Thursday, January 11, 2018

Du Pont

Du Pont: One Hundred and Forty Years  William S. Dutton
1942
Weight: 1.5 lbs
Method of Disposal: Donating




DuPont. The story of a company. DuPont was a donor to my elementary school. They made a big production of it when I was in first grade. Their was a giant photo of a DuPont building in the front of our yearbook, and the principal came to tell us how wonderful DuPont was. I remember my mother rolling her eyes and telling me they weren’t all that great.  I was confused, and she likely didn’t want to tell a child everything, but she did tell me some reasons. Only, I can’t remember them completely. I believe it was how they treated their employees. That stark contrast between my mother’s emotions and my school’s celebratory manner stuck with me. I kept an eye on DuPont.

It has been many years now, but you still see them in the news. I would think more now than back then, but I wasn’t reading the news then. A quick Google search will come up with these snippets:

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/DuPont-workers-had-been-exposed-to-potentially-6010262.php

https://www.osha.gov/news/newsreleases/region6/07092015

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-became-duponts-worst-nightmare.html

https://www.corp-research.org/dupont

I guess I should know by now that my mama is usually right! Du Pont has been around almost as long as this country has been known as the United States of America. It was started when a refugee from Francebegan manufacturing gun powder in Delaware.  If you’d like to learn more about the history of the company then try this book, though it is quite dated.




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