The history of the E. I. Du Pont de Nemours powder company; a century of success

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Gunpowder — Arms — Ammunition — Explosives ' i

II. Nemours — Pierre Samuel du Pont — Eleu-

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LETTER FROM JOHN HANCOCK TO MESSRS. DU PONT & CO., WILMING- TON, DELAWARE. 16 other mechanical and engineering work, connected with the laying of foundations, the digging of roadbeds, the operating of mines, and the like, and in farming.

The making of gunpowder was comparatively simple. The making of its successors in the explosive world has become a vast and intricate process. Gunpowder was only a combination, in certain proportions, of simple materials such as charcoal, sulphur, and niter; its successors involve the use of chlorates, perchlorates, permanganates, and chromates, and these in turn are mixed with all manner of compounds, such as sulphur and sulphides, phosphorus, charcoal, sugar, starch, cellulose, and coal.

One by one these various combinations, with their resultant explosives, have developed as chemistry has progressed and as public demand has increased. The tale of the evolution would be most absorbing, but it is almost impossible to narrate in detail, for the reason that the steps in the invention of each succeeding new explosive are so minute and the secrecy of the processes is so necessary for the discovery to maintain that a story could hardly be told in form for the general reader to grasp.

Suffice it to say that in the course of time, explosives have come to be divided into three or four different groups. The first, technically known as explosive mixtures, consist of more or less extensive modifications of the original principle on which gunpowder-making was based, viz., that of mixing, instead of compounding, the various substances used. The second consists of what are known technically as explosive compounds, and are chemical fusions or blends of different substances. The third are the smokeless propellants, which first became generally known to the American public during the Spanish- American War.

There are infinite varieties both of the mixtures and of the compounds, each varying in power and serviceability, according to its composition. Take the mixtures of the chlorate of potassium and sodium with sulphur or charcoal or starch or sugar or other carbon, and the result is a mixture that is fired by very slight heat or percussion. The propellant power of the mixture is very great, but its easy ignition makes it dangerous both to store and to manufacture. Also, it has a tendency to explode with strong detonation, is not smokeless and leaves considerable residue to foul the gun.

Mixtures of chlorates with nitro-benzines or similar aromatic compounds make powerful blasting agents, the strength of the action being due largely to the first rapid evolving of oxygen in the chemical processes. So, too, do the potassium and sodium perchlorates and permanganates, although the latter are slightly less sensitive and slightly less powerful. Bichromates make rather feeble explosives, as a rule, but there are ways of using chromic acid with certain other compounds to make an extremely explosive as well as sensitive powder.

Among the explosive mixtures, nearly all explosives that are used for blasting or for propellants are nitrogen compounds, obtained from nitric acid by some process more or less direct. Gun cotton and nitrogen result from one kind of mixture, while nitrobenzine, rick-a-rock and other well-known substances result from other kinds of nitric acid mixtures. Among the latter are the "flameless" blasting powders which have developed in recent years and which correspond to the smokeless powder used in military and naval circles. Even mercuric fulminate, one of the most useful of high explosives known at the present day, is the result of the action of a solution of mercurous nitrate, containing some nitrous acid, or alcohol.

The first real smokeless powder was gun cotton, but the original gun cotton had a fibrous, porous mass in its make-up which burned too quickly or was likely to create too great a detonation, and it did not take the place now occupied by the so-called smokeless powder until certain processes were discovered for gelatinizing it by the use of such substances as ethyl acetate or benzoate acetene, or other benzene compounds.

As early as 1887, France adopted a gelatinized gun cotton for its magazine rifle, and thus became practically the pioneer in the use of smokeless powder. In 1890, Italy adopted another form of smokeless powder called ballistite, which was the result, indirectly, of a discovery by A. Nobel that nitroglycerin could be incorporated with collodion cotton to form a blasting gelatin, or dynamite. Thus nitroglycerin was added to gun cotton as one of the substances to be used as bases -in making the smokeless powder, and ever since that time, either one or the other of these two materials has been the chief ingredient.

Originally, when the du Pont factories first came into existence, the great danger in the manufacture of its products lay in the incorporating of the ingredients one with the other. But now the danger lies in the chemical processes of preparing the nitroglycerin, the drying of the gun cotton, and similar operations. After the gelatinizing has once been accomplished, the balance of the manufacturing is practically without risk.

As probably everybody knows, gunpowder was generally made loose, as it is to-day, but the other explosives which have developed from it have come to be made in various compact shapes such as cubes, flakes, cords, and cylinders. All of these are designed to regulate the rate of burning of the explosives, and the calculation of that speed is but one more of the many fine arts which it has become necessary for the powder manufacturer to acquire.

II

NEMOURS — PIERRE SAMUEL DU PONT — ELEUTHERE IRENEE DU PONT DE NEMOURS

THERE is a little town in France, not far from Paris, on a river and a canal and with a long, long history behind it. It is known as Nemours. Centuries ago, it was a Roman lumber camp, and from the woods (nemora) which surrounded it it derived the peculiar and musical name which it still retains. Then, as the aristocracy of France grew up and the peasantry grew down, Nemours passed into a center of feudalism, erecting one of those memorable castles and strongholds which a thousand or more years have not sufficed to destroy.

But feudalism palled upon Nemours, as it palled upon all of Europe, and presently the place emerged into the liberties and hopes of free thought and economic independence. It became a center of intellectualism, as it had once been of feudalism. In its quiet streets and away from the seething strifes of the capital, beside its beautiful waters, yet near enough to the capital to be in touch with the process of learning, the arts, and the government, men of unusual culture found refuge. Writers, philosophers, scientists, and the like were glad to make it their home. Its fame became widespread and good. Even at this time so extraordinary a relic of those days remains that one of the most conspicuous features to confront the traveler is a monument to Bezout. What other town so poetic and appreciative as to erect a memorial to a mere mathematician?

PIERRE SAMUEL DU PONT

So when, in the strenuous times preceding the great Revolution, Turgot, the political adviser of Louis XVI, who alone among the countless reformers of the hour had a plan which if adopted and adhered to might have forfended all the turbulence and destruction which afterwards ensued, was compelled to relinquish his fight because there was little of the spirit of conciliation in any hearts save his own and those of some of his immediate followers, one of the chief of these — a du Pont — gravitated to Nemours for refuge, repose, and reflection.

He was a strong du Pont, this du Pont de Nemours (born December 14, 1739, died August 7, 1817), as he afterwards became known, and his life was one of public thought and service. Born in the national capital and educated for the practice of medicine, but too ardent a civilian to listen to any inner calling save the dominant one of the hour, viz., what to do to rescue a nation from its threatened economic and social overthrow, he early abandoned JEsculapius for Aristotle, and, together with the famous Turgot and Francois Quesnay, founded and promoted the school known to the world as the Economists.

This notable organization was the direct fruit of France's ever increasing internal difficulties, which began in the autocratic period of the great Cardinal Richelieu, grew worse under Mazarin and his financially brilliant but unimaginative and short-sighted successor Colbert, and finally culminated in the excesses and follies of the court of Louis XVI. Little by little through all the intervening years the position of the peasantry or working classes, and even of the middle business class, had grown worse, until some manner of violent resistance to the conditions had become inevitable. Far-sighted thinkers foresaw what must happen, and they divided into schools and groups, each of which had its remedy. The Economists were one of these groups, led by Quesnay in the first instance and reenforced by Turgot, who was Quesnay's pupil. They were for rectifying the economic ills by destroying certain special privileges, dissolving big trade corporations which had monopolistic powers, reducing taxation, retrenching in government expenses and terminating government borrowing.

Pierre Samuel du Pont was one of the school. His mind was broad and keen, his pen was able and convincing, and he soon became a close friend and intimate both of Turgot and of Quesnay. Abandoning the practice of medicine, he turned to letters and became editor of the Journal of Agriculture, Commerce and Finance, and later of the Ephemerides of the Citizen. In this capacity his writings had great force and influence and made him so much of a factor in the critical affairs of the hour that he was sent for in 1772 by the King of Poland, Stanislas Poniatowski, to become secretary of the council of public instruction. He filled the post for two years with energy and acumen. In the meanwhile, however, the vacillating Louis, driven between the fires of his covetous love of power and elegance and the increasing unrest and passion among the people, resorted to the Economists for help and summoned Turgot to power. Turgot at once sent to Poland for du Pont, and du Pont returned to become one of the most active participants in the brief but fruitless struggle of the great French statesman to restore harmony.

Turgot fell, as all students of French history well know, and with him fell du Pont and all of the Economist School. But the fall was to du Pont really only a beginning. It took him to the quiet of Nemours, or rather, at first, to the near-by Gatinais, and there, in the undisturbing pursuits of agriculture, he not only wrote the now widely known Memoirs of the Life of Turgot, but so continued his manifestations of public spirit that he was sent for by the minister of foreign affairs in 1782 to help in negotiating for the recognition of the independence of the United States and in preparing a treaty of commerce with Great Britain.

Doubtless he would have been glad to remain upon his farm, contented with his books and his pen; but as the Revolution grew, as the forces of discontent and disorder threatened to overthrow the very government itself, his sense of public preservation rose to its urgency, and he returned to political life as deputy from the bailliage of Nemours. He became president of the Constituent Assembly, and wisely or unwisely, but certainly, sincerely, and fearlessly, he championed the cause of the monarchy. His attitude proved his undoing. It drove him into hiding, then into prison, and finally into exile with a price upon his head. But nothing could curb his spirit, his energy, or his mental activity.

While in hiding, he wrote a yet well-known work on The Philosophy of the Universe, and when liberated by the general amnesty of Robespierre, he became a member of the Council of Five Hundred and actively and persistently fought along his previous lines, directing his forces chiefly against the Jacobins. To what end this determined and changeless adherence to his convictions might have brought him is to

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A LETTER FROM THOMAS JEFFERSON, DATED APRIL 24TH, 181 1,

ADDRESSED TO MR. E. DU PONT DE NEMOURS.

be judged from the fact that when, in 1797, the Republicans finally triumphed, his home was sacked by the mob and he only escaped transportation to the deadly penal colonies of Cayenne through the interposition of a friend and his subsequent departure for the United States.

The arrival in America in those strenuous days of this refugee from France was not an event in itself to amount to much, for there were thousands of other political outcasts. But the arrival of Samuel Pierre du Pont proved to be more than notable. It was in 1799 that du Pont first reached the new republic, but within a year Jefferson, recognizing his merits and abilities, had called upon him to prepare a scheme of national education, and two years later used him to convey unofficially to Napoleon Bonaparte a threat against the French occupation of Louisiana. His scheme for education was never adopted, but his brochure entitled Sur ^education nationale dans les Etats-Unis d'Amerique is one of the early American classics and is found in every American library which makes any pretense to historical efficiency. Several of the most important features advocated by him have since been adopted in the school system of France.

For a time, when affairs had quieted in France, love of home and country carried du Pont again across the sea, but he declined to accept any office under Napoleon, contented himself with his pursuit of letters, and became one of the early presidents of the famous Institute. Then, when Napoleon fell in 1 8 14, du Pont's political instincts were unable to suppress themselves and he became secretary of the provincial government and afterward Councilor of State. He hoped that the turbulent affairs of his country were at an end and he was willing to sacrifice his own

A CHECK DATED DECEMBER 19, 1814, MADE BY E. I. DU PONT DE

NEMOURS CO. IN PAYMENT FOR $7.20 FOR CAT TAILS.

personal comfort for the people's good. But his hope proved vain. The redoubtable Napoleon returned to upset the equilibrium of the nation once more, and du Pont's patriotic courage and optimism gave way. He was seventy-five years of age by this time. His family had grown up and scattered. There was no mission left for him but the honored mission that falls to the Elder Statesman — the mission of repose and counsel, the mission of watching the sons and children as the latter build their way into the careers for which their parents may have fitted them or for which their own caprices may have destined them.

Curiously enough, this mission called Pierre Samuel du Pont back to the United States. It called him back to watch his youngest son, Eleuthere Irenee, whom he had long since caused to be as profoundly grounded in science, particularly in chemistry, as the father had been in civics, lay the foundation of a career which should make a place in history even greater than that of his father's, for the entire du Pont family and name. It called him back to watch the establishment of America's first powder works and the creation of an institution which has already lasted for more than a century.

Curious that the son of a man of letters should be the creator of a manufactory of explosives? Curious also that a man whose weapon was the pen should be followed by a son whose work was to be for those whose weapons were the gun and the cannon.

ELEUTHERE IRENEE DU PONT DE NEMOURS

Thoroughly practicing what he preached, Pierre Samuel du Pont had established a large printing plant at Nemours, from whose presses were sent forth books, pamphlets, and other literature on their far-reaching errands of reformation.

The masses, however, in those years of unrest apparently desiring neither education nor an understanding nor an advocacy of their rights, nor reform, and having shown their mal-appreciation of his desires and activities by wrecking the plant and totally destroying the family estate at Nemours — a not altogether unexpected or unusually ungrateful reward for such unselfish services so unconditionally rendered — another country had to be sought.

Eleuthere (born June 24, 1772, died October 31, 1834) nad> meanwhile, been placed by his father in charge of the printing plant. On the wrecking of the works and their home, they both fled from Nemours. Eleuthere escaped to Ensonne, remaining for some time in seclusion there. Ensonne was the locale of the Government's Powder Plant. Eleuthere was a scientist by instinct and nature. His father's philosophical inspiration and training only served to increase his desire for a complete knowledge of chemistry. He became a pupil of the great Lavoisier, who was recognized as the foremost expert of the day. Lavoisier had recommended Eleuthere for the vacant superintendentship of the Government Works, and the new head threw himself with traditional energy into the study of the mystery and manufacture of explosives.

Like his descendants and representatives of to-day, there was nothing that escaped his observant and open mind. He studied and experimented unceasingly. He learned every possible detail theoretically, as well as practically, from the use of the raw material to the finally tested product. He furnished many new ideas and introduced numerous improvements. In a word, he raised the hitherto rough methods of manufacture to the higher level of a recognized science,

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A and as a distinguished pupil of a most distinguished tutor rivaled the master himself in his thorough grasp and knowledge of the products, that have meant so much for the world and without which it would be impossible to carry on its work.

Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours, founder of the great industry which, as a tribute to his memory and enterprise, was in 1903 — one hundred and three years afterwards — renamed after him, having made good his escape from France, reached this country in the year 1800, then occupied in its own remaking. He landed at Bergen Point, New Jersey. Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, the father, Victor, his elder brother, and the respective families of each accompanied him.

At the time of their advent here, Thomas Jefferson was President of the United States. The country was practically without means within itself of supplying gunpowder and explosives. It had no mills or manufactories organized for the purpose of making them, and the little that was made was on a handto-mouth principle, just in the same way that people used to make their own leaden bullets in their own homes.

On looking around, the du Ponts saw the magnificent opportunity afforded to them of manufacturing explosives of a character and quality entirely unknown to the people here, far ahead of anything of the kind that had been produced. Though greatly lessened in fortunes, strangers in a strange land, the possibilities of this great and somewhat crude and untutored country were apparent to them all, and their indomitable courage and enterprise came to their aid. Without loss of time, the du Ponts opened negotiations with Thomas Jefferson, General John

Mason and John Hancock, for the purpose of establishing a plant in this country which would standardize the products and supply them in sufficient quantities, and of a grade that would make them the leading ones of their kind.

The project was received with acclamation and many prominent people of the country expressed their willingness and desire to cooperate and be associated with it. The broken fortunes were forgotten. The unbroken spirit remained. The inherited strain and pedigree of centuries they each possessed told, and the knot of men set to work, in face of almost unsurmountable difficulties, to the task of erecting a plant that should be worthy of their experience, of their enterprise, and of the country which had welcomed them.

Seven chief factors presented themselves, with which they had to contend — isolation, water-power, labor, the means of securing raw materials, facilities for transportation, and lastly money and machinery. To decide upon the right locality where the elements and conditions were favorable was no slight matter, and many parts of the country were visited ; and at that time traveling was a very tedious and slow process. Virginia was considered, Maryland and other parts of the States offered sites, but nothing appealed to the du Ponts more than Wilmington, Delaware, for there it appeared as though nature itself had prepared the way for these talented emigres. There, the beautiful banks of the Brandywine, the scene itself of vital and important occurrences in the history of America, offered the ideal situation. Jefferson, Mason, and Hancock saw the immense benefit that such an enterprise would be to the country, and in the bigness of their big hearts offered their moral support in the founding of an industry which is now the fourth largest in the United States, manufacturing 2,000,000 pounds of explosives a day, having on its payroll 15,- 000 people, a monument of perseverance, intelligence, broad-mindedness, and sterling integrity.

Ill

FIRST POWDER MILL IN AMERICA— ANOTHER COUNTRY THAN FRANCE— ANOTHER WAR

IN 1802, two years after the arrival of the du Ponts, the first powder mill in America was erected. The grounds around it covered sixty acres. It was situated close to the Brandywine. The money and machinery had been secured in the country they were driven from, for they had in the meantime, both father and son, revisited the land of their expatriation and obtained them. The mill still exists. It is still working and producing. It is preserved and regarded with a respect amounting almost to reverence. It was the stepping stone to great things. It was the beginning of still greater things. It was a help to the country, and a reward to those indefatigable men whose tenacity and far-sightedness were the means of its foundation.

The du Ponts, during their more than a century of business existence, have always worked shoulder to shoulder with their men, have passed through the same experiences and faced the same dangers. They have been no less soldiers of industry than soldiers of the country, and Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours was always willing to share the common dangers surrounding his work-people. This spirit and example brought out the best that was in their help, and to-day loyal descendants of these first early employes are proud of being on the company's payrolls. The first year of its existence, the du Pont enterprise 35 netted the handsome sum of $50,000, which was accounted an unusual achievement in those days. To-day, that sum and more is netted by the company every seventy- two hours.

During the first decade ten more acres were added to the property and other mills established on the Brandy wine.

A supreme test of Eleuthere Irenee du Pont de Nemours' patriotism came in the year 1812, during the awful and uncertain war America had with its mother country. It was the first time a navy had been equipped here and a sea war experienced.

Without a moment's hesitation, he placed the whole of his services and his equipment at the disposal of the country which now claimed him. Recompense or reward was not thought of or considered. His singleminded idea was to do all that lay in his power to serve the country that had welcomed him, and give the best of his brains and services in the accomplishment of its liberty. Through those wars, which were the means of its freedom, in fact through the whole of them, were used the products of his mills.

He bequeathed to his descendants a firmly united family and his life's work, the largest and most perfectly equipped enterprise of any kind that the country at that time possessed.

He was personally the soul of honor, the gentlest and kindest of men, far-seeing and liberal to a degree, having attracted to him by a sheer personal influence and character men of all classes from all parts of the nation. From one of his letters is culled the following :

PIERRE SAMUEL DU PONT. 37

ANOTHER COUNTRY THAN FRANCE

That Eleuthere Irenee du Pont grasped in any way the great part that his study of powder-making under Lavoisier was to play in the future of another nation than France is doubtful. Men seldom, if ever, are gifted with such eyes of prophecy. But, as stated previously, the visit in exile of Eleuthere's distinguished and scholarly father to the United States was not for nothing. It planted in the family mind the knowledge that there was another country than France that could be served, another land where patriotism was not likely to be rewarded by banishment, and where enterprise and ingenuity were more certain to be in demand than in opprobrium. And when, the hopes of a republic temporarily vanishing, France went into the eclipse of Napoleonic imperialism, young Eleuthere reached out for the New World with his skill and his ambition and found there his future home.

His elder brother, Victor, had already been secretary of the French legation at Washington and consul of France at Charleston, and through this and other connections the proposition was put up to such leaders of American thought as General John Mason, John Hancock, and others to establish a powder plant in the new republic. The battles of 1775 to 1781 had been a sad commentary on the powder-making skill of the country, and many an advantage in the several years' struggle had been lost through the miserably poor quality of the explosives that had been used. So that when a qualified student of so expert a maker as the great Lavoisier offered to transfer his faculties to the United States, the United States was only too glad to offer them a welcome.

The Revolution by this time — for it was between 1800 and 1802 that Eleuthere brought forth his proposition— was past and gone, and the young nation looked forward eagerly to an era of peace. But westward of the seat of government and of the centers of business was as yet a vast wilderness, peopled with Indians and beset with wild beasts and game. Into this the march of the country's growth was gradually penetrating, and at every step came the call for the thing that Eleuthere had to offer. Farmers made their living not more from the soil than from the animals of the forests. They shot and trapped and cured pelts and furs. They slaughtered for food and killed for protection. And nothing was more necessary to their success than a good, reliable quality of powder, made in their own country and sold to them at a reasonable figure.

Besides, there was the specter of the Indians, of their sudden attacks, of their unexpected treacheries, of their merciless retaliations for injuries or encroachments. And it was but one of the many duties of the government to maintain troops and to furnish ammunition for the settlers' defense. Also, though the Revolution was over and though the nation presumably was at peace with all the world, only three or four years had elapsed since intrigue of one kind or another had almost landed the country in war with its benefactor, France, and even at that very moment other intriguers were causing hostilities with the so-called pirates of Teneriffe. So wise statesmen knew enough to provide against emergencies and to encourage industries which might aid in making that provision.

Thus, between the simple necessities of domesticity and the potential necessities of national exigency there opened for Eleuthere Irenee du Pont a splendid chance, and he took advantage of it. Location after location was tendered to him up and down the coast for his proposed powder works, but he was essentially a child of little, old, picturesque Nemours in the motherland — of Nemours, with its woods and its flowing streams — and he selected the beautiful shores of the Brandywine in Delaware, near the present site of the city of Wilmington. There, with the force of the river's current to turn the wheels, the timber to furnish the buildings and the charcoal, and the landscape to minister to his inspiration, Eleuthere placed his first powder factory. And there, from that remote day, one hundred and ten years ago, until now, the first E. I. du Pont de Nemours factory has remained.

America in its marvelous growth has gone on westward, southward, and northward. There were but four million people in all its vast domain in those days ; there are nearly twenty-five times that number now. The Mississippi and the Ohio were its utmost western limits then; the Philippines on the Asiatic coast mark its termini to-day. Where the Brandywine was once in the heart of a seemingly primeval wilderness as Eleuthere Irenee du Pont cleared out its timber for the first mill, it is to-day in the heart of a vast and complex civilization. Cities have come and cities have grown great in the meanwhile. Generations have lived and generations have passed away; all those things and those people among whom and for which Eleuthere himself lived and worked have vanished. The making of war by the use of a powder composed of a combination of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur fed into flintlock guns or rammed into muzzle-loading cannon, has long since given way to the disappearing carriage, the smokeless powder, and aiming by machinery. American settlers have not made their living by trapping and hunting for two generations. Yet the Eleuthere Irenee du Pont plant still stands on the Brandywine, vast, enlarged, an industry modern in magnitude, wealth, and power. The one little old building with which it began has become a hundred. The few acres which were originally required for the entire purposes of the business are now expanded into many times the original number. And where once the wood for charcoal was burned within a stone's throw of the mills, now whole freight trains come and go with charcoal burned many miles away and with infinite quantities both of raw material for the plant's consumption and of the plant's products for the world's consumption.