Du Pont, Pierre S. (Pierre Samuel), 1870-1954

P. S. du Pont was president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. from 1915 to 1919 and chairman of the board from 1919 to 1940. He was also president of General Motors (1920-1923) and chairman (1920-1929), as well as a member of many other major corporate boards. He was also an avid collector of documents on the early history of the Du Pont family and company.

The term "Mexican Account" was a code name used to designate the account which was used by E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. to pay under cover Pinkerton detectives who investigated employees suspected of union activities or involvement in the events like the 1890 barn burnings.

In 1917 at the initiative of Pierre S. du Pont and John Raskob, the Du Pont Company purchased 25% of the stock of the seven-year old General Motors Corporation. At that time, G.M. was the second largest automobile company in the United States. However, in terms of assets and volume of production it was a very distant second to the Ford Motor Company. In December of 1920, Pierre S. du Pont became the president of G.M., reorganizing the company's fincancial and administrative structure to mirror the organization that had been put in place at the Du Pont Company during the 1910s. In 1924 Pierre S. du Pont turned the G.M. presidency over to Alfred Sloan, Jr. Du Pont remained chairman until 1928. His major task was to oversee his huge investment in the automobile company. In 1948 the United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit charging that the Du Pont - G.M. relationship was a violation of the Sherman Antitrust law. In 1962, eight years after Pierre S. du Pont's death, the du Pont family and the Du Pont Company were forced to liquadate their G.M. stock.

In 1949, the Justice Department brought a case against E.I. du Pont de Nemours, General Motors, and related du Pont family interests seeking to demonstrate that the fact that the Du Pont company and du Pont family held 25% of the stock in the General Motors Corporation was a violation of the Sherman and Clayton Antitrust acts. The Justice Department was particularly concerned about the leverage that this stock gave Du Pont in securing G.M.'s substantial business in such products as artificial leather, celluloid plastics, and paints and varnishes. After eight years of litigation in 1957 the United States Supreme Court ordered the Du Pont Company and family to divest itself of their General Motors stock.

Isabelle B. ("Belle") Wales was a childhood friend of Pierre S. du Pont.

Pierre S. du Pont was born at Nemours, Del., on January 15, 1870, the eldest son of Lammot and Mary Belin du Pont. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 and entered the family firm of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company. In 1899 he resigned and became president of The Johnson Company of Lorain, Ohio, in which several relatives had been active. In 1902 he joined with his cousins, T. Coleman and Alfred I. du Pont, to purchase the Du Pont Company, which they proceeded to reorganize into a modern industrial corporation. He served as president of Du Pont from 1915 to 1919 and board chairman from 1919 to 1940. In 1913 he began to acquire stock in General Motors and was its president (1920-1923) and board chairman (1920-1929). In 1906 he purchased the Longwood estate near Kennett Square, Pa., and began developing the gardens. He also established a private library at Longwood, collecting books and manuscripts dealing with the history of the du Pont family and company and the explosives and chemical industries. He died in Wilmington on April 5, 1954.

In the spring of 1934 the Senate's Special Committee Investigating the Munitions Industry chaired by Senator Gerald P. Nye began to examine the role that the munitions manufacturers had played during the First World War. Nye charged that the Du Pont Company had conspired to bring the United States into the War. During the public hearings Pierre, Irénée and Lammot du Pont were forced to defend their Old Hickory (Nashville, Tenn.) plant contract as well as the company's links to ICI and I.G. Farben. While no hard evidence was ever presented to substantiate Nye's charges, in the public mind the Du Pont Company was labelled as "A Merchant of Death" as a result of these highly publicized hearings.

In the spring of 1929 Pierre S. du Pont and John J. Raskob purchased an interest in the Enyan Corporation which owned the old Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. In August Raskob convinced the Board of Directors to demolish the old hotel and build the world's tallest building on the site. On August 30, the Enyan Corporation became Empire State, Inc., and Al Smith became president of the new corporation. The Empire State building opened its doors in 1931. However, in the midst of the Depression it proved very difficult to rent office space. The Du Pont Company occupied several suites of offices, but despite Raskob's urging president Lammot du Pont refused to move the corporate headquarters from Wilmington to New York City. Empire State, Inc. did not become profitable until 1946. However, Pierre S. du Pont and John Raskob sold their interests in the building in 1938.

Pierre Samuel du Pont was born at Nemours, Delaware on January 15, 1870. He was the eldest son of Lammot and Mary Belin du Pont. He graduated from the William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia in 1886 and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology four years later. After graduation he returned to Delaware and became assistant superintendent of the Brandywine black powder mills. During the late 1890s he invested in the Citizens Gas & Electric Company and The Johnson Company of Lorain, Ohio. In the years between 1899 and 1902 he worked with his two cousins, T. Coleman and Alfred I. du Pont to reorganize the Du Pont company, which was formally incorporated under the name of E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company on February 26, 1902. With T. Coleman as president, Pierre became vice president, treasurer, and assistant secretary. As a member of the finance committee he played a pivotal role in reorganizing the company into a multi-divisional, modern corporation. In 1907 he was named as a defendant in an anti-trust case which five years later resulted in the signing of a consent degree which led to the formation of the Hercules and Atlas Powder companies. In 1915 P. S. du Pont purchased T. Coleman's stock and in 1915 he became president of the company. In 1915 he was elected as director of the General Motors Company, which at the time was near bankruptcy. Working with Alfred Sloan he reorganized the company and in 19.

20 replaced William C. Durant as president.

In the 1920s Pierre S. du Pont was very active in the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. In 1933 he was named to the National Industrial Recovery Administration's National Labor Relations Board, but resigned a year later. In the years between 1934 and 1941, he was active in the American Liberty League. In 1944 he resigned from the board of General Motors, but found himself four years later involved in an anti-trust suit when the government charged the G.M.-Du Pont Company relationship was an illegal restraint of trade.

In 1953 Pierre du Pont chartered the Longwood Library Association. He died on April 5, 1954.

Pierre Samuel du Pont was born at Nemours, Delaware on January 15, 1870. He was the eldest son of Lammot and Mary Belin du Pont. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 with a degree in engineering, he returned to Delaware to become assistant superintendent of the Du Pont Company's Brandywine black powder mills. During the late 1890s Pierre and his cousin T. Coleman du Pont invested in The Johnson Company and Citizen's Gas & Electric Company of Lorain, Ohio.

In the years between 1899 and 1902 Pierre du Pont worked with his two cousins, T. Coleman and Alfred I. to reorganize the Du Pont Company - transforming the family firm into a modern, centralized, multidivisional corporation. In 1915 Pierre S. du Pont became president of the Du Pont Company and shortly, thereafter, purchased 25% of the stock of the General Motors Corporation. He was elected to the Board of Directors of General Motors. He became president of G.M. in 1920 (after resigning his presidency of the Du Pont Company to become Chairman of the Board of Directors). In 1923 he turned over the presidency of G.M. to Alfred Sloan, Jr. During the late 1920s, 30s, and 40s, Pierre S. du Pont continued to serve on the Board of Directors of the Du Pont Company and General Motors Corporation.

In the early 1920s, Pierre S. du Pont began assembling a collection of family papers and books on economics and technology. These materials were initially housed at his Longwood estate. In 1953 he chartered the Longwood Library and when he died a year later the library was incorporated as an independent research library. In 1961 the Longwood Library merged with the Hagley Museum.

In July 1918 Pierre S. du Pont formed the Service Citizens of Delaware, his first of three philanthropic organizations devoted to education. Service Citizens was dominated by urban business and professional men, most of whom lived in Wilmington and many of whom were associated with the Du Pont Company. As a group they were convinced that Delaware's underfunded and backward public school system was an obstacle to economic and social development. Service Citizens undertook a program to rehabilitate housing in working class neighborhoods, it provided financial assistance for the Delaware Negro Civic League, it established a public health program, and it absorbed the state's experimental Americanization program. In the early 1920s Service Citizens played a crucial role in transforming Delaware's district-based, decentralized system of public education into one controlled by a state board of education.

Between 1918 and 1940 Pierre S. du Pont donated $5,000,000 to construct 120 Delaware schools. These funds were normally funneled through the Delaware School Auxiliary Association which he incorporated on 28 July 1919 to oversee the statewide school-building program. Much of this money was targeted for the black school system which was characterized by one room frame school houses containing at least six grades.

Tom Loftin Johnson (1854-1911) began his business career as a protege of the brothers Alfred Victor du Pont and Antoine Bidermann du Pont. They had come to Louisville, Ky., in 1859 as sales agents for the family powder business but engaged in many other local enterprises, including the street railways. Johnson rose to be superintendent of the du Pont lines and initiated many managerial and technical improvements. In 1872 he patented an improved form of fare box and formed a company for its manufacture. In 1882 he invented the girder rail that became the standard for street railways. In the following year he formed the Johnson Steel Street Rail Company with the financial backing of the du Ponts. Arthur J. Moxham, who developed the machinery to roll the complicated shapes, became the company's manager. The firm was renamed The Johnson Company in 1888.

Johnson went on to invent an improved underground cable traction system for street railways and later experimented with electric traction. Between 1905 and 1915 he conducted experiments for propelling high-speed trains on the principle of magnetic levitation. Johnson and his associates also invested in street railway systems beginning in 1876. During the 1880s and 90s, they controlled lines in Indianapolis, Cleveland, St. Louis, Detroit, Brooklyn, Lorain, Ohio, and Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

The Johnson Company originally made a contract with the Cambria Iron Company to produce its rails at its plant in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The Johnson Company built a fabricating works nearby, where the rail was made into switches and crossings. The Johnson Company built its own rolling mill south of Johnstown in 1888. Through a subsidiary, the Lorain Steel Company, the firm constructed its own steel mill complex at Lorain, Ohio in 1894-95. Johnson sold the Lorain Steel Company and the rail manufacturing facilities of the Johnson Company to the Federal Steel Company in 1898, through which they became a part of United States Steel in 1901.

Johnson thereafter went on to a second career as a political reformer and mayor of Cleveland, although he continued some of his investments in street railways and in other enterprises in the Cleveland-Lorain area.

Both Pierre S. du Pont and T. Coleman du Pont inherited some of their uncles' investments in Johnson's companies. T. Coleman served as manager of the works in Johnstown, and Pierre became president of the Johnson Company in 1899 after the sale of the steel works. Both received their early management experience under Johnson. Many of the managerial innovations which they later implemented at the Du Pont Company were elaborations of practices learned at the Johnson Company. Both continued to participate with Johnson in his various street railway and real estate enterprises.

Pierre Samuel du Pont was born at Nemours, Delaware on January 15, 1870, the eldest son of Lammot and Mary Belin du Pont. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 with a degree in engineering, he returned to Delaware to become assistant superintendent of the Brandywine black powder mills. During the late 1890s Pierre and his cousin T. Coleman du Pont invested in the Johnson Steel Street Rail Company and Citizens Gas & Electric Company of Lorain, Ohio.

In the years between 1899 and 1902 Pierre du Pont worked with his two cousins, T. Coleman and Alfred I. to reorganize the Du Pont Company, transforming the family firm into a modern, centralized, multidivisional corporation. In 1915 Pierre S. du Pont became president of the Du Pont Company and shortly, thereafter, purchased 25% of the stock of the General Motors Corporation. He was elected to the board of directors of General Motors and became president of G.M. in 1920, after resigning his presidency of the Du Pont Company to become Chairman of the Board of Directors. In 1923 he turned over the presidency of G.M. to Alfred Sloan, Jr. During the 1920s, 30s, 40s, Pierre S. du Pont continued to serve on the Board of Directors of the Du Pont Company and General Motors Corporation.

Beginning in the late 1920s, Pierre S. du Pont became active in politics, first with the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and later with the American Liberty League. He was a leader in shaping the business community's opposition to the New Deal. Pierre S. du Pont died in 1954.

Longwood Gardens is a series of formal display gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. that was developed by Pierre S. du Pont after he purchased the site from the Peirce family in 1906. The Peirce family had received this 1,000-acre site as part of a land grant by William Penn. Interested in horticulture, they ornamented the land with trees and plants that were not native to this area. During the 19th century it was opened to the public.

Pierre S. du Pont built a series of formal gardens with fountains on the site which were reminiscent of the Gardens at Versailles. In 1921 he constructed an extensive network of conservatories which contained rare plant species from Africa and South America. When he died in 1954, he left more than $98,000,000 to the Longwood Foundation to develop and maintain the gardens. Today, Longwood is one of the United States' premier botanical gardens, attracting nearly 1 million visitors a year.

Pierre Samuel du Pont was born at Nemours, Delaware on January 15, 1870, the eldest son of Lammot and Mary Belin du Pont. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 with a degree in engineering, he returned to Delaware to become assistant superintendent at the Du Pont Company's Brandywine black powder mills.

In the years between 1899 and 1902 Pierre du Pont worked with his two cousins, T. Coleman and Alfred I. du Pont to reorganize the Du Pont Company, transforming the family firm into a modern, centralized, multidivisional corporation. In 1915 Pierre S. du Pont became president of the Du Pont Company and shortly, thereafter, purchased 25% of the stock of the General Motors Corporation. He was elected to the Board of Directors of General Motors and became president of G.M. in 1920, after resigning his presidency of the Du Pont Company to become Chairman of the Board of Directors. In 1923 he turned over the presidency of G.M. to Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. During the late 1920s, 30s, and 40s, Pierre S. du Pont continued to serve on the Board of Directors of the Du Pont Company and General Motors Corporation. From the late 1920s to the mid 1940s, Pierre S. du Pont was active in politics first with the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment and later with the American Liberty League. He was a leader in shaping the business community's opposition to the New Deal. Pierre S. du Pont died in 1954.

During the late 1920s Pierre S. du Pont began to withdraw from active involvement in the administrative affairs of the Du Pont Company and General Motors Corporation. Beginning in 1925 he played an important role in financing and building support for the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment. He was a key supporter of Alfred E. Smith's 1928 campaign for President and remained active in the Democratic Party during the early years of the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

Pierre S. du Pont recognized that the Depression of the 1930s was going to result in an expansion of the role that the federal government played in economic life. He hoped that FDR and his New Deal would seek to accommodate the interests of the large corporations within the new regulatory structure. Thus in June of 1933 Pierre S. du Pont accepted an invitation to serve on the Business Advisory Council for the Department of Commerce. Several months later at the urging of General Electric's Gerard Swope he signed on as a member of the National Recovery Administration's Advisory Board. In November of 1934 du Pont was appointed to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board which had been set up under the NIRA to administer the portion of the law which guaranteed the right of collective bargaining to organized labor. Section 7a of the law also stated that "fair wages and hours" should be incorporated into the codes of fair competition. However, by early 1935, Pierre S. du Pont began to suspect that the New Deal was beginning to threaten the economic perogatives of the large corporations as it sought an accommodation with organized labor. In June, Pierre S. du Pont resigned from the National Labor Relations Board and began voicing his opposition to FDR's economic policies.