Blood Relations: The Rise and Fall of the du Ponts of Delaware
Summary (from the publisher): When Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald went to live in Wilmington in 1927, Scott wrote to his editor that "there is a kind of feudalism...The du Ponts, an immense family, mostly female, dominate the town." In fact, by the 1920's the du Ponts had more money than any other single family, including the Rockefellers, the Mellons or the Guggenheims, but unlike these others, they kept quiet about it. Ever since the original Pierre Samuel du Pont arrived on these shores in January, 1800, the family as a whole had been making strenuous and largely successful efforts to avoid the kind of publicity that has surrounded the rise of other great American clans. The saga of the du Ponts is, however, full of every kind of human and social drama, and, now, it is finally being told in all its fullness and rich detail by the masterful biographer of Dulles, Lindbergh, and Hiroshito.
There is practically nothing in human experience - with the possible exception of actual poverty - that hasn't happened to the du Ponts. Their story encompasses insanity, cruelty, malevolence and murder - but also great genius. In business they have often behaved like the worst exploiters, even encouraged wars to their own monetary advantage; but they are also responsible for remarkable discoveries which have benefited the peaceful occupations of mankind.
Almost from the moment they landed, the du Ponts began to produce a breed of quintessential Americans, fired by the challenges of a new nation and prepared to fight for their share of its power and success. Their mills on the banks of the Brandywine River produced $1,000,000 in profit from gunpowder sold to the North in the Civil War; without Du Pont powder the United States would not have been able to fight, much less win, the Spanish American War; and in World War I the British bought their explosives from Du Pont. By the 1920's, however, the company had already branched out into a wide range of chemical products - the precursors of what was, in 1939, to be the most explosive Du Pont invention of all time - nylon.
In 1922, the family gained control of General Motors and thereby created what the Sherman antitrust suit brought by the government in 1950 was to call "the largest single concentration of power in the United States." For a long time the du Ponts virtually controlled the state of Delaware: they collected the tolls on the turnpike, they operated what schools existed, they manipulated state and local government, they had a member of the family in the United States Senate. And their personal power was to last until the 1960's when, for the first time, there was no du Pont at the helm of what had been one of the largest family-owned-and-operated businesses in the world.
There are still as many du Ponts in Delaware, and they are still as rich, but their separation from the family enterprise seems somehow to have diminished their influence, power and importance. For well over 150 years, however, the gripping stories of this extraordinary family and its monolithic business were dramatically and inextricably intertwined.
Leonard Mosley has been given access to all of the du Pont letters and papers never before available to any biographer. He has brought to Blood Relations all the persuasive powers of a veteran reporter and researcher combined with a prodigious writing talent, to produce a book that is revealing, incisive, and, above all, engrossing.
There is practically nothing in human experience - with the possible exception of actual poverty - that hasn't happened to the du Ponts. Their story encompasses insanity, cruelty, malevolence and murder - but also great genius. In business they have often behaved like the worst exploiters, even encouraged wars to their own monetary advantage; but they are also responsible for remarkable discoveries which have benefited the peaceful occupations of mankind.
Almost from the moment they landed, the du Ponts began to produce a breed of quintessential Americans, fired by the challenges of a new nation and prepared to fight for their share of its power and success. Their mills on the banks of the Brandywine River produced $1,000,000 in profit from gunpowder sold to the North in the Civil War; without Du Pont powder the United States would not have been able to fight, much less win, the Spanish American War; and in World War I the British bought their explosives from Du Pont. By the 1920's, however, the company had already branched out into a wide range of chemical products - the precursors of what was, in 1939, to be the most explosive Du Pont invention of all time - nylon.
In 1922, the family gained control of General Motors and thereby created what the Sherman antitrust suit brought by the government in 1950 was to call "the largest single concentration of power in the United States." For a long time the du Ponts virtually controlled the state of Delaware: they collected the tolls on the turnpike, they operated what schools existed, they manipulated state and local government, they had a member of the family in the United States Senate. And their personal power was to last until the 1960's when, for the first time, there was no du Pont at the helm of what had been one of the largest family-owned-and-operated businesses in the world.
There are still as many du Ponts in Delaware, and they are still as rich, but their separation from the family enterprise seems somehow to have diminished their influence, power and importance. For well over 150 years, however, the gripping stories of this extraordinary family and its monolithic business were dramatically and inextricably intertwined.
Leonard Mosley has been given access to all of the du Pont letters and papers never before available to any biographer. He has brought to Blood Relations all the persuasive powers of a veteran reporter and researcher combined with a prodigious writing talent, to produce a book that is revealing, incisive, and, above all, engrossing.
Review: For over a hundred years, Du Pont explosives played a pivotal role in nearly every war fought in the world. This work of non-fiction covers the history of the family behind the company, who profited handsomely from the gunpowder business and amassed a fortune. The recognized founder of the family, Pierre Samuel du Pont, was born in Paris in 1739 and was named inspector general of commerce under Louis XVI. The family arrived in America on New Year's Day, 1800 and it wasn't long before Pierre Samuel's son Eleuthere Irenee realized that the manufacture of gunpowder was woefully behind in America and decided to capitalize on this opportunity and found a spot on the Brandywine Creek that flowed through the farmlands of northern Delaware.
While at times I got bogged down in minutiae of the business details and the increasingly complicated family tree, I enjoyed this biography of the family behind the company. The descriptions of the early buildup of the company, complete with frequent explosions and deaths was compelling reading, as were the later descriptions of family drama and unimaginable wealth. By the 1920s, the du Pont family was becoming the richest family in the United States and "probably the world," as the "aggregate amount of money possessed by the du Pont clan far surpassed that of any other family" (297). This was assisted by their habit of keeping everything in the family by frequently marrying cousins. It was also interesting reading about how much pull they had over politics, namely in Delaware, but also later in Florida and elsewhere.
I was interested in this book because my hometown had a Du Pont factory in years past that manufactured nylon and employed a large number of people. While this was a small section of the book, it was interesting to read that the Du Pont company employed a team of chemists, one of whom went on to discover nylon, which ended up becoming a huge and very profitable side business for the company. Chemists were always part of the company as they sought to stay on the cutting edge of the manufacture of explosives. In later years, new inventions like nylon were just an added bonus as the business evolved from a family business in gunpowder to become a chemical corporation.
Stars: 4
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