Name your 4:00 appointment —J. P. Morgan,” Coleman replied. “Your name Lammot du Pont.” 37
But Coleman knew where his bread was buttered. “I exist in New York,” he explained, “but I live in Delaware.” 38 Wilmington was Coleman’s political base, and his ego could not be confined to the largest city in the world. “I’m going to build a monument one hundred miles high,” he boasted, “and lay it on the ground.” 39 The result was a 200-foot-wide highway smashing through Delaware’s farms from Wilmington to the border of Maryland, bringing the lower part of the “first state” under heavier DuPont influence. Coleman merely wrote it off his taxes as “charity” but years later that charity would greatly benefit the family’s attempt at centralizing the state and connecting the company’s nylon plant at downstate Seaford with the major eastern highways.
Colonel Henry also found Delaware to be a good political base. After the court’s 1912 decision, Henry more openly served his family’s company in the U.S. Senate. That year, Henry was one of the Senate’s leading opponents against a bill proposing that the Army and Navy build their own powder plants to supply their needs at cost. In 1913 Senator DuPont’s committee struck out a provision in a bill that would have placed a ceiling on the amount the government would pay for DuPont powder, while later establishing a $100,000 allotment for the crude beginning of an American air force.
In June 1914 Henry voted for exemption for American ships from Panama Canal tolls, in direct violation of the original canal treaty with Great Britain still legally in effect at the time. Clearly, Henry’s first allegiance was to the company, not to international legal rights. A fleet of DuPont ships used the canal as the main gateway to Chilean nitrate resources. Since the first Lammot DuPont had discovered soda powder, DuPont had been extensively involved in exploiting Chile’s nitrate. DuPont works were set up about eight miles inland from the port of Taltal, and by 1912 DuPont imported 77,578 tons of Chilean nitrate of soda. 40 Henry’s vote and influence were important to the company’s profits. Through its use of Chilean nitrate, DuPont had captured a monopoly on fertilizer in America. The government exemption on canal tolls was a subsidy to that monopoly.
In 1916 a revenue bill was pending that sought to raise $26 million partly by taxing the profit of munitions manufacturers. It wasn’t long before the Junker of Delaware was angrily snapping his riding whip. First he tried to have the bill killed in committee. When that didn’t work, he launched a vicious attack on July 24 on the Senate floor against those unpatriotic enough to support the bill; he forced a reduction in the tax.
Henry DuPont, of course, denied any connection with DuPont Company. When the federal anti-trust suit named him as a co-defendant, he moved to have his case dismissed because he had resigned from the company a year earlier to take his Senate seat. The Delaware court granted his motion, despite the fact that Colonel Henry had been on DuPont’s board of directors since the 1870’s and was a director at the time of Coleman’s incorporation of January 1906. Even Coleman’s attorneys admitted that Henry had “attended meetings of the Board of Directors of said Company from time to time.” 41 Henry didn’t even deny his knowledge of the Powder Trust; he merely claimed the Trust hadn’t intended to monopolize the powder market. 42 It was just an accident.
Some people weren’t fooled. As early as June 17, 1906, the Wilmington Sunday Star asserted “the powder trust knows the new senator intimately, as a child knows its father, and he knows the powder trust.” 43
Such revealing light made Henry wince. In 1912 he turned the light off. He bought a controlling interest in his journalistic critic. The Sunday Star was never critical again. But other Delawareans were not to be silenced. Henry should have gotten wind of the national tempo in 1912. That year, two DuPont's, Alfred and Coleman, headed the Delaware delegation to the Republican convention that renominated their friend William Taft. Taft, however, was no match for Woodrow Wilson. Upset by Taft’s incompetence, William Rockefeller had deserted Taft for an alliance with Wilson’s supporters from the National City Bank: Cleveland Dodge, J. P. Morgan, Jr., J. Armour, James Stillman, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co. Morgan forces also backed Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, which cut into Taft’s vote.
Taft’s support from the Mellon's and Carnegie was simply not enough. The DuPont's, although definitely among the social elite, were not yet in the same super league as Rockefeller or Morgan.
Colonel Henry disliked Wilson for being one of those “progressives.” Henry was proud to point to his record as being one of the least progressive in the history of the U.S. Senate. He was a violent opponent of women’s suffrage, voting against a proposed constitutional amendment in 1913. When women suffragettes asked to see him in Wilmington, he refused. Finally, in January 1914 he consented to honor them with an audience in Washington. After traveling all the way from Delaware, the women were greeted by the Junker’s icy stare and cold remark that he was firmly opposed to giving the vote to two million illiterate women.
But what Henry did not mention was that most of those women worked in factories, and Senator Henry, like most DuPont's, was no friend of the working class. As president of the Wilmington and Northern Railroad, he had forced railroad workers to toil for only a dollar a day if they wanted a job at a time when unemployment was high and starvation seen everywhere. Henry voted against many supposedly pro-labor bills, including the Clayton Anti-Trust Bill of 1914 and the eight-hour day of the Adamson Bill of 1916. Instead, Senator DuPont helped draw up the Volunteer Army Act of 1914 that paved the way for universal conscription of working-class youth into the Army. A rigid hawk, Henry had vigorously supported McKinley’s war in 1898, the “Big Stick” of Roosevelt, and the “Dollar Diplomacy” of Taft. When war broke out in Europe, this key member of the leading munitions family in America was as pro-war as anyone in the halls of Congress.
The country’s population wanted peace, however, especially the workers, and 1916 was a bad year for DuPont political ambitions. Wilson was reelected. Henry, now required by the Seventeenth Amendment to face election by the people, was not.
Henry’s machine had easily won him the nomination on the Republican ticket. By stuffing ballot boxes, shipping repeaters from one polling place to another, and intimidating independent voters at the polls, Henry’s forces captured a majority of the primary’s delegates to the Dover convention. There, his Committee on Credentials refused to seat fourteen independent Republicans from Kent County and the convention gave Henry the nomination. It also gave the people of Delaware nausea.
“WHAT HAS H. A. DUPONT EVER DONE FOR THE LABORING CLASSES?” asked one Delaware newspaper. 44 Another announced that it could no longer support Henry’s “DuPont or nobody” philosophy. 45 Then the antiwar Wilmington Every Evening revealed that Henry’s record of absenteeism in the Senate was the highest of any senator in the country running for reelection. 46 That year Henry bought control of the Every Evening, changing its position overnight from dove to hawk.
But other forces joined in on the attack, including labor unions. The Central Union and four brotherhoods of trainmen denounced Henry as “labor’s enemy.” 47 When the electoral returns finally came in, Henry’s ambitions had been thoroughly swamped by a tidal wave of rejection. But even more shattering to Henry was his belief that his defeat had been engineered by a member of his own family—Alfred I. DuPont.
He was right.
7.4
ROUND TWO
THE BATTLE OVER CONTROL
Since 1912, when he was reappointed to the company’s finance committee, Alfred DuPont realized that it was only a matter of time before the family feud renewed itself. The
control of the DuPont Trust was at stake and no trust can have more than one master.
Now there were three masters: he, Coleman, and Pierre, each talented in his own field,
all equally ambitious, and each believing himself superior to the others. Eventually one
would have to emerge as lord and master, and most likely that would be the one who
was closest to the firm’s direct operations. Alfred knew that, of the three, his position
was the weakest in this regard. He feared, therefore, that he might be the first to be
eliminated. As the DuPont saga unfolded, his fears were proven justified.
The Triumvirate Splits
Perhaps Alfred’s greatest weakness was in his personal ties to the clan, ties constantly strained by his own family problems. It seemed to the clan that Alfred’s
family woes never ended, even with his new marriage to Alicia Bradford. Tragedy
seemed to hover over the couple. Alicia’s first pregnancy by Alfred ended in a
miscarriage that left her in poor health. Her second pregnancy produced a child who
lived only long enough to be christened. Then Alicia’s eyesight failed, resulting in a
social setback in the tightly knit world of Wilmington society. Her vanity prevented her
from wearing her thick eyeglasses on the streets, and she passed many friends by
without even a nod. Misunderstandings soon arose which only added to her social
ostracism in Wilmington. Alicia’s life grew sadder. Because of her failing eyesight, Alicia also was forced to give up her favorite pastime of riding thoroughbreds. Probably from all this, she had a bitter quarrel with Maddie, who then eloped to Germany. To add to the embarrassment, it was Coleman’s wife, Elsie, who paid for her passage.
Alfred also grew increasingly bitter, especially over the death of his last infant. He turned his wrath onto his son, Alfred Victor. He demanded Victor be sent to the Hallock School in Massachusetts, which Alfred had helped establish with a Morgan deputy, Charles Mellen, president of the New Haven Railroad. Bessie objected, but as Alfred was Victor’s guardian under Delaware law, the boy was sent.
With Victor out of Delaware, Alfred then began a secret campaign in Dover. There, in the sleepy House of Representatives, only the name of DuPont ever seemed to raise an air of excitement. This time it was an uproar.
Alfred had Democratic boss Thomas Bayard Heisel quietly support a bill to change Victor’s name to Dorsey Cazenove DuPont, hinting that Bessie was guilty of infidelity. Representative Swain of Delaware City and bribery fame rammed the bill through the Miscellaneous Committee and the House, assured by Alfred that there would be no opposition. “The Count,” however, had made one mistake: he underestimated his former wife. Bessie got word of Alfred’s action and frantically began contacting the DuPont's. The family was furious and, as if by some magic DuPont hand, the bill was recalled from the Senate to the House Miscellaneous Committee for hearings. In February 1913 Alfred DuPont appeared and testified that he believed his son would “bring disgrace” to his name, but refused details. The Committee was not moved by his arguments, especially when Bessie read a heartbreaking letter from Victor at school asking why his father was doing this to him. Alfred remained obstinate and forced the bill to the House floor for a vote, where it was finally defeated 17 to 15. Alicia’s brother, Representative Edward Bradford, Jr., was the only Republican who voted for it. Defeated, Alfred returned to Wilmington and the ire of the entire DuPont family.
Through this whole ugly affair, Coleman and Pierre had been Bessie’s staunchest defenders, but it was an uneasy alliance. Friction was beginning to build up between the talented cousins, for while Coleman was partying in New York, Pierre was facing the courts and was building the company as acting president in Wilmington. Then another point of friction arose in the person of William DuPont.
Willie, now shaggy in middle age, wearing a walrus mustache and gold-rimmed glasses, had been out of the firm since his divorce and second marriage, but he was still one of its largest stockholders and was entitled by all rights to a seat on the Board of Directors. Perhaps at Alfred’s urging, he requested that seat in 1911. Pierre flatly turned him down. Willie then appealed to Coleman. Coleman, always eager to show his heavy hand and generosity to family, agreed to support his claim.
It was a bad mistake for Coly. He was acting like an absentee landlord, countermanding Pierre’s decision in his typically insensitive manner. His brother-in law, Hamilton Barksdale, objected strongly and as a result of this quarrel he and Coleman were never close again. Pierre, knowing that Coleman would win, diplomatically chose the role of mediator. Pierre liked to side with winners, even if he didn’t agree with them. Willie was seated.
Three years later, like a modern King Richard returning from unholy crusades along Broadway, Coleman decided to journey to Wilmington and claim his throne. Pierre had actually been running the company for over six years by then, and he was soon at odds with his older cousin. Within a few months, relations between the two grew very tense. “In the summer of 1914,” Pierre later wrote, “T.C. [Coleman] suggested sale of his entire holdings in the Powder Company to me. The conversation leading to this suggestion had, as subject, the organizing of the company. He and I differed in our estimate of the value of some of our men and in our opinion as to the method of handling the company’s affairs. Without an intention to overestimate the situation, I might say that relations in regard to the company’s affairs were and had been somewhat strained … he evidently, in fact, openly did not desire to sell but explained his opinion that it was best under the circumstances.” 48
Coleman held off these plans when war broke out in Europe in 1914, feeling his organizational ideas were now crucial. Pierre disagreed, but Coleman went ahead with his restructuring anyway. His first target was the firm’s executive committee. Coleman felt that with an average age of 52, the committee needed younger blood. He suggested an incentive for younger DuPont executives. He would offer to sell to them 20,700 shares of his common stock at $160 a share. There was a reason other than company interest that compelled this move by the company president. Coleman needed cash for another of his big deals—the largest office structure in the world. Looming forty stories high over New York’s streets, the Equitable Building would have 2,300 rooms, according to Coleman’s plans, and it would cost over $30 million.
On December 10, 1914, Coleman put his offer in writing. By then DuPont stock had risen to 163 from November’s 127, with more rises expected in the next year with the war’s continuance. Coleman made his offer to the finance committee, also reorganized by him. Under Coleman’s new program, this committee now bypassed the executive committee, reporting directly to the board of directors. Control of the purse strings, Coleman explained, meant control of the company and that should always be in the hands of directors, not executives. He, Pierre, and Alfred were its members, and Coleman also added William. This shift left Barksdale, a member of the old executive committee who had now fallen out of Coleman’s favor, slated for green pasture. Barksdale had only one recourse: to support Pierre’s next series of moves to seize complete control of the company.
Pierre’s Coup
When Coleman originally made his offer, he wrote Pierre: “I have, as you know,
always thought well of common stock and put a higher figure on it than you have. I think
it well worth 185 today and think it will go up to 190 or 200 before the year 1915 is
many months old.”
49 Coleman was right. By March 31, 1915, DuPont stock was quoted
at 298 bid, 302 asked. Coleman soon expected to have cash from DuPont Company, so he severed negotiations for the Equitable loan with his New York banker friends. Since his health was deteriorating, however, Coleman decided to leave the matter in the hands of the finance committee while he went to the Mayo Clinic for lung tests. “As I am going away today,” he wrote Pierre on December 14, “and do not know how long I will be gone, I have left the matter in Mr. L. L. Dunham’s hands.” 50 Dunham was Coleman’s secretary. Quietly, his ambition whetted by opportunity, Pierre watched Coleman’s departure like a hawk after prey. Already, he knew, wheels had been set in motion. Between the date of Coleman’s offer and his departure, Pierre had his brother Irénée offer to buy Coleman’s stock for $125 a share before the finance committee could meet. Coleman refused, but Pierre may well have foreseen Coleman’s rejection and may have only wanted Alfred to get wind through the family grapevine of the price he had offered.
At any rate, on December 23, a fateful day in Alfred DuPont’s life, the finance committee met to consider Coleman’s offer. Alfred introduced a resolution to accept Coleman’s offer but to advise “that we do not feel justified in paying more than $125 per share for this stock at this time.” 51 On an $8 dividend basis (which the company had paid to shareholders that year), Alfred pointed out that this was little more than a 6 percent return on investment. He did not think a smaller yield was attractive to the men, he explained; he considered the war’s duration uncertain and refused to stake everything on its continuation. Willie agreed, while Pierre craftily chose to vote negatively, as if he really wanted the company to purchase the stock and knew nothing of Irénée’s offer.
After the meeting, Pierre wired Coleman news of the two-to-one vote and his sentiment of support. He failed, however, to mention the all-important words of the resolution: “at this time.” This gave Coleman the impression that the offer had been turned down permanently. He also left the words out of the official minutes of the meeting, and skillfully managed to have them signed by Alfred and William unnoticed. The coup was under way.
Dear Coleman,
I have been intending to write you about the reception of your proposition by the Finance Committee. Unfortunately, Alfred, who approved the plan before you went away, got somewhat crosswise in the meeting and I think it best to let the matter rest for the moment, preferably until I can see you, before taking another step. 52
This was no confirmation of a “definite rejection” by the committee, as Pierre later claimed. Nor did Pierre mention Willie’s position in agreeing with the temporary rejection. Instead, only Alfred, who was already in bad straits with Coleman, was mentioned.
Pierre’s report from the finance committee to the board of directors also never implied a final rejection. “The committee expressed the feeling that we were not justified in paying more than $125 per share and asked Mr. P. S. DuPont to take the matter up with Mr. T. C. DuPont further.” 53
On January 6 Coleman had replied that he was disappointed with Alfred’s position and charged that “Alfred has some ulterior motive in mind” 54 and suggested withdrawal of his offer to the younger executives. Always appearing the model of integrity before Coleman, Pierre had written back on January 9 that Coleman should wait until he had a chance to talk with Willie. 55 Finally, at that point, Pierre did mention Willie, but only to secure enough time to gather financial support from Morgan banks for the purchase of Coleman’s stock. Although Coleman had agreed to wait, 56 Pierre never contacted Willie, who had left town for a few weeks, believing the matter would not be settled until Coleman returned.
On January 15, Coleman again offered to withdraw unless Pierre had talked to Willie and was already committed. 57 With his financial backing and DuPont securities now set up as a holding company for the coup, Pierre replied on January 18 that he had done neither. 58 Pierre then waited for Coleman to finalize the withdrawal to the executives and drop control of the company into his lap. He must have broken into a cold sweat when Coleman wrote back on January 20 that he should wait until he returned East “when I am sure we can work out some plan.” 59
Pierre immediately stepped up the operation. Pierre unleashed phase two of his coup.With Coleman’s offer to the company effectively stalled, Pierre now needed only some “emergency” to prod Coleman into selling to him.
At about this time a rumor began circulating around Wall Street that a prominent DuPont stockholder was about to sell his entire holdings to Germany. As DuPont was a major supplier to the British war effort, it was not long before Nobel, the great British explosives manufacturer (now called Imperial Chemicals), sent word to Pierre that one of its officials, a Mr. Kraftmeier, was en route for a secret meeting with him in New York.
On January 23 Pierre and Irénée met Kraftmeier at his New York hotel. With a personal discipline that would have swelled his great-grandfather, E. I. DuPont, with pride, Pierre managed a straight face as Kraftmeier explained that British Secret Service had uncovered plans to sell DuPont to German interests through Kuhn, Loeb, & Co.
Pierre told the Englishman he was mistaken and assured him of DuPont’s loyalty to the British cause. Two weeks later, however, on February 5, Pierre wrote to Coleman DuPont that the company was willing to sell munitions to Germany.
Pierre was also already aware that in the fall of 1914 one Captain Fritz von Rintelin, a German agent, had approached J. Amory Haskell, a major DuPont stockholder and director, to see if DuPont could be bought out. Haskell had rejected the offer.
Such belated rumors, however, were a great opportunity to throw suspicion on Alfred. Now Pierre could explain to Irénée why he wanted Coleman’s stock by any means. In the interests of patriotism to clients, he also contacted Coleman and informed him of the grave meeting with Kraftmeier. He never mentioned the Haskell affair; instead, he asked Coleman to sell his entire holdings for $200 a share to prevent Alfred either from buying another director’s holdings or perhaps from selling his to the Germans. Coleman, alarmed by Pierre’s warnings, gave his consent to a complete divestiture of his stocks.
Why did Coleman agree to sell out? Originally, he had only intended to sell 20,000 to 40,000 common shares. Pierre later claimed that Coleman was in financial need. But that seems hardly the case. The Equitable Building was not a crucial matter to Coleman’s finances. Pierre had used some 14,000 preferred and 54,000 common shares as collateral for Morgan’s $8.5 million loan. Coleman could easily have done likewise. In fact, 26,400 of that 54,000 common used by Pierre as collateral was Coleman’s.
The answer lies in an obscure letter from Coleman to Pierre, held by the younger cousin until its release on April 2, 1947. In this letter, dated March 17, 1915, Coleman wrote that Pierre was “in the saddle running things possibly against some opposition.” What opposition? Alfred’s? Undoubtedly, but Coleman realized he himself had opposed Pierre on many decisions. Pulling out was best for both the company and his own health.
Probably all this was sped along by Pierre’s hint that Alfred might be buying stock or dealing with the Germans to sell his stock. Coleman must have had more than a little doubt as to where Alfred’s sympathies lay. After all, Alfred’s daughter was in Germany and her husband was fighting for Germany, and Alfred had allied himself with anti-war forces in the Democratic Party. Besides, Alfred was always out to wrong him, Coleman commented at the time. Alfred and William “were after the stock,” he wrote Pierre. Pierre must have smiled.
On February 10 the finance committee met. As the meeting drew to a close, Alfred asked, almost as an afterthought, “How are the negotiations for the Coleman DuPont stock progressing?”
“Why, they are all off,” Pierre replied.
Alfred was shocked. “Since when?”
“They were called off shortly after you and Willie turned down the offer in December.”
Alfred exploded. “But they were not turned down! There was merely a difference of opinion as to price, and it was my understanding that you were to convey to T.C., through Mr. Dunham, that we believe the price of $160 a share excessive, and we suggested $125 as a proper price at that time.”
“That was not my understanding,” said Pierre calmly. “My understanding was that you turned down T.C.’s offer definitely.” 60
Willie then agreed that Pierre was mistaken and Alfred suggested that Pierre correct the mistake immediately. Pierre complied. Alfred then asked for copies of Pierre’s letters to Coleman on the matter.
Predictably, Alfred never received the letters. What Alfred had no way of knowing was that his younger cousin had made no simple mistake, but had acted with cold deliberation. Pierre had already set up his holding company, DuPont (Christiana) Securities, with which he planned to purchase Coleman’s stock and buy the loyalty of company executives with pieces of Coleman’s pie.
Instead of the Coleman stock letters, Pierre sent Alfred some of the letters pertaining to the Kraftmeier meeting. Alfred repeated his request, but Pierre never sent them. The draft of his January 4, 1915, letter to Coleman shows why: Pierre’s manicured fingers had clearly been planting the seeds of Alfred’s downfall. Pierre’s tight-lipped treasurer, J. J. Raskob, was hurriedly finalizing the arrangements for the sale, while Pierre and his associates, his brother-in-law R. R. Carpenter, his brothers Irénée and Lammot DuPont, and one or two others landed a $8.5 million loan from J. P. Morgan & Company. On February 20 Pierre was able to telegram Coleman affirming the purchase of all of Coleman’s stock, 63,300 common, 14,600 preferred, for $13.9 million: $8 million in cash, $5.9 million in notes payable. On February 22 Coleman replied with his own final confirmation.
On February 28 Alfred DuPont opened his morning newspaper to receive the shock of his life. “Coleman DuPont sells out to P. S. DuPont and others in company.” Pierre had seized control of the firm.
Alfred spent that Monday at his desk anxiously waiting to hear from Pierre. Finally, when no contact had been made by 4:00 P.M., Alfred telephoned Pierre and asked him to walk down to his office. Pierre arrived calm and composed.
Pierre quietly asked why.
“Because you have accomplished something by virtue of the power and influence vested in you as an officer of the company … For that reason the stock which you have acquired does not belong to you but to the company which you represent. I therefore ask you to turn this stock over to the company.” 61
Pierre calmly refused and left.
Francis I. DuPont called a meeting of all family members not in Pierre’s syndicate for March 4 at Alfred’s office. That night, Francis, Alfred, William, Eugene E., Henry F., Philip F., and Alexis I. du Pont were present. Soon, however, two uninvited callers walked in—Pierre and Irénée. After politely asking if they could be seated, they began a friendly chat on trite family affairs with their astonished relatives. For almost an hour this small talk went on, Alfred losing the initiative over the meeting’s direction. In despair, he disconnected his hearing box and stared at the ceiling. Pierre then suddenly asked Willie to explain his allegation of bad faith. Willie stated that Pierre’s use of the company name was in bad faith. Alfred and Francis supported Willie’s claim. Pierre obviously did not, despite the fact that all but one of the fourteen banks associated with Morgan Company in floating the $8.5 million loan to Pierre were depositories of DuPont Company, and that right after the loan the banks enjoyed increased DuPont deposits of over $7.4 million. But then, as Pierre later explained, any new injection of funds into DuPont’s treasury would result in a rise in bank balances.
In desperation, Alfred asked Pierre if he would sell the stock to the company. Pierre calmly replied that he would not and asked if there were any further charges against him. The room was silent, too silent for Alfred. Feeling he had the upper hand, Pierre added a touch of drama to the occasion by warning his relatives not to say behind his back what they could not say to his face. Then, as quietly as he had come, he left. 63 From that moment on, it was clear to all who was in the seat of power.
Two days later, trying to appear fair, Pierre announced he had decided to reverse his previous refusal to sell the stock. But at the following directors’ meeting, the offer was jeopardized by an alleged—and undoubtedly calculated—legal technicality. At a prearranged time, it seems, in walked John P. Laffey, the company lawyer, with a marked law book in hand and pockets bulging with a $100,000 share in Coleman’s stock. The lawyer explained that he considered it illegal for the company to invest more than its surplus of $7.5 million. For that remark, Laffey was soon rewarded with a director’s seat. Then William Coyne, his pockets likewise bulging, added insult to Alfred’s injury by insisting the board give a full vote of confidence to their leader, Pierre Samuel DuPont. It was unanimous. Alfred left the room in complete disgust.
Pierre’s offer was referred to the finance committee for a final decision. Only now the finance committee had a newly appointed member, Irénée DuPont. When Alfred and William moved to accept Pierre’s offer, Irénée blocked it. A clear majority of the complete four-man committee was necessary and Pierre, as seller, had abstained. It was all over. Pierre’s coup was now complete.
Alfred and Willie knew it was only a matter of time before it would be all over for them. Pierre had already replaced Coleman officially as president and had bought control of the board of directors. He even lured Henry F. and Eugene DuPont and three other in-laws, Charles Copeland, William Winder Laird, and Hugh Rodney Sharp, into his camp. In all the scrambling for Coleman’s power, Pierre’s shrewdness had put him on top.
Alfred’s Revenge
After his cousin’s coup became apparent, Alfred, never one for concession, decided
to continue the battle on the legal front. He had Philip DuPont contest Pierre’s
acquisition in federal court. This was the final futile chapter in the greatest feud that
ever tore the DuPont family. It was also the end to Alfred’s role in the company. He,
Francis, and William were all purged from the board of directors and replaced by
members of Pierre’s syndicate: Ramsey, Tallman, and Henry F. DuPont, the deserter. At
the annual stockholders’ meeting a short while later a motion was carried endorsing Alfred’s ousting and applauding Pierre. “I don’t like to admit it, Doc,” Alfred told his
family physician, “but this is the most humiliating thing I’ve ever had happen to me.”
64 Alfred’s cause won over quite a few members of the family. William, Francis I., Paul, Archibald, Ernest, Eleanor DuPont Perot, and Philip all lined up on Alfred’s side and all were to share his permanent exile from the family firm.
Alfred and William also continued the battle on fronts other than the courts.
To rival Pierre’s Wilmington Trust Company, they set up the Delaware Trust Company and built an office building in Wilmington across the street from DuPont Building. It was two stories higher so that Alfred and William could cast an aloof eye down on their hated neighbor. The buildings still stand to this day, both banks dominating northern Delaware’s finances.
Next, Alfred heard that Coleman was planning to run for President of the United States. The press, he read, had found Coleman at his new office in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. “I have received thousands of letters from small businessmen and farmers,” he said with all due modesty, “asking that I permit my name to be used.” 65 Two weeks later the Business Men’s Presidential League opened its lavish offices at Coleman’s Waldorf-Astoria, announcing that T. Coleman DuPont was one of America’s great businessmen and a likely presidential candidate. Coleman agreed. In June 1916 one of Delaware’s senators rose in Congress to make a speech calling for Coleman’s presidency. Coly, as humble as ever, was delighted.
At first, Alfred was confused. Could Coleman really believe he was a serious contender? Alfred considered Coly’s ego and answered in the affirmative. Yet there had to be another angle, one where Coleman could get something out of the campaign besides probable defeat.
The answer came on the wind of rumors that 78-year-old Colonel Henry, if reelected in 1916, would serve only half his Senate term and then have his hand-picked governor appoint Coleman in his stead. “That was my chief reason for throwing the Colonel out,” Alfred later explained.
If Alfred lacked cleverness in business, he was amply endowed when it came to politics. In alliance with J. Frank Allee, he button-holed twenty of the thirty-five New Castle caucus members at the Richardson Hotel in Dover and captured the election as National Republican delegate from New Castle County.
Colonel Henry was virtually caught with his pants down. He had been so sure of that election for himself that he hadn’t even bothered to attend. He left everything to Coleman, who was there to make sure the caucus sent its delegate to vote for his own nomination at the national convention. When Coleman threatened to take the fight to the Dover convention’s floor, Allee used the General’s presidential ambitions against him. Make it a floor fight, he told Coly, and you lose New Castle’s vote at the national convention.
Coleman retreated, but he failed to capture Alfred’s vote anyway. Alfred had the caucus’s resolution of “instruct” for Coleman changed to “endorse.” When Alfred went to the convention as New Castle’s delegate, he claimed the resolution’s wordage was too vague to be binding and voted instead for Theodore Roosevelt. Coleman received only 13 of 987 votes at the convention. “Bang! T. C. DuPont’s boom blows up!” ran the headline on Alfred’s Morning News. Coleman’s Business Men’s Presidential League closed its doors at the Waldorf, never to reopen. 66
Alfred used the same tactic to split the Republican Party on the state level and crush Colonel Henry’s reelection bid. He fully endorsed Theodore Roosevelt right up to the Republican national convention. Then he switched “loyalty” to the Democratic nominee for Henry’s Senate seat, Josiah Wolcott. Alfred was actually not too happy about Wolcott. He had proposed Alicia’s first cousin, Thomas F. Bayard, Jr., husband of Elizabeth Bradford DuPont, for the Democratic nomination. Instead, Wolcott, a supposed friend of labor, won. Faced with the choice of Wolcott or Colonel Henry, Alfred easily chose the former.
Almost at once, Alfred began feverishly writing a steady stream of checks for Wolcott’s campaign. His seven newspapers constantly played up union charges that Henry was “labor’s enemy,” and local labor leaders like railroad brakeman Ed Davis stomped through Delaware factories and churches repeating the question: “What has H. A. DuPont ever done for the working class?” To further split the Republican vote on which Henry’s machine was counting, Alfred raised the Progressive Party banner and ran Ed Bradford for Congress and Dr. R. R. Burton of Lewes for Henry’s seat in the Senate.
On election night Alfred invited family and friends to his Nemours estate to hear the returns. The first results came from Wilmington, Henry’s stronghold. The Colonel was having a hard time, a clear indicator of his impending doom statewide. By the last tallies it was clear that Wolcott had won, 25,416 votes to Henry’s 22,925. Burton pulled in 2,361 votes, but they weren’t even necessary to beat the old Colonel. Every Republican endorsed by Alfred’s Progressive Party won; all opposed by Alfred lost.
Nemours broke into celebration. Champagne popped and Alfred lit up one of his 50- cent cigars. “Nothing like a great occasion for turning over a new leaf. This is the last cigar I’m ever going to light.” 67 It was.
It was also one of Alfred’s last great victories in Delaware. For while Alfred was turning over a new leaf, cousin Pierre, undaunted and untouched, was turning the family business into a new order that was to dominate Delaware’s economy—and its politics —for most of the next sixty years. Building from Coleman’s careful blueprint, Pierre streamlined the company’s organization according to his own liking now, erecting one of America’s first modern corporations while racing to prepare DuPont for its crucial role in that worldwide orgy of mass slaughter known as World War I
Next
MERCHANTS OF DEATH
notes
Chapter 6
1. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Defendant’s Record, Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, II, 964.
2. Ibid., Testimony of Alfred I. du Pont, I, 446.
3. Marquis James, Alfred I. du Pont—Family Rebel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1941), p. 145.
4. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Testimony of Alfred I. du Pont.
5. Ibid.
6. Charles Wertenbaker, “Du Pont,” Fortune, November 1934, p. 180.
7. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 147.
8. John W. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor—A Profile of Coleman du Pont (Wilmington: privately printed, 1964), p. 8.
9. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 149.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (Baltimore: Reynal & Hitchcock, Inc., 1935), p. 160.
13. Walter Lord, The Good Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962), p. 299.
14. See “The Industrial Replacement of Men by Women,” Industrial Commission of New York, March 1914.
15. Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor, April 17, 1920.
16. Lord, The Good Years.
17. Ibid.
18. See John Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1907) and J. Van Vorst, The Cry of the Children (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1908).
19. See “Child Labor in Canneries,” Child Labor Bulletin, Vol. I, No. 4, February 1913.
20. Lord, The Good Years, p. 76.
21. Ibid., p. 51.
22. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor, p. 11.
23. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Petitioner’s Record Exhibits, IV, 1788, Government Exhibit No. 166, “Resolution of the Directors of the Delaware Investment Company”: also Ibid., p. 1756, “Resolution of the Directors of the Delaware Securities Company.”
24. Philip du Pont vs. Pierre S. du Pont, Petitioner’s Brief, II, 330–33.
25. Records of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Interview with R. S. Waddell, President of Buckeye Powder Company and former General Sales Manager of Du Pont Company; August 28, 1907, Selections from the National Archives.
26. Ibid.
27. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
28. See Leonard Leopold, “The Growth of American Foreign Policy and American Imperialism,” Problems in American Civilization (Boston: Heath & Company), 1969. 2
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
32. U.S. vs. Du Pont, et al. Petitioner’s Record, Government Exhibit No. 212, IV, 1959.
33. Ibid., I, 206.
34. Ibid., IV, 2106.
35. Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library.
36. Ibid.
37. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
38. Ibid.
39. R. S. Waddell, “More Facts on the Powder Trust,” June 1906, Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library. 40. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Petitioner’s Record, Government Exhibit No. 212, IV, 1959.
41. R. S. Waddell, “More Facts on the Powder Trust,” January 1907, Selections from the National Archives, File No. 4480, “Complaints Against the Powder Trust by Buckeye Powder Company,” Eleutherian-Mills Library.
42. R. S. Waddell to Herbert Smith, Records of the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Corporations, National Archives, File No. 0–40-7, Record Group 122.
43. Calendar No. 6435, House Joint Resolution 224, 59th Congress, 2nd Session.
44. Chicago Chronicle, January 2, 1907.
45. See Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945).
46. See Sigmund Diamond, The Reputation of the American Businessman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).
47. T. Coleman du Pont, “The Powder Case Briefly Stated,” Du Pont Company memorandum to employees, October 5, 1911.
48. “Du Pont—The Powder and the Glory,” Fortune, January 1935, p. 125.
49. Henry A. du Pont to Benjamin Harrison, July 11, 1892, Papers of Benjamin Harrison, pp. 31754–55, Library of Congress (photo print), Accession 825, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
50. Wilmington Every Evening, May 11, 1895.
51. Philadelphia Public Ledger, May 19, 1895.
52. New York Times, May 18, 1896.
53. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
Chapter 7
1. Marquis James, Alfred I. du Pont—Family Rebel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1941), p. 214.
2. Ibid., p. 193.
3. Ibid., p. 201.
4. Philadelphia North American, October 31, 1909.
5. New York World, December 5, 1909.
6. New York Sun, October 31, 1909.
7. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 227.
8. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
9. Taft’s visits were on May 11, 13; December 1, 1910.
10. Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Accession of letters from W. H. Taft, 442,665, R. 973, Library of Congress.
11. New York Evening Post, November 14, 1910.
12. Robert G. Houston to Congressman W. H. Heald, Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Taft letters, op. cit.
13. W. H. Taft to H. A. du Pont, September 8, 1910, Ibid.
14. Ibid., November 25, 1910.
15. Linda Diane Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont’s Correspondence, 1907–12” (Master’s thesis, University of Delaware, June 1969), p. 48.
16. Ibid., p. 50.
17. Ibid., p. 57.
18. Ibid., p. 60.
19. Ibid., p. 48.
20. U.S. vs. Du Pont, et al.
21. Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont,” p. 92.
22. Ibid., p. 94.
23. Ibid.
24. George W. Wickersham to T. C. du Pont, October 20, 1911, Vollmar, “T. Coleman du Pont,” p. 95.
25. T. C. du Pont to C. P. Taft, October 26, 1911, Ibid., p. 103.
26. J. F. Alee to A. I. du Pont, July 13, 1921, Papers of A. I. du Pont, quoted in James, p. 244.
27. Wilmington Morning News, February 14, 1912.
28. Papers of H. A. du Pont, Series B, Box 38, Eleutherian-Mills Library.
29. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 245.
30. W. H. Taft, Selected Papers of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., Taft letters.
31. Ibid., W. H. Taft to Charles Taft, June 2, 1912.
32. John K. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty (Baltimore: Reynal & Hitchcock, Inc., 1935), p. 167.
33. This fact remains to disprove William S. Dutton’s claim in his Du Pont—One Hundred and Forty Years (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942) that “Today, as diversified chemical manufacturers as well as producers of explosives, Hercules and Atlas rank among Du Pont’s most aggressive and respectful competitors” (p. 197). The modern interlocks between both firms and the Du Ponts persist for Hercules just as strongly today as they did in 1912, if not more strongly. It is of little surprise that Dutton, himself a Du Pont executive, described his own book as “the Du Pont Company as seen by Du Pont men. It is an ‘inside’ view” (“Introduction,” p. vii).
34. W. H. Taft to George W. Marshall, June 12, 1912, Taft letters.
35. William H. Carr, The Du Ponts of Delaware (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1964), p. 268.
36. John W. Donaldson, Caveat Venditor—A Profile of Coleman du Pont (Wilmington: privately printed, 1964), p. 4.
37. Ibid.
38. Carr, p. 279.
39. Winkler, The Du Pont Dynasty, p. 296.
40. U.S. Federal Trade Commission, Records of the Bureau of Corporations, Entry 1, Department of Commerce, Social and Economic Branch. Selections: 1903, 1906–8, 1912–13, 1915. File No. 4480, M-62.11, R.G.122, Reel 1 (microfilm), EleutherianMills Library.
41. U.S. vs. Du Pont, Answer of E. I. du Pont & Co., et al., Pleadings, p. 108.
42. Ibid., p. 319.
43. Wilmington Sunday Star, June 17, 1906.
44. Wilmington Every Evening, October 30, 1916.
45. Milford Chronicle, October 13, 1916.
46. Wilmington Every Evening, September 19, 1916.
47. Wilmington Morning News, October 18, 1916.
48. Donaldson, Cave’at Venditor, p. 17.
49. Ibid., p. 18.
50. Ibid., p. 20.
51. Du Pont vs. Du Pont, Testimony of William du Pont.
52. Du Pont vs. Du Pont, I, 97.
53. Ibid., Testimony of P. S. du Pont, VIII, 19.
54. Ibid., I, 100.
55. Ibid., VI, 104.
56. Ibid., p. 114.
57. Ibid., p. 118.
58. Ibid., p. 126.
59. Ibid., p. 130.
60. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 259.
61. Ibid., Testimony of P. S. du Pont, VII, 25.
62. Ibid., Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, IV, 83–86.
63. Ibid., Testimony of Francis I. du Pont, VII, 89–92, 134.
64. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 281.
65. Ibid., p. 282.
66. Wilmington Morning News, May 20, 1916.
67. James, Alfred I. du Pont, p. 296.
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