Gerard Colby - Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain

Du Pont Dynasty

Behind the Nylon Curtain

Gerard Colby

This 1984 edition is dedicated

To Charlotte Dennett, for her rare courage and dedication to justice and the peoples right to know,

To the memory of my mother, Veronica Colby Zilg, for her inspiration and belief,

And to the people of Delaware and employees of Du Pont, for sacrifices untold and their continuing struggle for human dignity and true democracy.

One

BARONS OF THE BRANDYWINE

In a chair overlooking the night-enshrouded city of Wilmington, a middle-aged man sat amidst the sound of tinkling glasses as waiters drifted by winking to each other in clandestine code. He looked like any businessman, dressed in a simple suit with a tie striped a bit too broadly, his brown hair swept back from a broad brow in the no-nonsense style typical of his family, his face florid but friendly. Only the nervous deference paid his presence gave any hint of the extraordinary. But Edward du Pont was no ordinary man. And this night, in Wilmingtons newest private club, he was observing the promise of a most unusual summer.

His dark eyes pierced the glass of the picture window, scanning the constellation of the city below. From it shot a blazing blue line that traced a lone highway reaching toward a southern horizon lost in shadow, where seas thundered pristine shores, stirring dreams of gilded tourist meccas. For generations, southern Delaware had been renowned for a rare tranquility, its isolation on a peninsula jutting between the Delaware and Chesapeake Bays leaving it untrammeled by the strains of urban life. Even his familys construction of this highway to the worlds largest nylon plant at the lower end of the state had not disturbed the areas pre-industrial ambience, and southern Delaware retained its curious fragrance as the backyard of Virginia colonial gentility blended with the raw pungency of the tideland. Although most Du Ponts were Unionists during the Civil War, the practical task of rule had led them to compromise with the regions Dixiecrat legacy, and his family had seen fit to manipulate the social forces history had handed them in order to secure a hundred years of political stability. Even the nylon plant at Seaford, when its huge shining steel came into operation shortly before World War II, seemed to point westward, toward the ships and rails of Baltimore, rather than back toward Delaware, and the goods that did travel north on the highway raced past the quiet villages, leaving them untouched and intact.

Now all that was changed. Seaford, once the crown jewel of Du Ponts textile empire, had been belted by winds of technological change it itself had generated. Having conquered and pillaged the markets of natural fibers during the 1970s, polyester had reached the point of overproduction, idling the Seaford plant far below capacity, leaving it a tarnished relic of an age gone by when his family could rely on textile profits to keep control of their company and their own destiny. It was an era now eclipsed by revived world competition and its attending displays of tensions, uncertainty, and weaponry, all symbolized by the giant armored birds that settled each day to roost some sixty miles to the north at Dovers mammoth air force base.

Near there, in the stately colonial halls that mark Delawares capital, Edwards cousin, Governor Pierre S. du Pont IV, rules in absentia while pursuing his all-but-announced race for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination. His ambition for the White Housewell-placed, since he is chairman of GOPAC, a major dispenser of funds to local Republican candidates around the countrycomplements the needs of the rest of Edwards family as they confront the crisis of transition from their position as Americas oldest industrial family to the assumption of leadership in the world of high finance. Responding to that crisis and Governor du Ponts interest in courting the financial powers who are the kingmakers of Republican national politics, a crack team of loyal lieutenants is working hard these days in Dover, conferring regularly with Edwards allies and New York bankers to remake not only Delaware, but America.

Already, the national ramifications of what they have done have been felt by millions of Americans across the country. Thanks to favorable laws, large banks are now free to use Delaware like a Bahamas tax haven and charge credit card customers around the nation whatever interest they like, even retroactively. They may also foreclose on homes to collect credit card debts and can charge unlimited fees for credit card usage. Other state legislatures, fearful of losing any more bank resources to Delaware, are feeling the pressure of bank lobbyists to change their laws too, all in violation of the intent of federal laws such as the Glass-Steagal Act, passed during the Depression to stop precisely such compromising overlapping of interests through over-concentration and dangerous credit overextension by the large central banks. As the states gut the New Deal safeguards, the Federal Reserve System is also feeling the pressure to accept changes in national law by Congress just to keep some sense of financial order through national banking standards.

The impact on American society will be enormous, raising the spectre of another 1929 of feverish speculation in the domestic money markets as banks attempt to compensate for the reduction of capital coming in from abroad because of diminishing control by American industry over world markets and growing defaults on foreign loans (with the Third World now replacing Weimar Germanys role during the 1920s), spurring financial chaos and setting the stage for eventual collapse.

Dover, however, is unperturbed by such long-term lessons from history. What counts now are short-term political and financial fortunes, and Wilmington is enjoying an unprecedented influx of bank capital; thirteen major banks from New York and Maryland, in fact, have joined the Computer Corporation of America from Detroit, which manages the credit card business of 90 banks in the Midwest, and the nations third largest retailer, J.C. Penney, in resettling in Delaware since Governor du Ponts bills, drafted by New York bankers and former Du Pont Chairman Irving Shapiro, were rushed through an obliging legislature which is ranked by the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures as one of the nations worst.

It is not surprising, then, that the only major road from Dover leads back to Wilmington, the real capital of Delaware. Nor that it is named Du Pont Highway. It scrapes its way north through the flat rich farmland and past the handsome stables where champions are bred for the purses offered by the raceway owners, who are often, as exemplified by the Du Ponts, the same families who own the stables.

Ten miles or so past the burgeoning state prison at Smyrna, where severe overcrowding sparks strikes by mostly Black and Hispanic inmates against the Du Pont Administration in the shadow of a restored gallows, and just a few miles north of the chaotic tinsel strip that runs through the helpless town, the automobiles filling Du Pont Highway flow within the emergency evacuation zone of the Salem nuclear power generating plant.

The Salem plants facilities have been plagued by structural cracks, leaks of radioactive water, faulty equipment and the charges of a nuclear engineer who resigned in protest of designs he claimed would result in over-pressurization. Incidents of over-pressurization have since been reported. The nuclear plants also rest precariously on a mound of dredged sand in the Delaware River, a part of New Jersey appropriately christened Artificial Island. Although a serious seismic disturbance would turn the sand to jelly, the nuclear station does not rest on bedrock, which is hundreds of feet beneath the sand. A geological fault, with 75 earthquakes of varying degrees recorded over the last 200 years and increased activity reported recently, runs right down the middle of Salems four reactors and two more reactors